Ultimate Guide for Selecting Hair in Photoshop

there's so many ways to select her in photoshop but don't you think that there's not one technique that works for every scenario it is just not possible right because if you look at hair can be simple it can be complex on top of that the background can be a variety of different things it can be busy it can be blurred maybe colored white black there are so many possibilities and to make it even more complex the hair can be red green blue black white salt and pepper and then we have to think about how that hair color combines with the complexity of the background right with so many different variables and thousands of different tutorials on selecting hair in photoshop you can look that up on youtube i can understand that this can become extremely confusing and it is confusing for me as well sometimes so in this video i've tried to make an ultimate guide where we will explore the best technique for selecting and masking hair in every single situation i hope this one helps and trust me it's simple and it all starts with contrast whenever you have an image where you have to cut out the hair we just need to ask ourselves this very simple question is there contrast between the hair and the background in other words is there any kind of separation between the hair and the background answer this question in yes or no let's see some examples look at this example the background is busy the hair is busy and there's no way photoshop can tell the difference between a grass in the background and a strand of hair right so in this specific case don't you think we can clearly say that there's very minimal contrast between the hair and the background feel free to disagree in the comments the hair is red and then there's flower in the background there are leaves busy background just making it difficult for photoshop to make a separation so our answers no let's move on to second example in this case as well even though the background is simple there is no contrast between the hair and the background you cannot even tell where the edge of the hair stops and the edge of the background begins so here as well the answer is no because it's black hair on black background if it was white background and black hair there would be contrast let's take a look at example number three here the answer definitely is yes there is contrast there is separation between the hair and the background as you can clearly see the background is brighter the hair is darker the background is white the hair is black so it's very easy to figure out where the edge of the hair is and where the background begins so there clearly is a contrast let's take a look at our last example in this case as well we can tell between the hair and the background why because the background is of a different color than the hair the background is blue the hair is black so there's contrast of color in this case there's contrast brightness in this case there's no contrast in this case as well both are busy so there's no contrast why are we asking this question if the answer is yes we can move further down the flowchart but if the answer is no there's only one technique that we can apply here and that is the hair brush technique the way it works is pretty simple but do know that it's time consuming by the way if you want to go ahead and follow along using any of the photos in the video check the links in the description it is a simple situation where photoshop cannot tell the difference between the hair and the background so we as artists have to create that edge and the way we create that separation from scratch is with the help of a couple hair brushes by the way you can download them using the link in the description or simply use this link to have more headroom you expand the hair a little bit using liquify and then with the pen tool make a selection stay a little inside now create a mask out of it once you have a mask with the help of the hair brushes paint back in those edges you can also create a brand new layer and sample a color from the hair and on top of that draw some random hair that's all up to you if you do wish to use the hairbrush technique you can choose to watch these complete guides in absolute detail as to how to go about them they have step-by-step detail of every information that you might need we cannot cover every detail in this video because we have so many techniques to cover but if you feel lost don't worry i'm there to guide you of course if you let me so moving on to the very first question that we asked ourselves and that was is there a contrast between the hair and the background if the answer is no we know we need to use the hair brush technique but if the answer is yes again there's one more question we need to ask ourselves what type of contrast is there between the hair and the background is it brightness is it color or is it a mix of both if it's just regular brightness like if there's a sky in the background or a light colored backdrop i recommend using the select and mask workspace so this image falls into that category so you can either you have two options you can either choose any of these tools like the object selection quick selection and the magic wand and then click on select subject you have a selection and then create a mask it uses the select and mask then click on the mask button it does possibly the same thing but if you do want more control i recommend even before doing this just go to select and mask workspace so while you have any selection tool selected at the top you would see select and mask click on that and do all your selections inside it because inside it you also have select subject so click on select subject and you have the option to see your selection on different kinds of backgrounds so let's say if you want our view to be on white so if the opacity is at 100 everything that is selected shows up and