The BEST Way to Select Hair in Photoshop!

hi there this is animation today we can learn a very interesting way to select hair in Photoshop using channels and also I'm going to show you how to remove the fringes which is of course a byproduct of selecting hair so that you can put your subject in any background that you like you can have any color in the background and the fringes will not disturb it so without any further ado let's get started [Music] so here we on Photoshop and I have two examples for you so if you are go ahead and download any of the photos shown in the video make sure and check the links in the description so that you can follow along alright so the idea here is very simple to select the hair separately from that of the body as you can see the body has a definite edge but the hair doesn't so we can make a separate selection of the body very properly using the method that we like either using the quick selection tool or the pen tool whichever is your favorite for the hair you're gonna use that particular technique now first of all let's go ahead and select the body let's zoom in quite a bit and we're gonna use the quick selection tool in the second example we will use the pen tool alright select the quick selection tool and let's make a selection of the body first of all let's make a copy of the background layer just to be safe ctrl or command J right and simply paint over the body okay very simple let's select the head as well don't worry about the hair right now we're gonna make a separate selection of it don't worry about it so much okay that's let's go back that's too much that's a pretty good selection now all you have to do right now is to subtract areas of the hair listen to this carefully subtract areas of the hair where you can see the background okay wherever there is a pass through see through delete that selection okay so how to do that hold the alt or option when you hold the alter option this changes into - and then when you paint it subtracts from the selection okay so simply subtract this area you can see through subtract this area keep the head subtract this particular area okay just make sure that the body is perfectly selected and everything else is fine okay this is a pretty good selection and will do for the most part that's pretty good okay now once you have done the selection just click on the mask button don't worry about the feather and the blurring right now we can do that later just click on the mask button and there you have it right now you cannot see it because you have the background layer just as the same as the subject layer so let's go ahead and put a solid color adjustment layer we can put anything so let's solve color and put a dark let's say black okay click okay now we need to make a selection of the hair how do we do that we're gonna do that using channels so first of all let's come to this less subject layer let's name it subject for convenience purposes now let's turn off the mask by holding the shift key and click on the mask this will turn off the mask now let's go to the channels now in the channels apart from RGB you will find a red green and blue and the mask that you created which is of no importance right now but have a look we have a red green and blue what do these mean and why are they in black and white these are just representations okay now just for a second let's understand what it actually means when you click a photo with your camera it captures an image and it's comprised of three colors red green and blue okay and image is comprised of red green and blue if you look at the red channel the bright areas have more red in it the dark areas have less red in it okay so as you can see if we are in the red Channel the lips are brighter if you are in the blue channel the lips are darker because the lips have more of a red than blue like as simple as that now these three colors combine in different proportions to give you the image for example in this area the hair the red is too much but if you look at the blue it's not so much so there's a mixture of red a little bit of green and very less blue which will combine together to give you this colored hair so three colors combine together to give you whatever color your images off all right now and these are just representations now if you're seeing this not in black and white but in colors like red green and blue you need to make a change in the preferences by going to edit and then preferences and inside of preferences let's go to interface and inside of interface make sure that this is unchecked if this is checked show channels in color and if you hit OK and it will show the channels in color okay if that's the problem you can always go ahead and revert back to black and white by going to interface and then make sure this is unchecked click OK right now your job is to find out which channel has the most contrast between the hair and the background okay which channel has the most contrast between the hair and the background as you can see blues some of the hair is not selected okay but greens more of the hair is selected the objective is to get the hair selected or not selected okay red as you can see the hair is very nicely selected okay and this might differ from image to image hair color to hair color okay in this example as I can see if I select red most of the hair is very nicely selected so for me red is the perfect channel okay now make a copy of the red channel or the channel which you choose whatever channel you choose in the second example it will be different let's drag it and drop it over here it makes a copy of the red channel now our job is to get the background completely black and the hair completely white which means the hair will be selected and the background will not be selected or do the opposite get the hair completely black or the background completely white depends upon example to example image