Cut Out Hair with Very Busy Background in Photoshop

hi there this is animation Dixon perfect and today we gonna learn how to select hair in Photoshop no matter how busy the background is so without any further ado let's get started before we begin this video is divided into sections so if you wanna go ahead and skip to any section that you like you can use these time stamps so here we on Photoshop if you go ahead and download this photo and follow along check the links in the description so the first thing that we have to do is to select as much as we can so first off make a copy of the background layer press ctrl or command Jake we need to have a backup right now in this copy you can turn the background off for now select any selection tool now you can choose whatever method you want but the objective is to select as much as you can all right so I'm gonna go ahead and click on select and mask if you're using an older version of Photoshop you might have to use refine edge and that can be found under select and here instead of selected mask you will find refine edge now just click on selected mask you can also use the pen tool whatever you want just select as much as you can except the hair alright don't pay attention to the hair so here inside of vo I'm gonna choose on black so what is on black well if you have the opacity 200 whatever is selected will show up and whatever is not selected will be completely black if you have the opacity to zero everything will show up irrespective of your selection or masking so let's keep the opacity at somewhere around 68 ish we are happy with this and we're gonna use the quick selection tool inside of selected mask dialog box let's make it a little bigger and paint on her as you can see now if I increase the opacity only that area shows up let's keep it at this number and just start painting on her get as much as you can now obviously we will have to improve it later but just get it all right this is okay this looks okay don't pay attention to the hair let's do the cap a little bit left over there no problem make the brush smaller and paint there easy very good now let's paint on this area okay we have got the most now let's increase the opacity all the way to hundred and see if we have it accurate in other areas except for the hair alright so here is a couple of improvements that we need to make let's make the brush a little smaller alright so we might have to add a little bit over there and let's zoom out and have a look everything else seems to be fine and we will improve that later and once you are done with this just make sure that output to layer mask is selected and decontaminate colors is checked off just hit OK and we have the image for the layer mask we have a basic selection it's not that great we have to improve it we will work on the hair later you can skip that section if you want to be able to see the selection properly let's go ahead and create a solid color adjustment layer and let's choose black that's fine just hit OK and place it under layer 1 now let's improve the selection ok so we're gonna take a brush and you know the concept of mask right black hides and white shows up see whatever area is white is showing up whatever area is black inside of the mask is hidden ok so we're gonna select the mask take the brush and take the color of white you can press X to toggle between the foreground and the background as you can see so I'm gonna take a white make the brush a little smaller and just paint over a couple areas which are not selected properly so I'm just gonna make the brush a little bigger and then just get these right let's select the soft round brush fine okay great now I change the color to black by pressing X and erase the extras keep in mind since this area is a little out of focus it needs to be the edge needs to be a little blurry don't make it very sharp this is fine this seems a little strange change that back to white and just paint over it now change that to black and just erase the extras it doesn't matter whether you have an accurate selection or not it should just look good because nobody knows whether that piece of leather had a little bump there right after the selection this is not a scientific study is it this is art as you can see there's a little bit of unevenness going there so it will make sure it's white and just paint in that area black and paint out the extras I think it's perfect that way okay let's paint in white okay the court is fine and don't worry about the hair hair is okay we will take care of the hair later okay this area what about this area there's a little bit of fringe on the outside how do we get rid of it all you need to do is to contract the selection okay so hold the control or command click on the mask this will make the selection of the mask now we will go to select modify and then contract you can choose two pixels two pixels is fine here okay it will get inside by two pixels if it's not enough you can do that again now we want to erase on the outside but the inside is selected so we need to invert the selection so all we need to do go to select and then inverse or press the shortcut command shift I or control shift I on a windows so once the selection is inverted take the brush foreground color black and simply erase the extras just like that see now you don't have the fringe control or command D fine except for the hair everything else looks fine let's look at the hat it's okay most of it is good this is great here I think it might need a little bit improvement right over here done alright that is taken care of now before we work on the hair we need to do a couple of things first we need to expand the hair a little outside so that when we paint hair back in inside of the mask we don't get the background okay so just unlink it unlink the mask and the layer come to the layer and then go to filter and then liquify at this point you can also choose to convert this into a smart object if you want to play non-destructive but I'm gonna keep it at that and choose liquify now inside of liquify we need to zoom in and with the help of the forward