How to Blur Background When Hair is Difficult to Select in Photoshop

today we're gonna be talking about how to blur the background and get a shallow depth of field effect in Photoshop especially when the hair is difficult to select and the background is busy so without any further ado let's get started so here we unfortunately cannot download this photo and follow around make sure to go ahead and check the links in the description so the number one thing which we already know that if you want to apply the shallow depth of field effect or blur the background for that matter we have to first separate the background from the subject so that we can blur the background the way we want and keep the subject intact in focus now when the background is busy and the hair is flowing all the way all around there's a couple of things that we need to get comfortable with number one we won't be able to select every strand of hair it's very essential that we don't get caught up in selecting all these hairs flying around it's just not possible and you need to get comfortable with that so we need to find a happy place where most of the hair is selected not all of it but most of it and it looks nice it looks a little bit realistic so you need to find that don't get caught up selecting all and every each strand of hair okay that's number one number two it is gonna be sticky if you think it's gonna be easy just click and just boom and done magic happens that's just not gonna happen it's going to be sticky you have to apply some brushes you have to clear out stuff and it's going to be a little sticky but we'll get through it if you follow along we hope get through it but here's the thing you have to have a little patience so let's get started so I'm using Photoshop CC 2018 in which selections are far better than the previous versions so if you are in Photoshop CC 2018 it's an added advantage to you but if you're on previous versions you can still do it but not as good as Photoshop CC 2018 so make sure that you upgrade to it so the first thing that you need to do select any selection tool and directly go to select and mask now there is no selected mask prior to version 2015 point 5 CC 2015 point 5 so make sure you make that upgrade it's just not possible with the refine edge it's it's a little it's bad it's just bad okay select any selection tool and click on select and mask now she has a little brighter hair right so let's choose view on black okay if the opacity is 100% it will show you everything that is selected and just that if the opacity is 0% it will show you everything irrespective of whether you have made a selection or not so this is the selected mask dialog box and the first thing that we need to do select the quick selection tool and just start painting over the subject okay so this is the quick selection tool the shortcut to which is W okay select that let's zoom in quite a bit and start painting over the subject it will do its job automatically now it's gonna be little sticky so I'm gonna fast forward that but before that I'm going to show you something which is important so if you select something extra if that just bumps out all you have to do hold the alt or option this changes to minus and then just select that out okay just do that now I'm going to fast forward this process so that this doesn't get monotonous okay there we go and by the way once you're zoomed in you can hold the spacebar when you hold the spacebar the cursor changes to a hand and then you can move here and there so that's the tip okay now let's fast-forward and here's one more tip while here doing the hair trying not to paint on the areas where the background is speaking through for example in this area the background is we can see the background through the hair just don't paint on those areas just paint on those solid areas but the hair is solid and you can see no background through it okay alright now it is going to select those areas don't worry about that but you don't have to paint on those areas if you paint Photoshop will think that you want to select those areas so just don't paint those areas it will select them but you don't have to paint okay now just to check most of the areas are selected you can go ahead and increase the opacity this will show you just the selected area as you can see these areas are fine we can improve that this area is also good now we need to work on the hair let's decrease the opacity somewhere around this is fine 74s is fine now let's increase it a bit all you have to do select the refine edge brush tool the shortcut is our select that and just paint on those difficult areas okay so these areas are difficult where the hair is speaking through where it's difficult to select those areas just select just paint on those difficult areas okay so this area is a little clunky just paint on that area and Photoshop will take care of that see amazing isn't it now just pinged don't aim for selecting every strand affair don't try to select these strands because they will just bring back in the background okay don't try to do that all right let's do it carefully I'm gonna fast forward this process also let's change the view to white and let's see how this is looking because this is lighter let's decrease the opacity somewhere around this ok let's try it's looking pretty good it needs a little bit of improvement now let's go ahead and choose black again let's see where improvement is needed in this area because this area is brighter so we chose black view and if we just go ahead and increase the opacity all the way to let's say hundred let's see how this area selection is so this area looks pretty good it isn't bad but it's pretty good okay now there's a little bit of improvement needed that we can take care of that later and this area needs a lot of improvement see this is just not looking good okay so the first thing that you need to try here is that make sure you check smart radius and let's try increasing it okay so if you