everything that is not selected is in white if you decrease the opacity to zero everything shows up irrespective of what you have selected or what you haven't let's increase the opacity back to 100 if you're not happy with the selection you can play with some of these settings or if there are some areas where it didn't get the selection right you can use the refine edge tool right here so let's zoom in and we can clearly see that the selection right here is not absolutely perfect so just paint over that and it gets it right now on top of that you can also shift the edge if you wish to so i can shift the edge a little further if the hair selection is not refined properly you can also try clicking on refine hair and it also does a fantastic job and on top of that i would shift the edge a little bit to the right and also choose to decontaminate colors sometimes what happens is the background can be a little colorful like it was the sky and the background was blue and the hair is usually so thin in almost all cases of course even mine that it takes up the color of the background so you might want to check decontaminate colors sometimes and it does a good job and then you can move forward from there we also have a complete dedicated guide on this topic which you can watch right here by the way this video is a guide to guide you to which technique to use in what scenario now if the backgrounds are extreme like white or black in other words the background can be black and the hair can be brighter or the background can be white and the hair can be darker in those cases it is much more practical to just use blend modes it's one of the best ways to mask hair it maintains every strand of hair we'll see so in this case you can clearly see that the background is nearly white it's not completely white but we can make this work so let's zoom in have a look at the strands right here if you used select subject it wouldn't be that nice so let's try making a background by creating a solid color adjustment layer let's create a bright blue background something like that hit okay and put it under the subject first of all let's unlock the background layer by clicking on the lock right there and let's take it under now with the subject layer selected let's try select subject first let's see what it does and now when you create a mask have a look it's okay but a lot of the strands are gone so to prevent it we're gonna use blend modes let's start it from the beginning so here we have our subject layer and here we have our background so first of all we need to make a duplicate of the subject layer so with the subject layer selected press ctrl or command j to make a duplicate the first one is normal and the second one is multiply now as the name suggests we're gonna change the blend mode according to that okay so let's turn off the normal for a second and for the multiply layer change the blend mode to guess what you are a genius change it to multiply now as we do that have a look around the edge all of the hair on the strand is visible now this will work if the background is brighter and the hair is darker when i say brighter i mean the extremes like closer to white or white or you can actually experiment with anything these are just guidelines if it's other way around however if the background is darker and the hair is brighter use a different blend mode and that is screen we're going to get back to that later but for right now let's focus on this one so as you can see every strand is visible but the blue of the background is also going through the subject and if it was even a tad bit darker it would make the subject darker as well because we have chosen the blend mode multiply and it just darkens so to bring back everything in the middle and just use the edges for the multiply layer let's turn on the normal one and in this one you can use select subject with any of these three tools selected the object selection the quick selection and the magic wand at the top click on select subject you can use any of your selection methods to make a selection and then click on the mask button now you have the best of both worlds you have the middle part properly selected and you have all of the strands around the edge properly selected as well when you do select subject it might also bring in some bits and pieces from the old background so what do we do now we just erase around the edges we don't want to disturb the original mask so select this layer press ctrl or command g put it in a group and create a mask for that group that way you have two masks for the same layer now take a brush take a soft round brush black as the foreground color and just around the edge just paint in black that's all opacity and flow at 100 there we go that edge is taken care of have a look right here so simple similarly right here as well done perfect now when you do change the blend mode of this layer to multiply it also brought in the original shadow from the original image now if you don't want it you can create a mask of this layer as well so click on the mask button and erase that area out don't worry about this edge right there because that is selected perfectly with the normal layer all right so let's go to the mask of the multiply and paint it in black if you do want to remove the shadow sometimes you might want to keep it we'll get to that later but for right now let's take it away there we go now as you can take a look if i turn this off and turn this on again it's also making the blue a little darker so to control it you can create what a curves adjustment layer right so let's click on the adjustment layer icon and then choose curves we want to limit the curves just to the multiply layer otherwise whatever you do will also affect the background we don't want that so click on this button that way it will create a clipping mask look at this sign it means that it's limited to the multiply layer