warp tool just make the brush a little bigger and just get it a little outside extended do the same here X and it just like that looks great here as well we need to extend it all right pretty much looks good now once you're satisfied just hit okay and you're good to go okay so the hairs have been extended now we need to select the mask and remove it remove the hair from the mask so that we can repaint it so with the mask selected take the brush make sure any brush is fine soft round is good all we need to do is to raise it foreground color black opacity and flow at 100 just erase the extras just like that all right here as well just erase the extras do the same over here just erase the extras fine cool now our next step is creating a brush to paint back in the hair so let's go ahead and create a brush so for that we need to look at the hair now you can of course definitely use one brush for every image but I would suggest creating different brushes according to the portrait that you're working on so for this portrait have a look at the hair how is the hair how thick is the hair we need to analyze that and also analyze how dense is the hair and according to it we will be creating brushes so let's go ahead and create a new layer alright now once we're zoomed and you can create a brush on the face doesn't really matter because we are on a separate layer let's have a look at the thickest hair we can find I think we can take this hair as a sample so make the brush just a little bigger than that here how big is this four or five pixels something like that so it's four pixels so we can use four pixels as medium or what you can do we can choose three pixels and paint a little extra so it just gives you an idea of how big the hair is how take the hair is so we're gonna choose three pixels and increase the hardness all the way to hundred okay now we're gonna be creating brush inside of this box so you can just open up grids it doesn't really matter I'm just doing it for your understanding so you can press ctrl or command R to hide the ruler and show the ruler again so I'm gonna just make a box just like that for my own convenience and we're gonna be creating a brush here so you can create more than one brush if you'd like to but I'm okay with just one okay so once you have that three let's make it a little bigger and I think I'm gonna make it a little bigger so with the help of the move to make it a little bigger okay take the brush just make a dot here cool a bigger dot here go random with this you don't have to be accurate a very small dot again a big dot a small dot small dot a big one so you can get totally random with this okay so this looks pretty much random now once you're ready I think I've painted a little too much this is gonna be a little too thick so he can take simply take the eraser right here make the eraser smaller increase the hardness you can make it 3 pixels as well and just erase out okay that looks very random now once you have that done all we have to do hold the ctrl or command click on the layer thumbnail that makes a selection of that now let's create a brush from this selection so we need to go to edit and then define brush preset and we can save it here or let's name it fix hair one just hit OK now we have that brush does that paint like here I don't know press ctrl or command D to let go of the selection and let's try painting with it let's create a new layer and let's try painting with it with black so we have the black selected take the brush and let's select that brush that we just made fix hair one no it's it's nothing like hair right so we need to make it like how can we make it like hair simple very simple we need to go to window and then brush settings now we'll make a couple trials here so let's open some place where we can paint so first of all that you have to decrease the spacing it's not continuous so let's decrease it to the point where it gets continuous house five fives okay ish house for force pretty good let's go three percent great now check on shape dynamics now inside of shape dynamics we will put the size jitter if you're using a tablet you'll put it to bend pressure okay so when you press softer it'll be small when you press harder it will be big so it really helps when you're painting hair strands just like that let's see now it looks so much better just like here however if you're using a mouse I would suggest that you use something called fade so it isn't looking very great now but you have to just play with the value of fade so let's keep it 200 this is how it will look 200 is not enough let's go 300 or 400 400 looks fine hit Enter or return now you can paint see it looks like hair just like that even if you are doing it for the mouse okay I'm gonna change that back to pen pressure all right it works fine for me make sure the size jitter and minimum diameter is zero all the way to the left we don't need to have any angle jitter secondly just check in transfer now inside of strands first set the opacity jitter to pen pressure and flow jitter to bend pressure now if you're using a mouse again set those to fade and you might have to play with it said that to fade as well and you might have to play for example let's set it to 400 let's set this one to 400 as well see now that's just what happened select the brush again sorry about that now once you pain it's great you can do that with mouse as well so let's change that back to pen pressure okay now let's paint a little hair and see how it looks yeah it looks really good it looks like hair right now once you have done all of that you can come back to brush tip shape you can also play with the angles if you want but for this side I guess the angle is fine and for that side we might have to change the angle right after setting up the brush let's not forget to save the brush preset because we only have saved that shape of the brush not with these settings so click on this grid and click new brush preset now fix hair 1 let's name it final make sure capture brush size and this one the second one include dual settings is selected and hit OK now we have it ready