to image in this example we'll get the background completely black and the hair completely white okay how do we do that hold the ctrl and press L this is for levels or you can also go to image adjustments and levels whatever you like you can use the shortcut as well now let's zoom in quite a bit and our job is to get the background completely black let's take it from the left to the right this is fine if if we take it too much have a look if we take it too much it will fry up the hair we don't want that to happen right so we have to find that balance where the hair is not fried up so much and it still looks good at this point we think a good outline is created and it looks pretty good over here here it needs a little bit of Correction we can do that later don't worry about that so much right now okay this much is fine that much is pretty much good over here the outline is created we can go a little bit further and from the hair side we can just take it a little further like that and get most of the hair selected and that's pretty good I think that's a pretty good selection of the hair as well don't go overboard don't fry up the hair that's fine I guess for me okay that's pretty good now this area might need a little bit more correction hit okay and you can always go ahead and select the lasso tool and for this particular area have different levels add a little feather to it by going to select modify feather and we can add a feather for example say 10 pixels okay that's pretty good and let's zoom in let's see whether the feather is added ok the feather is added now let's go to image adjustments and then levels and we can do this area separately that's pretty good and we have to just take care of this area okay and we can always go ahead and put the feather from the beginning as well so let's keep 14 pixel feather and let's go this area and ctrl or command L for levels let's try okay hit okay if you're satisfied we're gonna have to blur this area out ctrl or command D now we have a pretty good selection of this hair and the background and we have a contrast so here's what you have to do hold the ctrl or command click on this so right now the hair is completely selected let's come back to the layers and select the mask masks will automatically open up if it doesn't open up you know what to do hold the shift and click on the mask then what you have to do carefully take a brush okay make it a little bigger make sure the foreground color is white now what is the concept of mask white other areas which show up black other areas which do not show up so if you're gonna paint over here these areas will show up right so simply just paint over there just like that and that way we will get the perfect selection off the hair just simply paint if you paint once it will have a certain level of opacity if you paint over again it will be more visible for example you can see it over here by paint once if I paint twice it will be more visible see if I paint again it will be even more visible so don't make it so visible that the background starts showing up half that balance if you want the marching ants to go away and if it's disturbing you you can always go ahead and press ctrl or command H H for hat and this will hide it this will not take it away this will hide it okay and you can always bring it back by pressing ctrl or command H again it brings it back press it again to take it away so it totally depends upon you if it's disturbing you you can always take it away by pressing that shortcut all right as you can see the edges are a very jagged over here and we can take care of that later don't worry about it right now just worry about the hair let's press ctrl or command H again let's see if all of the hair is brought back yeah that's that looks pretty good the selection looks pretty fine okay let's paint a couple more times over here now once you're satisfied press ctrl or command D now all you have to do hold the alt or option click on the mask let's check whether the mask is proper or not so as you can see a couple extra areas have been selected we can take care of that and these areas are missing and we're gonna fill up that area take the brush make sure the foreground color is white and let's fill up these particular areas which are left out over here let's fill up this one fill up this okay that looks proper and let's delete these particular areas now if you take black by pressing X you can always press X to toggle between the foreground and the background if you do that okay I pressed X now you can just erase it but if you do erase over here it will completely erase the hair selection let me give you a tip if you change the blend mode of the brush from normal to overlay watch what happens black is selected and if I paint now it still goes away but it doesn't get inside the whites okay it doesn't erase anything which is not closer to blacks so if you have black selected and if you try to erase it it felt paint on everything which is closer to black but it will not paint on any area which is closer to white so you can easily go ahead and remove these extra areas nicely like that and you don't have to select every strand of hair it's fine if you don't select every strand of hair over here it needs a little bit of correction over there okay it tries up there but we'll take care of that later here over there okay that's pretty cool and it's looking pretty nice now wherever it's frying up you can blur out that area if you if you look at the image if I hold the alt or option again bring out the image again the image has a shallow depth of field as you can see it's blurring out the hair which is far away it's blurring out even if you look at the background if I hold the shift and click on the mask turn off the mask look at the background it's totally blurred out it is a shallow depth-of-field image now let's bring back the mask by holding the shift