NEED HELP : Photoshop Nightmare - Recreating hair

[kissdesign]

:mrgreen: G'day All,

This is my first post here on this forum. My name is Dan, I am a print designer from Melbourne Australia. I have a small task of retouching few photos that is driving me nuts. I was wondering if I could get some help from the gurus.

Please download from the link below. It won't let me share links until I have 5 posts so I had to dodge it - sorry

tinyurl dot com/cvcllpp

I have to extract the model out of the background + have to recreate the hair + it should look perfect on black & white background. I have tried almost everything that I know to extract & recreate the hair(plugins, brushes e.t.c) but due to the quality of the photo, it is not possible to get the optimum quality.

I have to paint the hair in to give it realistic look, it does the perfect job but I do not have that but it takes a lot of time and I mean it. So is there anything we could do to speed up the process? anybetter way of recreating realistic hair?

Would really appreciate your help.

Have a great day!

Cheers
D

 

[ibclare]

Here's your link: https://www.dropbox.com/s/873pp6o1ru141yg/test_photoshop_gurus.psd

Brushes designed to simulate hair. I use them all the time, because most images do not lend themselves perfectly to extraction and, believe me, I have tried a dozen techniques. So once I have done the best I can extracting and refining with mask and brush, I make layers below and add in brush strokes. You'll see that on most of my manipulation composites. It takes some work but it is tons faster than painting them with your own brush as someone has done the work already. Once you get to know which brushes have shapes, curls, lines, etc,. that work for specific projects, it will go fast.

You can get brushes on the web of course. I just try to be careful that I don't pick up one where the hairs are infected with viruses (OK, corny joke). I use deviantart.com to a fault for a lot of things.

Good luck; let us know how it goes. BTW, you'll likely get more replies. One more thing, you can upload images at any time. You'll see a square icon with a little tree image in it and that is for uploads. When you click it, you'll get an option for computer upload or to add link.

 

[ibclare]

Here's an example of using the brushes:

before:



after:

 

[kissdesign]

Thanks mate, appreciate your help. How many colors did you use to paint the blonde hair? e.g lightest, mid, darkest...

Cheers
D

 

[MikeMc]

What version of PS are you using ? CS5 and CS6 have some neat tricks for hair, the brushes will help.

 

[IamSam]

Thanks Clare for the hair brush idea! And I thought I had a complete collection of brushes. In the 20 mins or so I spent searching hair brushes, I did not find many that looked good for blonde hair. Any suggestions?

Mike, you have my curiosity peaked!

Kiss, I would love to see the original image that you used. What technique did you use to remove her from the background?

 

[ibclare]

It took me awhile to figure out how to make the blonde hair work, or any of it for that matter. Thanks you PS for the undo and the eraser!. Even at 100% I was not getting deep, detailed hair strands. What I do now is lay down the base color that I select, alt/opt + click the paint brush, do that at 100% and maybe click it twice; not too many times or it may blur, but if you have steadier hands it could be OK. But I would just pick a darker shade instead. Then I select the darkest hair in the range and put that over it as a lower opacity. Next I select a medium and apply it at some lowered opacity. At times, depending on the image or the hair quality, I will start with the darker color and work the opposite.

Took some time for me to get this right so it didn't look muddy. Occasionally I will change the blend mode or layer opacity if it helps, but I find blend mode is not too helpful. I have several sets of brushes for this purpose and I will position and angle and size them so that only pieces of the original stroke will show. I should post a screen shot of some of the layer below the model and you'll see the mish mash of strokes, lol.

On my after image there, I cloned portions of the hair in the swishy part that's bouncing out on the right side of the image. Looking at it now, I can see things that could have been executed better. But I'm not in a competition, doing this for a client, nor planning to hang it in a gallery or post in a web magazine! So I may fix this before I post the whole composite. After all, that's why I've been working on it for days now. Determined to be patient about displaying work that is not as finished as I would like it to be.

 

[Tom Mann]

Thanks, Clare. I never got into brushes to fix hair. Given your comments and results, I'll have to give it a try again.

T

 

[ibclare]

I can't answer that about how many strokes or how many colors that is that I use. It pretty much all depends on the color density and shade and sometimes it takes a few tries to get the right one. So I will often put different color strands side by side. I suppose I usually use about three different colors per brush design, but like I said it depends . . . no way for me to explain better except say, "try it."

Here's an earlier example; still struggling. Like I said, I took quite awhile before I even attempted this more than occasionally, and then more time to feel comfortable with it. In this example, I put a few strands on layers above. I don't remember, but I probably used an eraser to remove the excess, unwanted hair. That's why I use several layers, either below or above. I gave up trying to extract this one's hair; it was so fine and flyaway. I probably should have done more with the hair on the right. This is actually a high res photo but something was wrong with the light and/or exposure. However, she sat back from the FG so I left it. (lazy? lol)

 

[MikeMc]

Thanks Clare for the hair brush idea! And I thought I had a complete collection of brushes. In the 20 mins or so I spent searching hair brushes, I did not find many that looked good for blonde hair. Any suggestions?

Mike, you have my curiosity peaked!

Kiss, I would love to see the original image that you used. What technique did you use to remove her from the background?

Sam....You know refine edge.....I like to save some "clips" and use them to make hair brushes, along with the ones in cyberland. I did find a great "pixie" brush.......if you need a 60's look.....

 

[IamSam]

I like to save some "clips" and use them to make hair brushes, along with the ones in cyberland.

That's a great idea. I enjoy making my own brushes, but I had never thought to make a hair brush when I had removed someone from their background! Thanks!

Clare your brilliant! When painting traditionally, I developed a technique for painting blonde hair that is similar to what you describe. I would lay in the darkest layer first and then gradually work my way forward to the lightest hairs.
Her's a painting of a woman I did using this technique:

View attachment 26457

I'm going to see if this will work in Photoshop with brushes!

 

[ibclare]

Very nicely done Sam.

And, yes I shine; I'm hard to look at. You should see my driver's license. It took them 6 times to get an image of me. And it's really hard to look at, uglyyyyyyyyy, lol.