fix final okay so let's go ahead and delete these two layers we don't need them anymore now let's get back to painting the hair this can be exciting let's just decrease the size of the brush a little bit don't play so much for the size because if you do the hair can become thin or too thick let's select the mosque let's link the mask and the layer back again take the brush make sure the foreground color is white press X and then let's start painting here let's see what we come up at and get rid of these guides you can just press ctrl or command semicolon it hides them okay now let's paint them the hair back in if you want some guidance here's what you can do with the mask selected just open up the mask properties if you cannot see it go to windows and then just click on properties now insider properties just simply decrease the density now you're able to see the other areas just a little bit just for guidance okay now you can paint that but I don't need that just wanted you to know that this is possible just paint accordingly according to the shape of the hair that you see you can go to Windows and then brush settings you can change the angle a little bit if you want let's make it this way need to brush a tiny bit bigger keep in mind that we can alter the size of the brush but not that much if the original size of the brush in which it was created in if it was 47 we can go from 40 to 55 but not larger or smaller than that okay all right so let's have a look at this brush what's the original size of the brush if we change the brush if you get back to the brush it gets back to its original size so if I choose some other brush this is the original size 100 pixels if I get back to picks here one final 47 so this is 47 don't go beyond 55 just a general rule hair can be too thick or too thin and you might be thinking hairs are very blurry here and how can the hairs be so sharp over there don't worry about that we'll take care of that later just generally paint in and we can take this as an exception this strand because we'll blur it later okay let's get the size back forty three forty five is fine all right see we're getting the background there and we don't want that press X to get it to black and just pain from the outside this also gives us a night it's nice effect you can try this here as well painting from the outside sometimes it gives your hair a little texture this is looking bad over there a little bit let's get back to white now here we might have to change the angle so let's go to windows and then brush settings here or you can simply click here it opens up that and you can change the angle from here you can also change the angle from here as well same thing okay let's put the angle somewhere around that okay that looks cool now let's do this side of hair now it's difficult to work my hand that way because I work with my right hand so you can do this you can press R r for rotate and then you can rotate it and now you can easily paint it you can change get back to the brush and then just start painting it now you might have to play with the angle again because the angle stays the same okay that works for us maybe make the angle a little like this something like that you can do a little bit of textures here in there to go a little random just make it a little smaller wow this looks really nice now once you're zoomed in if you're not aware of it you can hold the spacebar and drag to move okay so this is zoomed out version okay now once you're zoom in you can hold the spacebar you cursor changes to a hand and you can move around now at this point I would rotate that again press R rotate that just like this probably I will rotate it like that okay be for the brush too getting a little bit of the background now let's rotate that back again just like this brush - let's see how the background was because this is getting a little confusing so hold the shift key and click on the mask to disable it and let's see how this was okay so there are little gaps so hold the shift key back again click on it so for these moments you can open up the properties and decrease the density so that you can see what's happening out there okay now get back to the mask and then just paint the brush a little smaller and can be painted a little extra over there we don't need so much hair over there and it's pretty much all right okay looks good now press R again click on reset view to reset it with the mask selected click on the properties and then just increase the density back again hit enter and that's the reason why we extended the hair because if we had not extended it have a look if I turn off the mask the hair would be up to this point right and when we have painted we would have got the background we don't want that and that's why we extended it all right so hold the shift key click on the mask again now I know this looks great right but it's not very perfect how can we make it perfect if we have to manually paint some hairs for just one single brush and I'll teach you how to create that brush so we know that the regular hair size in this image is 4 just keep that in mind get back to the brush and this time let's create one more brush we will select the soft round brush just to start and then just zoom in let's create a new layer and we will try to paint in a couple hairs here so foreground color black just decrease the size to four okay and then go to windows and brush settings now shape dynamics size jitter put it to pen pressure okay and if you are using a mouse you know what to do but it do fade and then dial in the numbers that works create in this image okay so for some image the fate can be 400 for other images it can be 200 so it totally depends upon image to image because resolution differs okay secondly transfer set opacity and flow to pen pressure okay and it should do it let's paint in a couple hairs yeah it's fine it's and you can also play with hardness if I increase the hardness how is it gonna look if I decrease the hardness yes it's much more natural I kind of like it let's get brush size to around three and let's see how three would look turn this