increase it Photoshop will do a little bit of math calculations and see what looks nice with this and it will try increasing the radius or in other words the amount of hair it is selecting so if you go too high it will look strange look very strange it might but it sometimes might work you don't know it's too much it's just too much okay so let's Photoshop do its work and let's see how good of a selection it does now Photoshop is slowing down a bit okay let's go back a little it's not good because it's selecting some extra things which we don't want it to select let's reduce it let's look at the calculations Photoshop does that's not nice radius of 8 pixels that's pretty good that looks wonderful now we need to work all this out okay so first of all let's clear this out we can clear this out using the brush so we can take the brush this one and we can just choose the minus one just click on the minus or you can choose the plus one and hold the alt or option and just subtract that or you can choose the minus one directly because we'll be subtracting stuff okay we don't want to keep alt press all the way around so just delete the extra areas like that work on it properly we'll work on that later and I'm just gonna fast for this process again now as you can see this area's not selected so we'll select the + brush and just select this area just it just missed out that area so we'll just select that area and if we have a little extra selection here it doesn't matter because the background is a little seamless and we are blurring the background we are not changing the background so it doesn't matter inside of it doesn't matter much now we'll select the refine edge again and try to select this area back let's decrease the opacity to see which areas are a left remaining don't try to select every strand of hair just not possible okay now once you're a bit happy with the result its increasing let's see what kind of a selection we have in here it's pretty dirty selection let's try to work this out properly let's try to work this up now it's going to select something extra something off the roof okay if you decrease the opacity seats it's it's ugly we have to make sure that most of the hair is selected not all of the hair because that's going to destroy your image so we'll select the brush again the minus one and we'll try to delete these extra areas very properly I'm gonna make this process a little faster now let's add a little bit of selection here and there because it's it's just that we can add some selection here with the Plus brush now once you have done all of this let's check these edges these I just also need a little bit of correction but we can do that later as well but what's important now have a look what's important now is that we check this thing this is a really cool stuff decontaminate colors this allows you to remove fringing from the edges okay so let's make sure you check that and check new layer with a layer mask and you check look at the magic look at what happens have a look if you increase the radius opacity I'm sorry look at it Wow what's actually doing is that if you decrease the opacity have a look it extends the hair a little bit it just extends the hair and then it just masks it out so that it reduces a lot of fringing now it looks a little strange there so we have to remove it with the brush so remember select most of the hair not all of the hair you just have to be happy with this happy with whatever you have selected okay you can always press X to turn on and off the view so if I press X the view shows up if I press it again it goes away it gives you a nice reference as to what is selected what is not selected you don't have to again and again decrease the opacity and do stuff so X is a good shortcut to remember now let's subtract that it's kind of too much let's okay there we go that's pretty good and let's have a look at these selections so we might want to just zoom in and let's do it here it's not save it for later let's do it here okay just like that just play with it and you know what to do right you can get this correct you can just delete it take your time and solve this okay there we go it's pretty good it's not bad now if you're satisfied once everything is gone done and good to go let's just zoom out and click OK now everything is okay make sure decontaminate colors check new layer with layer mask is checked click OK now for some of you and this problem has happened to me sometimes what Pence's decontaminate colors is grayed out have a look it's grayed out I did something it's grayed out there's just one thing that you have to do make sure sample all layers is checked off now once this is checked off have a look this is activated so make sure this is checked off so that this is active so check it new lever the layer mask click OK now when we check on decontaminate colors it always creates a new layer why does it create a new layer if we just zoom in and if we turn off the mask have a look if we just turn off the mask see it extends the hair so as to remove the fringing and then it creates the mask that's why it always creates the new layer because it doesn't want to disturb the current layer so let's turn on the mask back again by holding the shift and clicking on the mask there we go now let's Stern on the background and make a copy of the background press ctrl or command J now if you think all you have to do just blur the background and we're good to go the hats not the case let me show you if you go to filter blur and then let's apply a Gaussian blur for this moment and if you just increase the values you see this ghosting effect around the subject why that ghosting effect if you click OK I'll show you why let's just turn off the subject left see in the background we still have the subject so if you try to blur the background in the background the subject is also getting blurred so there's a breach outside the outline of the subject so if you turn on the subject layer you see the blur