and now you can control it so let's zoom in make sure we are not hurting the strands let's take the rightmost slider to the left just like this if we take it to further away have a look the strands are going so you have to be careful just like this and there you have it so without it see it's making it slightly darker with it it's perfectly normal now there might be scenarios where this shadow can actually be very beneficial so let's say you were to introduce a wall so let's drag this wall and drop it into photoshop let's make it larger just like this and put it under the multiply layer there you go now if you turn the mask off the shadows will come back and just as the shadows come back this begins to look natural but there's one problem here if you look at the wall the light on the wall is coming a little bit from the right hand side and the light on the subject is coming from the left hand side so let's invert the wall press control or command d right click on it and then choose flip horizontal now it begins to just look fantastic take a look at it isn't that super amazing i would even go further to make the shadow even darker so let's go to the curves adjustment layer make it normal and actually let's make it darker like that there you go it looks even better when it comes to colors values and concepts photoshop is like physics but when it comes to creating art with photoshop don't you think it's more like chemistry because it's full of exceptions all right now we talked about what to do if the background was white and the hair was dark but what if it's the opposite what if the background is black and the hair is brighter we have already covered it in this detailed guide we use the screen blend mode and you can watch this complete guide on how to go about it we do the exact same process but with the blend mode changed to screen instead of multiply now keep in mind again there's a complete guide on using both multiply and screen and all of these videos are also linked in the description now what technique should we use if the color separates the background from the hair you see this is a difficult question for me to answer because a few versions ago i would have asked you to just use the color range and it makes the most logical sense because it selects a target color and let's try color range first but it's not that effective let's test it let's go to select and then color range now it would make sense to you to just choose sample color and select the first eyedropper and click on an area of the color that you want to select okay and then decrease the fuzziness and select the surrounding areas as well first of all let's change the selection preview to none and let's click on the plus eyedropper let's add all of these colors okay now as we begin to increase the fuzziness it's going to select the background if you want to see a preview let's choose let's say white matte so whatever is selected would be shown and whatever that is not selected would be and why we have already covered this in select and mask right it's very similar so you can go ahead and increase the fuzziness and also invert the mask because that's actually what we want but if you have a look around the edge it's not as good even if you take the first eyedropper and select this only color if you try to increase fuzziness in this area it seems nice but it's very rough on the other side and it's just not perfect and if you somehow increase the fuzziness like this and try to cover every area have a look a lot of the strands on the left hand side is gone so what technique should we use even i tried select and mask even that takes away a lot of hair so let's go to select and mask let's click on select subject and even then if you go ahead and choose on white take a look a lot of the strands are gone it's much better than color range but again strands are gone even if you try the refine edge and try to paint over it see they don't really come back that nicely see so what should we use well it's a combination of traditional old channels method along with selected mask particularly select subject inside of selection mask here's how to go about it so let's go to channels and by the way if you cannot see channels here let's go to window and make sure channels is checked all right and now let's go through all of these channels red channel green channel and blue channel and figure out which channel has the most difference or the most contrast between the hair and the background and in this case we can clearly see since the original background was blue blue channel has the most contrast so make a copy of the blue channel let's drag it and drop it right here on the plus icon so now we need to make sure that the background is absolutely white and the hair is as dark as possible we can take care of the rest all right so press control or command l for levels this is one of those rare scenarios where i actually use levels don't hate me for it but you can also use curves here as well control or command m that's also equally usable anyway control or command l for levels now take the slider on the right most side to the left and just when you begin to lose the hair stop so just about right there you need to find that sweet spot we are losing all of the hair on the left hand side so we might have to take it a little bit to the right this seems to be a nice place to be at you can also play with these sliders make the hair as dark as possible okay there we go now we don't have to make it absolutely black and have all of the halo show up this is all right hit okay once you're satisfied now we can make a selection based on this channel but we don't have to do it now let's go back to rgb let's go back to our layers make two copies again so here we have the background layer press ctrl or command j so the first one is the regular and the second one would be using channels okay we also unlock the