Reflections and Hair Edits

[ElizabethM]

Okay, I admit. I could come up with a much better title than the one I put, but frankly I don't actually know what to call what I did. I was watching a tutorial on sunglasses reflections and though, "Hey this is cool. Let's try it!". The random picture I picked ended up irritating me in a way where I just started compiling a couple new things I learned (Like shadow/highlights, hair masking, ect) and well... I made this. Whatever this is:



This would be the original:



And as you can probably tell I didn't do THAT great in terms of keeping most of the stray hairs, no thanks to the horrible white glow she had surround her hair (any ideas how to get rid of those?) and actually now that I think about it, it's way embarrassing that I'm even posting my lame attempts at creating god knows what. BUT I'M TAPING INTO MY CREATIVE MIND AGAIN (I hope) so here's my progress. Lmfao.

Tips and tricks are welcomed, anything to help me improve from this for shame attempt at something! Ahhhh.

 

[gedstar]

Here's a tutorial for masking out hair, remember google's your friend and people on PSG of course! hope this helps.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GJHHwytbnlI

 

[ElizabethM]

Whooo! Thank you! I did google a couple hair masking tutorials before hand, but nothing helped so much in regards to the white glow surrounding her hair :/

 

[chrisdesign]

The reflections in the glasses look great Elizabeth.
But the hair coloring is a little overdone. Something in between the 2 images would look much more natural.
As you mentioned hair masking is always a big problem.
In this case I would choose a much lighter and not so busy background. The blending would be easier. You can avoid many problems like this.

 

[ElizabethM]

Whooo! Well the reflection was my main priority so at least I got that down good enough. Haha thanks for the tips, Chris! I'll try out a less busy background and tamer hair colour, let's see what I come up with. I don't want to simply give up on this image, at least not before I come up with a good enough result.

 

[chrisdesign]

Elizabeth, I tried out what I said earlier. I hope you don't mind if I post this image. It is meant for educational purposes only.

 

[ElizabethM]

Oh Chris, by all means please post away. I'm happy to learn from you because seriously your designs (from what I've seen) are way amazing! And ^^ that right there is GORGEOUS. I got mine to look slightly better too with your advice of a lighter background! I'll post it tomorrow after some final tweaking. Haha

 

[ElizabethM]

Attempt number two was made! Better than before, that's for sure but Chris seriously how did you managed to mask her hair so amazingly? I literally re-did my selection a hundred times trying to get it done nicely without having the tiny hairs become so translucent. But nothing that I tried worked. The slight details I got here was after duplicating the layers a couple of times. Haha

 

[chrisdesign]

This one looks much much better Elizabeth!
I forgot to tell you that on the BG layer your blend mode must beset to "multiply". This makes it a lot easier.


1.
I did this selection with the magic wand tool.
Tolerance 25 pixel. Feather selection 7 pixel.
Enlarge selection 5 pixel.
Invert selection and save it.


2.
On a new layer,(blend mode multiply) add your Background image.
Add a layer mask, open your selection and hit delete.


3.
Paint back with black color your missing Background on the layer mask
with a soft brush of 35 pixel with 10% opacity.



Sorry german PS version.

 

[ElizabethM]

Thanks Chris! I did the selection with masking the layer and then using refine edge to get more details, but that also made it more translucent in some areas.

I tried your methon, mine still came up with choppy edges... Do you think it's the way I'm selecting?

I never thought hair would be this frustrating. Haha

 

[chrisdesign]

I think you are trying to get too much detail. Your layer mask has to be very soft.
Look at my screenshot of the selection for the layer mask.

 

[ElizabethM]

Does this look better? Because I realised my mistake. I kept wondering what you meant by invert selection, thinking of the hardest tricks when really I should have just realised you selected the easiest thing (the white background) and inverted the selection. God, such a blur moment on my part.

 

[chrisdesign]

Congrats Elizabeth...you're a fast learner.
What a difference to you first attempt.

 

[ElizabethM]

Congrats Elizabeth...you're a fast learner.
What a difference to you first attempt.

Aw gee wow thanks for all the help Chris!

I've been trying to learn all these little things to tackle designing a full own photo manpulation (background, hair color, eyes, different things and bits of objects added in) that's what it's called right?