layer on I think three would be if I paint in over here get back to the mosque if I paint in a couple hairs here three is not that bad so we can change between three and four depending upon the area that we are painting in so we can delete this layer we don't need that anymore and select the mosque I accidentally painted on the layer don't do that select the mosque foreground color white and just paint in a couple hairs here and there now I know we are painting over the background don't worry about it we'll take care of that later okay this is good and we have to paint some random ones here and there just a little one outside and just to get it more random look we can get the size to four we can extend this hair a little bit get a little random hairs here and there you see extension helped extension via liquify it was really necessary for us to do see how natural it's getting right now you could have done the whole thing with just one brush but it would have taken ages let's continue this line all right so we need to fill a couple areas in make the brush a little bigger and just fill it in a couple areas okay let's have a look at this area this area looks perfect let's take care of this area get the size back to four let's get it before okay whoops I increase the size four I think we can go five okay we got that area this area is fine the hair looks good now let's work on the other area rotate it again makes the stuff easier get back to the brush let's get a grand 'm there's a lot of hairs here in there so we can just get random I know it's looking like the hairs are cutting cutting cutting through and we can take care of that later just get the shape right okay it seems all right press R and click on reset view and let's inspect it let's see how this looks looks pretty good looks good on this side maybe we need to get back at the brush and do a little more random stuff here and there just to make it look more authentic whoops I accidentally copied it let's get back okay let's get back to this oK you've got the hair it looks alright but there are some areas where the hairs are just too sharp so for those areas all we need to do we need to use the blur tool so there is this blur tool right over there if you cannot see it you'll see this much too or the sharpen tool just select the blur tool and you can play with the strength and with the mask selected we are not painting on the layer just with the mask selected you'll just love it out just like that see now it looks so much more natural because these areas are blurred out those areas need to be blurred out to keep in mind we are not blurring the layer just the mask here as well it's - okay so when you blurred out now look how natural it looks right now so here do we need to blur out a couple areas maybe here a little bit this area is fine what about the other areas fine fine probably a little bit there these areas are fine all right so we have got it right if you have blurred the areas that we needed to and just let's see maybe we can use blur a little bit here all right now what about the areas where the backgrounds just are showing up no problem at all all we can do we can create a new layer dig the brush okay and we can increase the brush size if we want to and then just sample and paint so hold the alt or option click to sample now if you're not able to sample properly you can go to the eyedropper tool make sure sample size is 11 by 11 or something larger or 5x5 they'll also do but not point sample because if you choose point sample it will just sample from one single pixel and we don't want that 11 by 11 creates a box of 11 by 11 pixels and takes the average color off that box so 11 by 11 is fine for this also make sure we are sampling from all the layers and then get back to the brush if you don't have an adjustment layers make sure it's all layers but if you do have adjustments layers on top of it you can also select current and below okay you can get back to the brush and just hold the alt or option click on it to sample and just paint over it I know this looks crazy all you need to do hold the alt or option click on the line between these two it creates a clipping mask which means the color or whatever we do will be limited to just this layer one a selection or we can name it subject just to the subject mask okay so let's select that so whatever we color will be limited to that so let's sample a brighter color I'm gonna get back to it and I'm gonna choose three by three get back to this because I want to sample the brights okay here it's looking too much flat so we can take the eraser and just get the heat razor to the normal one and just erase this area okay get back to the brush what other areas are looking bad this area's lookin great okay so these are getting out so we can sample from here and paint over here no problem from here and paint over here get a little variety on sample from here paint over there from there paint over here okay we got that solved what about the other areas here you're getting a little background so we'll hold the older option sample here paint over here now we painted a little extra so we'll take the brush sorry the eraser and he raised it get back to the brush just to pray in these areas back in it looks strange so I'm gonna paint this and paint a couple these areas this area is also getting out in the background so paint that okay apart from that other areas are looking great now to make it even more realistic what's there what's that I might have accidentally painted it so let's take the eraser and simply erase that or maybe he moved it accidentally okay is it fine now everything else is we did something yes we I think we moved it accidentally or probably we moved the mosque something strange happened right there see it's looking very very strange if he had turned that off see you need to go back okay now it looks fine we moved something in between we might have to paint that again the the brush not the eraser okay let's zoom out and check alright this looks pretty good awesome now we are done actually we are but if you want to take it to the next level