of the subject is coming out see this breach of color we don't want that to happen so let's go back press ctrl alt Z command option Z if you're using a matte Z as you pronounce that alright let's turn off the subject layer and the first thing that we need to do from the background layer let's name it background or let's keep it back and let's keep this let's name it subject in the back layer we have to remove the subject first so there are a couple of ways of doing it first of all select the lasso tool and make a selection around the subject make sure that you don't select any strand of hair make a selection just outside the subject like so just like this make a selection and make sure no strand of hair is selected or cut across just like this the closer you can get the better but make sure nothing is selected now once you make a selection of it all you have to do go to edit fill and then content-aware click OK in most cases this will work for you and it's gonna apply count in the way its it will do a pretty good job but if it doesn't work for you I have another method for you so stay tuned for that method now I'm just talking just to pass the time while it does its process now it's a little bit slower my laptop is a little bit slower it just has 8 gigs of RAM and it's very mediocre processor alright it did a pretty good job if you just press ctrl or command D and turn this on yeah it did a good job but as you can see here it just kind of messed up now you can also do one more thing turn this off you can select the clone stamp - okay clone stamp - just sample this area and just carry it along just like that and anyway this is gonna be blurred so you don't have to be super careful about this but you can also use clone stamp tool to make sure it carries along okay this is okay looking at the other areas just just extend it a bit turn it on let's check the edges always here we need a little bit of extensions if I just turn it off line it up and there we go let's turn it back on it's pretty good it's good here it's good turn it off again here it's looking strange so just sample this and just paint it over there turn it back on you don't have to be super careful because this is gonna be blurred okay now it's fine now let's blur the background but before we do that do me a favor have a proper look at the background and study it so I have a prop for you so the background is just like this right and it's gradually going further so we have to apply a gradual blur you cannot just apply a flat blur that's just not possible background is like this so if the subject is here for example and then this area will be little blur this area will be more blurred more blurred and so so on and so forth so we have to apply a gradual blur a flat blur won't work again the background is not just the road it also has a wall at the side of it have a look it has a wall so it's something like this the background is something like this so it has this wall and it has this footpath on which she is walking now a couple of things to keep in mind when you apply a gradual blur from here to here okay so this is a gradual blur little blur more blur more blur more blur when you apply and gradually make sure you do not blur this area I getting what I'm trying to say if you blur it gradually and if you blurred this gradually it will look strange because this is on the same focal plane if this area is in focus this area also has to be in focus and it will become more clear when we apply the blur and before we do that let's just convert this layer into a smart object so that whatever we apply it's non-destructive so for that go to filter and convert for Smart Filters click OK and then simply go to filter blur gallery and tilt-shift just click on that now you're not flying a gradual blur and the blur starts from right there right where it's standing right where she's standing so we'll take it all the way to the bottom just like this and zoom out quite a bit and this is the line where the blur starts and this is the line where the blur ends okay so this is the line where the blur is 0% and this is the line where the blur is whatever number you choose here okay so let's bring it down just like that let's just extend this line to this point that's pretty good and let's just increase the blur that's good that kind of looks that isn't bad but that's too much maybe 90 would be a good number to be at let's apply 19 you can apply any number you want let's take it a little more down because okay just like this now as I said this is looking fine in this area but have a look at this area this area is also getting blurred and this area is in focus now I want you to understand something let's zoom in quite a bit have a look she is standing here so everything in the same focal plane will be in focus now coming back to the prop again have a look she is standing here suppose she's standing here okay and here is the wall so this wall also has to be in focus and it isn't focused at this point it isn't focused but as it gradually goes up it's out of focus which is just not possible in real life because it's in the same focal plane if you have this area and focus this area cannot be out of focus it's just in the same line okay so you have to add one more point and that is the advantage of the blur gallery you can add one more point just click in here be adding one more point let's just rotate it so when you see the rotate sign if you hover over at this point just rotate it 90 degrees like that and if you hold the shift key it will rotate it perfectly 90 degrees okay now it's not perfect 90 let's rotate it even more as you can see the lines are not perfectly straight so like just like this a little bit like that and now we can adjust so she's standing here so this area has to be in focus so this is fine let's drag this line a little bit inside and drag this a little out and this line is perfectly fine and there you have it have a look if I Zuma this is looking perfectly fine now if