layer just double click on it name the layer it will also be unlocked and under it you can create a background let's create a white background and put it under both let's turn off the regular for now let's just focus on the channels now let's go to channels and make a selection based on the blue copy this one that we created hold the ctrl or command and click on the thumbnail of this channel to make a selection based on that so the brighter the areas the more that area would be selected the darker the area the lesser that area would be selected we want just the opposite of that so to invert the selection press ctrl shift i command shift i all right now with the channels layer selected click on the mask button now take a look at the mask it is pretty amazing isn't it all of the strands are covered again it's not perfect a lot of it is going through if you look at it if you turn off the white background have a look a lot of this is transparent as well and for that we have the regular layer let's turn on the regular layer click on select subject you can use any selection method that you like just to select the insides and click on the mask button you have your regular and you also have all of these strands right here as well with the channels so if i turn that off strands go away if i turn that on strands come back now as you can tell this is not perfect a lot of halos a lot of the blue is also coming along to give us blues don't worry we're gonna take care of that i'm with you so let's go to the mask of the channels hold the alt key or the option key click on the mask of the channels how do we take that away here's the trick select the brush black as the foreground color no we are not just simply gonna paint black change the blend mode of the brush not the layer of the brush to overlay that way it will paint less on areas which are closer to white and more on areas which are closer to black so it will paint more here and less here so decrease the flow to about 10 percent and just paint around the hair make sure these areas are black it's not affecting the hair that much that's what it will do left hand side is fine this is good now once you're okay with it increase the flow to 100 change the blend mode to normal and then it can cover the rest of the areas if you want to do it quick just hold the controller command click on the mask of the regular layer press ctrl shift i command shift i to invert the mask and then just simply blast it on controller command d hold the all key or the option key click on the mask to see the layer and there you go the problem here is that the mask is fine but it's also bringing along a lot of blues so how do we take care of that pretty simple make a group of both of these so regular and the channels hold the controller command also select the regular press control or command g now on top of it we're going to create a brand new layer the problem here is the color right so all we have to do is to sample this color and paint and we need to limit that just to the hair so hold the alt k the option key and click on this button that way it will be limited just the hair somehow accidentally i've increased the smoothing let's decrease it back to zero so you can either paint it or if you just want to change the color change the blend mode from normal to color there you go so sample this color and paint sample and paint how easy it is sample and paint and that way you can take care of the rest of the mask if you have painted extra right here simply erase it no big deal and that my friend is pretty much done by the way if you only wanted the channel slayer just for the hair areas and not for the body because sometimes it can create some outlines that you didn't want just open up the group go to the channels mask right here and just erase the extras so hold the alt k the option key click on the mask take the brush black as the foreground color and take it off that's all hold the alt k the option key click on the mask again and boom you won't have those weird outlines you still have a little bit of it again how do we take care of that we already learned it in this video but just to give you a short refresher select the smudge tool right here strength 20 is fine and you can just push it in slightly there you go there we go that's how easy it is to do it you can also contract the selection you can fill it again there's lots of tutorials on filling up halos and taking care of it you can watch them right here linked in the description last but not the least if the contrast between the hair and the background is a mixture of both brightness and color like in this case just start with select and mask so you can just select any of these three selection tools and click on select subject that works too or go into select and mask and refine it further click on the mask button once the selection is active and it usually does a pretty good job if not you can go into select and mask choose decontaminate colors work with all those settings and after that you can always manually adjust the mask as well you can hold the alt option key go to the mask use the overlay technique that we just learned in this to refine it but in this case we don't really need it in all of these techniques excluding the hairbrush technique because in the hair brush technique we create our own edge so in all of these techniques sometimes you might want to refine the mask it may not be always perfect so to refine the mask what do we do we use the overlay technique what is the overlay technique that is simply changing the blend mode of the brush to overlay and then painting on the mask with a lower flow we have already covered it in this lesson so if you select the brush go to the mask and then if you zoom in let's say we change the blend mode to overlay no matter how much you paint on the black areas with white it just won't paint or no matter how much you paint in