and clicking on the mask what we can do we can simply blur out not the hair but the selection let's go ahead and hold the alter option click on the mask and select the blur tool this one the blur tool we can increase the strength 200% let's keep it at hundred and zoom in and simply blur out the areas which are frying okay just like that and that's pretty cool let's blur out some areas like this and this will be alright it's like have a look let's blow this out it's like is blurring out away as a result of shallow depth-of-field all right let's zoom out let's bring in the subject Wow now now that's called a perfect selection but as you can see the background right now is completely black if you change the background color to some way around say something like this the fringes show up now that's very ugly and we need to take care of the fringes okay create a new layer simple let's create a new layer and let's change the background to somewhere where we can see the fringes okay so let's have something around this red now we can see the fringes hit okay in this layer you can name them fringes okay now hold the alt or option bring the cursor over these two lines between this layer the subject line the fringes let see it changes to a square with an arrow click this means that we are clipping this to the subject layer which means if I take the brush and if I have any color over here if I try to paint over it it will not go out of the boundaries of this one if I break the clipping mask by holding the alt or option clicking on it again it will go up but if I turn on the clipping mask by holding the alt or option clicking on these two lines between them it will limit them okay so let's go back and let's zoom in and you have guessed it already just take the brush sample this color over there and simply paint over this particular area over the outside not the inside just the outside okay just the outside sample this just paint over the outside and make sure whoopsie-daisy you have not changed the blend mode from overlay to normal make sure you do that it's very very important okay let's clip it again okay sample this sample the nearby areas and then simply paint on the outside properly see if you paint on the inside this problem will occur so make sure you just paint on the outside for the inside I have a different solution for you that's sample for example this particular color that's nice okay it looks pretty good and sample this just paint on the outside not the inside and by the way if you are wondering how am i taking a sample you can take a sample by holding the alt or option and when you hold the alter option the cursor changes to the eyedropper tool and then you can click in can take the sample and release the click and then you can just simply paint okay that picks up that color of that area hold the alt pick the sample and then simply paint now the hair is pretty much ready but if you look the inside is looking a little strange over there okay so this area's little strange we can take care of that okay let's zoom out let's see whether the hair is okay let's turn off the mask and let's turn this off and let's see how the hair was over that was looking a little strange let's turn on the mask and let's turn on this okay the insides that's what we need to take care off right now so for the inside you can use the clone stamp tool and make sure in the fringe is layer and let's sample this particular area and let's simply paint on the inside like that now this is quite a task but it is they'll pay you off in the long run be very careful you don't have to paint in such a way that it shows as if the textures are repeating see it's it's not looking nice over there it is quite a task so you have to be really slow and patient about it don't do anything where the hair is looking great okay now that's pretty good that's pretty okay but as you can see there are a few places just like this area where the hair is not looking great so what we can do we can go to the mosque and we can just erase off that area so sometimes you have to do things like that where not every strand of hair is looking great just erase it off like that okay that's fine that's pretty good okay simply just to raise it off all right now all you have to do just it's looking great it's looking okay now let's bring that press ctrl or command a ctrl or command C and then ctrl or command V paste it over there and let's just delete the red layer okay now let's go ahead and add a curves adjustment layer click on the adjustment layer icon and choose curves now as you can see the shadows are brighter so we're gonna take the shadows little brighter like that but it's affecting the background as well so we're gonna make a clipping mask by clicking on this clipping mask button this is gonna create a clipping mask over there and we're gonna make it brighter just like this and that looks fantastic that looks all right okay we can take away the details by taking this a little bit to the right like that and increasing it and there you go there you have it you can always go ahead and crop it and this edge is not looking right yes I was gonna show you that so let's come to the mosque this edge is not looking right so simply blur it simply select the blur tool and just blur it like that now that looks pretty good let me show you one more tip very interesting tip if you want to make it very smooth here so as you can do you can just select this area like that okay just like that and simply go to filter blur and then Gaussian blur watch this Gaussian blur and increase the blur okay now this might sound very strange but do it increase the blur do somewhere around say keep a high number 26 ish that's fine or maybe 19 whatever is your favorite let's make sure everything is even keep it 21 hit okay then what you have to do make sure the selection is still intact okay and then go to image adjustments