you want to decrease the value of the blur I think it's a bit too much let's say 50 ish or maybe 75 ish would be fine now one more very important thing which you cannot miss if your image has noise you also have to introduce noise in the background because once you apply blur to it the noise also gets blurred so if the noise is blurred if the subject has noise and the background doesn't have noise it starts to look fake so let's zoom in then let's have a look at whether the subject has noise as you can see the subject has a little bit of noise and we need to replicate this noise in the background it's completely looking faking all you have to do just click on the noise tab and there is a couple of noise types which you can choose from so there is green there is uniform there is Gaussian so let's choose green which is the most natural and increase the amount of it and let's see how it works over here trees a little more yep this is looking fine squeeze a little more that's too much let's decrease it now there's size of the noise you can just decrease the size as you can see the size is not too big in here so I'll just decrease the size 10% that's fine roughness let's just increase it a bit no that's not looking fine let's decrease it to this point that is good and color highlights now what is highlights this is important sometimes noise is just not visible in the highlights it's just visible in the shadows when you click a picture with your camera so you can control that as you can see if you apply this noise it's also applied in this highlight so you can remove it from the highlights using this slider so if you just decrease it it will get removed from that depends upon how much you decrease okay as you can see it's going away from this area so it gives it a more natural look if you want that this increase it the amount a bit and that's pretty much fine and you can work out the values later and once you're satisfied just hit OK and at this point I'm pretty satisfied with this but I think I'll just click on this one and extend it even more looking a little strange in there probably if I extend it and I'll put it even down that's better now once you're satisfied hit OK now this is a slow filter you have to have a lot of patience with it click OK once you're satisfied now it's gonna process it and it is going to take some time now as you can see the processing is done and it did a pretty good job of getting a shallow depth of field effect if we just zoom in and have a look it looks really really good the hairs have been selected fine it looks fine now a couple of things that I want you to keep in mind that you can also apply the bokeh effect to it if your background has a lot of lights you can apply that effect inside the blur gallery so if you wanna change the values or if you want to apply anything this is non-destructive you can always go back double click on the blur gallery and you can still change the values of the green and all of that stuff and inside of this you have effects if you just click on it there's Bo perfect but in this we don't have any source of light you can just choose the bokeh color the light range if you just try to apply it it just won't look nice in this one but if your background has and just apply this as well so I'm gonna just hit cancel because we don't want to apply that and this is looking pretty fine no there's a couple of Corrections which you can make to this if you have a look at the mask here of the subject have a look we can correct this actually you can take the brush okay just take the brush make sure the foreground color is black and then you can choose the blend mode to overlay now what overlay does is that it fill now have a look if I try to paint over it it's not painting in on the areas which are completely white it fill only paint on the areas let's just come back to that mask again and if you are wondering how did we get to the mask just hold the alt or option and click on the mask if you take the brush and if you take black color and choose overlay now overlay is a very funny blend mode if you choose overlay and take the color black and try to paint it it just won't affect the areas which 100% white or brighter it will affect relatively darker areas and just paint on that it will just not paint on the bright areas okay it feel paint on everything which is darker than 50% gray so on and so forth and if you choose black it for effect relatively darker bright areas darker bright areas are getting it now if you choose white color it will do just the opposite if you try to paint on it it just will not paint on the hundred-percent black areas it will just paint on the areas which are brighter than 50% gray or relatively brighter areas than 100% black okay so take the brush and make sure you decrease the flow to somewhere around maybe 10 and then paint on these areas with black and make sure overlays the blend mode off the brush this really helps and you can also decrease the flow to somewhere around three percent and just work on it properly see how fine this becomes like wow it works wonders you can just do it similarly here work on it like that it's too much just lets it just works wonders now that's fine now if you want to add extra take the brush take white and just paint on these areas now this time you can increase the flow fight with this whole the alter option-click on the master bring back in the image now let's just zoom out and let's have a look at it and there's a couple more Corrections that you can do let's zoom in and let's have a look at the corrections that we can make right now have a look at the hair it looks so perfect now here it's looking it's looking a little strange because of decontaminate colors it just expanded it and then created a mask it'll extrange and we are blurring the background we are not changing the background we can bring back the whole image here we can do that right for that just make a copy of the background layer select the background