the white areas with black it just won't paint when you have the overlay blend mode selected and the color on the brush is black it will paint more on the areas which are closer to black and less on the areas which are closer to white so right now black is selected right so if you go to this mask and have a look if we paint on this area you would notice that it's painting more on the darker areas and very less or absolutely not on areas which are absolutely white the more darker it is it's painting more on those areas now this image looks a little scary i understand that sorry about it but it's a good example similarly if you have white as the foreground color and you try to paint on black it won't paint but if you try to paint on an area which is closer to white it will paint more the less and less closer it is to white the less it will paint and on top of that if you have a lower flow it gives you more control so in this area some of the background is still showing up so we would go with 10 flow blend mode overlay and paint here with black it takes care of that if we directly painted it without overlay see what would happen it also covers up the hair as well but if the blend mode is overlay it will paint less on the brighter areas and absolutely won't paint on areas which is 100 white so now when i paint it even if i accidentally try to paint inside it just won't let me paint so by now we have talked about selecting the hair and all of the different scenarios we have talked about refining the mask one major thing that we just cannot ignore is removing halos when it comes to masking hair we just cannot forget about it no matter how good of a mask you have except for the hairbrush technique and the blend modes technique no matter how good the mask is it will carry the color of the previous background and if the previous background is too colorful and the new background is very drastic in color in comparison to previous background it will definitely show up the hair is so thin especially around the edges that it will take in the color of the old background and those are halos that we need to take care of so there are three ways to remove halos in photoshop the first one we already covered we simply created a new layer and we started brushing with the color of the hair we took a sample of the color of the hair and we painted there and changed the blend mode of that layer to color that's the first method the second technique is simply filling it up with paint and the third technique is using the clone stamp too i'm going to show you an example where we're going to use both so first of all let's make a selection of the subject we have our new background right here so click on select subject at the top and let's click on the mask button now as you can see it's bringing in the color of the older background if we simply try to create a brand new layer and clipped it and changed the blend mode to color here it might not work sometimes when the brightness of the new background is different it just doesn't work so if you take a sample and you try to paint right here with the color blend mode let's increase the flow it kind of doesn't work there are still gaps here see it just looks awkward so that technique won't work so let's simply try filling it up and here's how you do it starts the same you create a new layer and keep the blend mode to normal pull the alt key of the option key and click on the line between these two layers clip it just the way we did before and fill it now when you fill it keep in mind that we have to fill the outside hair only for the inside we're going to use the clone stamp too so let's zoom in hold the alt option key click to take a sample if you cannot take a sample let's go to the eyedropper make sure sample all layers or current and below is selected sample size can be three by three or five by five let's not choose point sample otherwise it can sample a grain or a color that you didn't want five by five average is fine take the brush hold the alt k the option key click to take a sample and just paint on the outside areas instantly it's taken care of take a sample and paint on the outside now why am i asking you to not paint on the inside because it will make it flat so if we do it see it's just not looking alright now you can take your time to do the entire area and for these inside areas you use the clone stamp tool so take the clone stamp tool and hold the alt option key click to take a sample and simply fill it just like that similarly right here as well hold the alt k the option key click to take a sample make sure sample is current and below and fill up these areas that's all and just by doing that we have taken care of the halos in this small area so here's the before as you can see the previous halo showing up here's the after here's how we take care of that zoom out take a look before after now you can do the rest of the areas just a reminder you don't have to remove halos if number one you're using the hair brush technique and number two you're using the blend mode technique so there you go that is everything about selecting hair in photoshop and these are the techniques that i recommend as of recording this video you're free to use this video as a guide and if in future there's an update to the techniques that i recommend i will mention it in a pinned comment to this video thank you so much for making it to the end of the video it truly means a lot and to show my gratitude i wanted to give you something it might not be that exciting it's a little boring something but it may be helpful so you can download this complete flowchart it might help you with selection of hair and along with it definitely you can download the hair brushes as well by the way this is the link to download all of it this is a secret link only appears on the screen not on the description and only for you who have made to this part of the