contrast brightness contrast and then simply increase the contrast of this area see you get a smooth sharp edge okay now make sure let's try use legacy we need more contrast have a look at the edge you get a very smooth edge over there so that's one of the tricks which I sometimes use click hit OK and there you have it a very smooth at the same time sharp edge let's hold the alt or option and bring it back and there you have a pretty nice edge and a pretty nice background you can always shift the edge if you think the edges a little selecting the background is also you can shift the edge as well by simply just open this up and let's make a selection of this area and let's just take it to the left just a bit by using the arrow keys like that and that's pretty much fine hit ctrl or command D and then take the brush and just fill in this here this is a very quick fix over there if you want to do it you can do it all-righty alt or option click on it and that's pretty good let's see we have to just we might have to just delete this extra area over here and that's fine you don't have to have a perfect edge over that's not invisible all right so there you have it I think I see a little more of an edge over here okay that's great so have a look at this it's all perfectly fitting the background looking great and that's all what you need it now at this point what I would personally do I would crop it a little bit by pressing the C and then just clear it out and I'll just crop it a bit from the top like that from the bottom I wouldn't select so much just like this and it would be a perfect selection for me to to this one and I will move the subject hit enter and I'll just simply move the subject because I don't like the composition so much I'll just using this tool just simply move the subject like that but if I do move the subject have a look the fringes are not moving so make sure you make a group of all of these three by holding the ctrl or command selecting the other two or you can also hold the shift key select the top one it will select everything in the row then press ctrl or command G and then you can move the subject just like that I like it that way okay that way the color is looking all right and there you have it the subject and the background at this point at this point you might see some this is not looking right the edge is not looking right so you can always go ahead and open up the fringes according to the background you can you might have to make some changes you might have to take a sample from over here and paint it over there like that to make it match take a sample you might even have to just take a sample from here and make it even brighter like that so you might have to do things like that depending upon the background that you have alright so there we have the subject and the background looking perfect you can have a black background if you want to and there you go your desktop wallpaper so this is the before we masked in the body separately and the hair separately using channels and then paint it on the fringes and therefore this is the after alright it's time for us to jump to second example and in this example you see some changes you'll see some differences as opposed to example number one because in this case the hair is darker and the background is brighter so some things will be in Reverse first of all as the previous example are we gonna select the body first you can use the quick selection tool or the pen tool you can use the pen tool for the second example so what I suggest is using the regular pen - not the curvature control the curvature pen tool is fancy it's easy I understand that you're gonna use that but I prefer the regular pen tool because it gives you much more control over the path that you're drawing all right let's first of all zoom in quite a bit and let's start from over here okay so simply you can just click a point and begin and by the way I have a dedicated video on mastering the pen - in 30 minutes if you want to know how to use the pen tool the ins and outs of the pen tool go ahead and watch that video first that's gonna be very useful especially if you're compositing in Photoshop okay so simply just click a point over there and click another point and drag this creates handles click and drag click and drag like that and you are adjust it hold the ctrl or command and it can adjust the points if you like you can adjust the handles if you like okay and if you want to break a handle for example if you clicked and dragged over here okay and you make another point over here you cannot just it's a corner you need to break it if you want to break it hold the alt or option bring it to the handle and simply just break it like that you can break it to your heart's content all right and then you can adjust it and move forward just like that and you can take a complete loop over the subject I forgot the line so you can make a complete selection and then loop in and come to that and just make sure just like the previous example that you don't select any of the areas where there's a hair gap where you can see the background okay so I've already made the pot so I'll just go ahead and delete the part let's go to pots let's delete the work path and let's select this one I've already made it and then you can make a selection out of it by holding the ctrl or command clicking on it this makes a selection now again if you want to know how to use the pen to watch that first it will clear out things for you if we clear out parts and everything every doubt that you have about the bento alright watch that video first okay now we have made a selection using any method that you like let's click on the mask button ok this time we didn't keep the background layer the copy of the subject layer and it's totally upon you you can keep it for comparison purposes to look at the before and after if you don't want to keep it don't