layer press ctrl or command J now bring it at the top of every other layer now everything is back okay everything is back all you have to do hold the alt or option and click on the mask button to create a negative mask and then we're gonna paint back in these areas hold the alt or option click on the mask button take the brush make sure the foreground color is white and just paint back in these areas with just increase the flow a bit and just paint back in and make sure it change the blend mode back to normal and have a look it's looking fine why because fear not background is seamless first of all and secondly we are not changing the background so you can bring back some of this and if you paint too much you can always go ahead and press X to toggle between the foreground and the background and paint this area with black inside of the mask again what is the concept of layer mask black conceals white reveals so wherever you paint black that area will be hidden very few paint white that area in the layer will be shown so we're just revealing some of the areas for just bringing some areas back so just paint white in and let's erase e-series okay just like that okay that's fine let's bring back some of these areas these areas are fine and that's pretty good now have a look you have finally done it now if you want to apply some extra effects you can always do that apply maybe a curves adjustment layer click on the adjustment layer icon now I've created the complete dedicated video just on stylizing your photo check out the video right here amazing ways to stylize the photo check the video out ok so let's apply curves and then let's just increase the brightness probably like that and just fade it a bit like that and let's go to blues and decrease the blues make it yellowish and let's go to green and decrease the green now you might think this is looking a little strange but let's do it let's apply some mask to it so select the mask adjustment let's come with a mask take the gradient tool make sure it's white to black so you can always check reverse to do that or you can press X to toggle between the foreground and the background this also toggles this and then you can just apply something like this or probably something like this and that looks fine have a look at that before and after so this is the before this is the after now let's just apply it like that and that's cool isn't it that's cool now the noise might look a little strange to you but it's slipping strange just in this window if you just zoom in you'll see the noise properly noise it's very good okay let's have a look at it before and after if you don't want the noise you can just open up the blur gallery and turn it off let's look at the before after so this is the before really really bad and this is the after now above all of this you can also apply some color look-up tables just click on this and just color lookup and there's a lot of things which you can apply probably soft warming is the one which I will apply or you can choose from a number of effects and I just played with all of them and hey that looks good decrease the opacity of it that looks wonderful and I'll just play with them and this is the final result that I came up with so this is the before this is the after pretty cool isn't it so that's how to blur the background or apply the shallow depth of field effect and if the background is busy and the hair is difficult to select there's a couple of things that you have to keep in mind number one you have to have the understanding and have to be content that you won't be able to select all of the hem not every strand of it but you will be able to select most of the hair so don't get caught up selecting all of the hair number two it's gonna be a little sticky a little difficult but if you follow the steps it is easy you have to work in selected masks you have to just manually go ahead and paint in the areas you have to copy the background layer and reveal some areas you have to do all of that but if you follow the steps it's as easy as a pie all how to do it first of all separate the subject from the background using selected masks and make sure to check decontaminate colors and after that delete the subject from the background okay make a copy of the background and you have the subject on separately and in the copy of the background you delete the subject out of it by using content aware and clone stamp tool or any other cloning tool of your choice and then blur that area but before you blur that convert that into a smart object and then blur it tilt-shift blur keep in mind the prof do not blur if this is the focal plane if this is blurred and this is in focus that's the problem if this is in focus this is blurred that's the problem this is in the same focal plane keep in mind the focal plane always everything which is in the same plane nature they are sharp now once you blurred the background you can just improve the mask click on the mask take the brush change the blend mode to overlay and improve the masks can also copy the background layer on top of everything and reveal some areas inside of the hair if the background is seamless and that's how to do it and if you want to top it off you can apply some effects I hope this video helped you and if it did make sure to give us a like and also don't forget to subscribe and not just subscribe bring the verses that you might friend own is the thing I'll see you guys next until then stay tuned and make sure that you keep creating

Channel: PiXimperfect

Views: 100,536

Rating: 4.9233942 out of 5

Keywords: photoshop blur background, photoshop depth of field, lens blur photoshop, out of focus photoshop, select hair photoshop, cut out hair photoshop, hair masking, photoshop cc 2018, shallow depth-of-field, select and mask, blur gallery, blue background like expesive lens, advanced hair masking, photoshop tutorial, piximperfect

Id: 69x30qM53MM

Length: 30min 45sec (1845 seconds)

Published: Sat Oct 28 2017