video so thank you so much you are very special actually you're one of the five percent of the audience who make it to the end of the video it means a lot and there you go my friend that is my attempt at creating the ultimate guide for selecting hair i hope it was helpful and if it did help make sure to give us a like and also don't forget to subscribe and not just subscribe ring the bell so that you my friend don't miss any other feature tips tricks or tutorials i would like to take this moment to thank all of these nice and amazing people for supporting picks imperfect on patreon and making these videos free for everybody forever thank you so much for watching i'll see you in my next one till then stay tuned and make sure that you keep creating i truly appreciate your time wake up honey i made you breakfast fresh coffee and bagels too a new day is waiting for us we got lots of fun stuff to do let's go to the zoo and feed the monkeys

there&#39;s so many ways to select her in photoshop but don&#39;t you think that there&#39;s not one technique that works for every scenario it is just not possible right because if you look at hair can be simple it can be complex on top of that the background can be a variety of different things it can be busy it can be blurred maybe colored white black there are so many possibilities and to make it even more complex the hair can be red green blue black white salt and pepper and then we have to think about how that hair color combines with the complexity of the background right with so many different variables and thousands of different tutorials on selecting hair in photoshop you can look that up on youtube i can understand that this can become extremely confusing and it is confusing for me as well sometimes so in this video i&#39;ve tried to make an ultimate guide where we will explore the best technique for selecting and masking hair in every single situation i hope this one helps and trust me it&#39;s simple and it all starts with contrast whenever you have an image where you have to cut out the hair we just need to ask ourselves this very simple question is there contrast between the hair and the background in other words is there any kind of separation between the hair and the background answer this question in yes or no let&#39;s see some examples look at this example the background is busy the hair is busy and there&#39;s no way photoshop can tell the difference between a grass in the background and a strand of hair right so in this specific case don&#39;t you think we can clearly say that there&#39;s very minimal contrast between the hair and the background feel free to disagree in the comments the hair is red and then there&#39;s flower in the background there are leaves busy background just making it difficult for photoshop to make a separation so our answers no let&#39;s move on to second example in this case as well even though the background is simple there is no contrast between the hair and the background you cannot even tell where the edge of the hair stops and the edge of the background begins so here as well the answer is no because it&#39;s black hair on black background if it was white background and black hair there would be contrast let&#39;s take a look at example number three here the answer definitely is yes there is contrast there is separation between the hair and the background as you can clearly see the background is brighter the hair is darker the background is white the hair is black so it&#39;s very easy to figure out where the edge of the hair is and where the background begins so there clearly is a contrast let&#39;s take a look at our last example in this case as well we can tell between the hair and the background why because the background is of a different color than the hair the background is blue the hair is black so there&#39;s contrast of color in this case there&#39;s contrast brightness in this case there&#39;s no contrast in this case as well both are busy so there&#39;s no contrast why are we asking this question if the answer is yes we can move further down the flowchart but if the answer is no there&#39;s only one technique that we can apply here and that is the hair brush technique the way it works is pretty simple but do know that it&#39;s time consuming by the way if you want to go ahead and follow along using any of the photos in the video check the links in the description it is a simple situation where photoshop cannot tell the difference between the hair and the background so we as artists have to create that edge and the way we create that separation from scratch is with the help of a couple hair brushes by the way you can download them using the link in the description or simply use this link to have more headroom you expand the hair a little bit using liquify and then with the pen tool make a selection stay a little inside now create a mask out of it once you have a mask with the help of the hair brushes paint back in those edges you can also create a brand new layer and sample a color from the hair and on top of that draw some random hair that&#39;s all up to you if you do wish to use the hairbrush technique you can choose to watch these complete guides in absolute detail as to how to go about them they have step-by-step detail of every information that you might need we cannot cover every detail in this video because we have so many techniques to cover but if you feel lost don&#39;t worry i&#39;m there to guide you of course if you let me so moving on to the very first question that we asked ourselves and that was is there a contrast between the hair and the background if the answer is no we know we need to use the hair brush technique but if the answer is yes again there&#39;s one more question we need to ask ourselves what type of contrast is there between the hair and the background is it brightness is it color or is it a mix of both if it&#39;s