keep it it's it's upon you alright let's go ahead and create a solid color adjustment layer white solid color adjustment layer click on the adjustment layer icon and choose solid color and any color that you like and put it behind okay there we have it similarly in this one let's turn off the mask by holding the shift key click on the mask button and then actually the mask and then let's come to channels alright this time let's see which has the most difference the red has the least difference this time let's choose green no not much blue has the most difference as opposed to red as it was in the previous example and this time the hair is black and the background is brighter so let's make a copy of the blue first by dragging it and dropping it over here ctrl or command L or image adjustments levels then let me show you something you can click on this eyedropper tool for the white point and click on the outside area the gray area it will make it bright automatically it actually moves the slider to the point where it completely becomes white now mind you we are doing just the opposite in this second example we are making the background white and the hair as dark as possible okay you can always reverse it right so let's do it don't do it too much it will start frying it up so maintain that balance and let's keep it somewhere around this level that's particularly that's perfectly fine hit OK and then do the same by holding the control or command click on it make a selection of it come back to less select the mask ok now the change is over here now the background is selected because the background was white and the hair was black hair is not selected we need to inverse the selection because in the previous example the hair was white okay in this example the hair is black so the background is selected and the background was pranked so to invert the selection press ctrl shift I command shift I if you're using a Mac okay you can always go to select and then inverse the same thing okay take the brush make sure the foreground color is white press D to reset the swatches and then make sure the foreground color is white and then simply paint just like that just as the previous example you once you're done press ctrl or command D and now let's check the mask by holding the alt or option click on the mask and let's check it it's pretty good it's an amazing mask now as you can see these selections are very sharp so we need to blur it out so how much to blur let's turn off the mask for a bit okay so how to turn off the mask hold the shift and click on the mask this will turn off the mask but you can still see the mask let's get out of the mass by holding the alt or option click on the mask and turn off the mask hold the shift turn optimized see this is this much blur ok so you have to apply this much blow over there and the hand is pretty sharp so you don't have to apply blur so much ok so let's go back to the mask again and let's apply the blur by using blur tool and let's blur it out a bit this area be careful over the corners because this area sharp there we go via blurt that is there any blow over the hand let's see let's turn off the mosque again let's first of all let's get out of the mosque see it's very softest looking very nice let's turn off the mosque let's see if there's any blurred there is no blur if you don't have to apply blow but if you still want let's apply a little bit of blur over there let's decrease the strength to 20% and let's simply just paint once just like that let's zoom in just a little bit of blur just to make sure that they're not very sharp all right now that looks pretty fine let's zoom out hold the alt or option click on the mouse to view it and that's pretty good looks amazing in a white background but if you change the background watch if you change the background to somewhere around say bluish color it begins to look a little really bad the hair the strands kinds of mess up so this area looks fine the hand everything that looks perfect but the hair it needs a bit of Correction so how do we correct it similarly in that one click on the new layer button let's create a new layer name it fringes if you want to okay whoops the spelling fringe is like that and let's clip it to this one take the brush just on the outside remember on the inside we're gonna use the clone stamp tool on the outside we're gonna simply paint okay let's take a sample from this area but you can also do you can also change the blend mode of this one to darken what that will do that will apply the paint only in those areas which are brighter than the paint that you're painting in make sense no that's just simply paint okay make sure you don't paint so much on the inside because if you do the has become a little flat paint very carefully let's zoom in and paint very very carefully remember your painting flat so if you paint so much it becomes a little flat over there so be very careful about let's check the mask a little bit I need to check the mask see a lot of the background is selected over here so we need to take the brush you know what to do black selected change the blend mode from normal to overlay and then simply just remove these particular aus decrease the flow it's so much 13 ish that's fine remove these particular areas it's it's kind of so much selected over there okay okay that's fine over here as you can see the extra any place else no that's perfectly fine let's come back and let's come back to the fringes let's start painting let's zoom in and this time you got to be really really careful while painting increase the flow and you can also decrease the flow for enhanced control alright not so much flow decrease the flow twenty five ish that's fine don't have so much flow you let's increase the flow a little bit let's zoom out and let's apply this thing called the clone stamp tool right now it's time for us to apply that okay