like really make it authentic any have a ton of time you can do this as well you can create one more layer okay and then zoom in take the brush size for for this one and just simply paint no clipping mask nothing just to add an extra air of authenticity you can just sample and start painting some extra hairs light colors dark colors and just start painting just for some added authenticity from the inside now when you have something like this you can just sample a color and add hairs from the inside and take it outside that way it looks so much more authentic for example here the hair looks a little off so you can just sample here and get it from inside to outside just combine brights and darks and add some texture this is like manual painting okay all right this area is fine you can also do some manual painting here as well let's make the brush a little bigger okay great let's get back to the other side get the size to four again I'll rotate a bit a bits we don't have to do much just a little bit here in there see going from the inside going outside and then coming inside back again I did mistake there all right see it's so authentic I mean it's fake but it will look authentic all right press our click on reset view just zoom out and there we go we have successfully selected the hair and this goes for no matter how difficult the background is we might get a little back get back to the mosque and take the brush and just get the coat back a little okay you got the coat back zoom out looks great and I can change the background to whatever you like so let's try white wow it looks amazing on white let's try and black and if the subject goes well with both white and black without any fringes or any crazy things around the edges well it can work with any background right so you can choose red pink whatever you want and it will look great on everything you can add a drop shadow this is totally amazing so that's how to do let's get back to why and one last check just once you have selected white it okay now we might have to perform one last check before we give this a green signal hold the alt or option click on the mask there might be some areas left see there are some areas which needs to be painted so here or these areas just simply take the brush and you can increase or decrease the size foreground color white and just paint in those areas here as well to hold the altar option-click on it again it should look great okay you might have to repair this area a little bit we're repairing these areas you can also choose the blend mode called overlay that way when you have white selected it just won't paint on the black area see it's just covering those but not painting on the black areas change it back to normal do not forget to do that okay great now hold the alt or option click on the mask back again see how beautiful this looks in white backgrounds now you know this is very sharp right so also at the same time I see that we need to paint a little bit there okay it's very sharp so how can we solve that simply select the blur tool and just blur it out a little bit but it's not blurring why is it not blurring well it's not blurring because this hair is something we added later so you can you have to select that layer and now add a blur a touch of blur let's make some adjustments get back to the mosque and we might have to add a little bit here okay and we might want to add a little bit there as well with the brush make sure the foreground color is white let's add a little bit let's check on that area look so much more wonderful you can take the brush and just make it smaller make it somewhere around five pixels and just paint back in some areas press our brush and just lean back in some areas you can get to this layer and just paint some hairs okay looks great press our reset view and zoom out wonderful this is so so much wonderful so there you go that's how to mask hair and let it go with every background so it looks totally amazing the mask is perfect and there you go it's pretty much done now you can put whatever backgrounds you want so that's our mascara no matter how busy the background is in Photoshop just a quick little recap first off select as much as you can use your favorite method it can be using the pen tool it can be selected mask use whatever you want and select everything you can except for the hair step number two remove the hair area a little bit inside then using liquify select the layer not the mask select the layer and inside of the liquify just extend the hair a little bit on the outside then we need to create few brushes so one brush for the hair with many strands and one single brush two brushes then get back to the mask paint back in the hair also there might be some areas which are extending to the background and background is showing up so you might have to create one new layer clip it and just paint in those areas also to add more authenticity you can just take the brush pick a color of the hair and just paint above it on a separate layer and do not forget to blur the areas which are out-of-focus inside of the mask and also on the other layer in which we have added the hairs on top of it so that's all for this video hope this video helps you and if it did make sure to give us a like and also don't forget to subscribe and not just subscribe ring the bell so that you might friend don't miss any other feature tip trick or tutorial I would like to take this moment to thank all these nice and amazing people for supporting this channel on patreon and we keep its imperfect free for everybody forever thank you so much for all your support I'll see you guys Mannix until then stay tuned and make sure that you keep creating [Music]

Channel: PiXimperfect

Views: 264,173

Keywords: cut out hair in photoshop, hair masking in photoshop, select hair photoshop, remove background, remove hair background, painting hair in photoshop, photoshop hair brush, select and mask, compositing, photo manipulation, change background, tutorial, adobe, piximperfect, unmesh dinda

Id: pEMG-RoXGaA

Length: 38min 2sec (2282 seconds)

Published: Fri Aug 03 2018