just regular brightness like if there&#39;s a sky in the background or a light colored backdrop i recommend using the select and mask workspace so this image falls into that category so you can either you have two options you can either choose any of these tools like the object selection quick selection and the magic wand and then click on select subject you have a selection and then create a mask it uses the select and mask then click on the mask button it does possibly the same thing but if you do want more control i recommend even before doing this just go to select and mask workspace so while you have any selection tool selected at the top you would see select and mask click on that and do all your selections inside it because inside it you also have select subject so click on select subject and you have the option to see your selection on different kinds of backgrounds so let&#39;s say if you want our view to be on white so if the opacity is at 100 everything that is selected shows up and everything that is not selected is in white if you decrease the opacity to zero everything shows up irrespective of what you have selected or what you haven&#39;t let&#39;s increase the opacity back to 100 if you&#39;re not happy with the selection you can play with some of these settings or if there are some areas where it didn&#39;t get the selection right you can use the refine edge tool right here so let&#39;s zoom in and we can clearly see that the selection right here is not absolutely perfect so just paint over that and it gets it right now on top of that you can also shift the edge if you wish to so i can shift the edge a little further if the hair selection is not refined properly you can also try clicking on refine hair and it also does a fantastic job and on top of that i would shift the edge a little bit to the right and also choose to decontaminate colors sometimes what happens is the background can be a little colorful like it was the sky and the background was blue and the hair is usually so thin in almost all cases of course even mine that it takes up the color of the background so you might want to check decontaminate colors sometimes and it does a good job and then you can move forward from there we also have a complete dedicated guide on this topic which you can watch right here by the way this video is a guide to guide you to which technique to use in what scenario now if the backgrounds are extreme like white or black in other words the background can be black and the hair can be brighter or the background can be white and the hair can be darker in those cases it is much more practical to just use blend modes it&#39;s one of the best ways to mask hair it maintains every strand of hair we&#39;ll see so in this case you can clearly see that the background is nearly white it&#39;s not completely white but we can make this work so let&#39;s zoom in have a look at the strands right here if you used select subject it wouldn&#39;t be that nice so let&#39;s try making a background by creating a solid color adjustment layer let&#39;s create a bright blue background something like that hit okay and put it under the subject first of all let&#39;s unlock the background layer by clicking on the lock right there and let&#39;s take it under now with the subject layer selected let&#39;s try select subject first let&#39;s see what it does and now when you create a mask have a look it&#39;s okay but a lot of the strands are gone so to prevent it we&#39;re gonna use blend modes let&#39;s start it from the beginning so here we have our subject layer and here we have our background so first of all we need to make a duplicate of the subject layer so with the subject layer selected press ctrl or command j to make a duplicate the first one is normal and the second one is multiply now as the name suggests we&#39;re gonna change the blend mode according to that okay so let&#39;s turn off the normal for a second and for the multiply layer change the blend mode to guess what you are a genius change it to multiply now as we do that have a look around the edge all of the hair on the strand is visible now this will work if the background is brighter and the hair is darker when i say brighter i mean the extremes like closer to white or white or you can actually experiment with anything these are just guidelines if it&#39;s other way around however if the background is darker and the hair is brighter use a different blend mode and that is screen we&#39;re going to get back to that later but for right now let&#39;s focus on this one so as you can see every strand is visible but the blue of the background is also going through the subject and if it was even a tad bit darker it would make the subject darker as well because we have chosen the blend mode multiply and it just darkens so to bring back everything in the middle and just use the edges for the multiply layer let&#39;s turn on the normal one and in this one you can use select subject with any of these three tools selected the object selection the quick selection and the magic wand at the top click on select subject you can use any of your selection methods to make a selection and then click on the mask button now you have the best of both worlds you have the middle part properly selected and you have all of the strands around the edge properly selected as well when you do select subject it might also bring in some bits and pieces from the old background so what do we do now we just erase around the edges we don&#39;t want to disturb the original mask so select this layer press ctrl or command g put it in a group and create a mask for that group that way you have two masks for the same layer now take a brush take a soft round brush black as the foreground color and just around the edge just paint in black that&#39;s all opacity and flow at 100 there we go that edge is taken care of have a look right here