let's take a sample from over here and let's zoom in first of all and we can apply that very carefully because this is essential okay so let's take a sample from over here and let's try to apply it over there you can try changing the blend mode back to normal let's see what kind of a change it makes it makes it better we can try both blend modes darkened sometimes even light and depending upon the hair color but in this case I think normal looks good again I cannot say it totally depends one image to image so you're gonna have to play around and see which one looks good for you this is the place where we have to paint you have to paint in places you need to paint you have to use the clone stamp tool in places you need to use the clone stamp - it's kind let's zoom out zoom out from time to time to see whether that's looking great so have a look before after it makes a ton of difference so this is work yes this is work here we might have to paint so let's see if painting improves that vertical area then the clone stamp tool let's zoom out let's see this area is pretty fine before after we have taken care of this area and this area needs to be taken care of it's quite a task but we can do it we can do it seems like we have done it there's a little bit of brown patch over there which we need to take care of but that's not looking bad that's not looking as bad as it sounds but that's pretty much good that's done have a look at it have a look at the before and after so this is the before this is the after look how much of a difference we can make just by doing that now as you can see here as you can see the hair strands are appearing so we might have to paint here a little bit or take a sample from some other area which has the hair in that particular direction and just simply paint like so or you can take a sample from over here and then just rotate it just like that how to rotate it by holding the alt shift and the right-arrow bracket key so this will rotate it just like that see it's rotating see once it matches you can just simply paint it like that and that will be fine there you have it you might have to paint it with a darker color because the brown is not suiting it over there let's choose this brown okay and there you have there you go it's done so let's paint this one too with that color to match okay it's done it's taken care of and there you have it before after now you can choose any color that you like you might have to paint a little bit over here as well like that a little bit darker over here and you get the complete picture and and there you go okay now that is perfect so you can choose any color that you want just double click over here and choose any color it will look good in whatever color you put it in right so you can choose green if you like and there you have it that's how you can select hair and remove the fringes see the biggest challenge is not selecting the hair you can do it also using the selected mask and whatever is your favorite but removing the fringes see that's where the challenge lies so that's pretty much all for this video that's how you can select hair and remove the fringes in Photoshop just to quickly recap let's do a quick little recap first of all all you have to do let's come to example number one first of all make a selection of the body as in this one also we made the selection using the pen tool then what we did then using the channels we figured out which channel had the most difference between the hair and the background okay now we made a copy of that channel for example in this we made the red copy then we held the ctrl or command and clicked on that selection and we came to the mask of the subject and paint it back in the areas of the hair as in this one as well we paint it back in it looks good in white background and in that one it looked good in black background but as we change the color it didn't look quite as good so what we did we created a new layer called fringes and then we clipped it to this one how did we clip it by holding the alt or option clicking on the line between the two and then we took the brush sampled colors the hair and painted on the outside and then what we did we used the clone stamp tool to paint on the inside to match it properly and also along the way I talked about refining the mask for example in this one we went to the mosque and these areas were frying out so we selected the blur tool and blurred it out and in some areas it was selecting extras so we took the brush change the blend mode to what to overlay and once we change the blend mode with the black we just simply paint on the painted on that particular area we can also use white depending upon you can let me show you you can choose white and paint in some extra hair and there you go that's what you can do we also blurred some areas over here because this area was very sharp this selection so we went to the mask using the blur tool we blurred this area and that's how you refine the selection and that's pretty much it for this video I hope this video was helpful and if this was make sure you guys li can also don't forget to subscribe and not just subscribe you ring the bell so that you my friend don't miss a thing and by the way if you're wondering why am I not showing my face or not appearing in videos it's because I'm sick still I'm making videos for you because I just miss making videos I'll be back in 15 days and till then stay tuned and make sure that you keep creating [Music] you [Music] [Applause]

Channel: PiXimperfect

Views: 1,178,148

Rating: 4.9067888 out of 5

Keywords: select hair in photoshop, select difficult hair, remove fringes, remove background around lots of hair, change background in photoshop, cut hair, channels in photoshop, advanced hair masking, mask hair in photoshop, piximperfect, unmesh dinda

Id: T2D8EIh9Gus

Length: 40min 13sec (2413 seconds)

Published: Mon Dec 18 2017