so simple similarly right here as well done perfect now when you do change the blend mode of this layer to multiply it also brought in the original shadow from the original image now if you don&#39;t want it you can create a mask of this layer as well so click on the mask button and erase that area out don&#39;t worry about this edge right there because that is selected perfectly with the normal layer all right so let&#39;s go to the mask of the multiply and paint it in black if you do want to remove the shadow sometimes you might want to keep it we&#39;ll get to that later but for right now let&#39;s take it away there we go now as you can take a look if i turn this off and turn this on again it&#39;s also making the blue a little darker so to control it you can create what a curves adjustment layer right so let&#39;s click on the adjustment layer icon and then choose curves we want to limit the curves just to the multiply layer otherwise whatever you do will also affect the background we don&#39;t want that so click on this button that way it will create a clipping mask look at this sign it means that it&#39;s limited to the multiply layer and now you can control it so let&#39;s zoom in make sure we are not hurting the strands let&#39;s take the rightmost slider to the left just like this if we take it to further away have a look the strands are going so you have to be careful just like this and there you have it so without it see it&#39;s making it slightly darker with it it&#39;s perfectly normal now there might be scenarios where this shadow can actually be very beneficial so let&#39;s say you were to introduce a wall so let&#39;s drag this wall and drop it into photoshop let&#39;s make it larger just like this and put it under the multiply layer there you go now if you turn the mask off the shadows will come back and just as the shadows come back this begins to look natural but there&#39;s one problem here if you look at the wall the light on the wall is coming a little bit from the right hand side and the light on the subject is coming from the left hand side so let&#39;s invert the wall press control or command d right click on it and then choose flip horizontal now it begins to just look fantastic take a look at it isn&#39;t that super amazing i would even go further to make the shadow even darker so let&#39;s go to the curves adjustment layer make it normal and actually let&#39;s make it darker like that there you go it looks even better when it comes to colors values and concepts photoshop is like physics but when it comes to creating art with photoshop don&#39;t you think it&#39;s more like chemistry because it&#39;s full of exceptions all right now we talked about what to do if the background was white and the hair was dark but what if it&#39;s the opposite what if the background is black and the hair is brighter we have already covered it in this detailed guide we use the screen blend mode and you can watch this complete guide on how to go about it we do the exact same process but with the blend mode changed to screen instead of multiply now keep in mind again there&#39;s a complete guide on using both multiply and screen and all of these videos are also linked in the description now what technique should we use if the color separates the background from the hair you see this is a difficult question for me to answer because a few versions ago i would have asked you to just use the color range and it makes the most logical sense because it selects a target color and let&#39;s try color range first but it&#39;s not that effective let&#39;s test it let&#39;s go to select and then color range now it would make sense to you to just choose sample color and select the first eyedropper and click on an area of the color that you want to select okay and then decrease the fuzziness and select the surrounding areas as well first of all let&#39;s change the selection preview to none and let&#39;s click on the plus eyedropper let&#39;s add all of these colors okay now as we begin to increase the fuzziness it&#39;s going to select the background if you want to see a preview let&#39;s choose let&#39;s say white matte so whatever is selected would be shown and whatever that is not selected would be and why we have already covered this in select and mask right it&#39;s very similar so you can go ahead and increase the fuzziness and also invert the mask because that&#39;s actually what we want but if you have a look around the edge it&#39;s not as good even if you take the first eyedropper and select this only color if you try to increase fuzziness in this area it seems nice but it&#39;s very rough on the other side and it&#39;s just not perfect and if you somehow increase the fuzziness like this and try to cover every area have a look a lot of the strands on the left hand side is gone so what technique should we use even i tried select and mask even that takes away a lot of hair so let&#39;s go to select and mask let&#39;s click on select subject and even then if you go ahead and choose on white take a look a lot of the strands are gone it&#39;s much better than color range but again strands are gone even if you try the refine edge and try to paint over it see they don&#39;t really come back that nicely see so what should we use well it&#39;s a combination of traditional old channels method along with selected mask particularly select subject inside of selection mask here&#39;s how to go about it so let&#39;s go to channels and by the way if you cannot see channels here let&#39;s go to window and make sure channels is checked all right and now let&#39;s go through all of these channels red channel green channel and blue channel and figure out which channel has the most difference or the most contrast between the hair and the background and in this case we can clearly see since the original background was blue blue channel has the most contrast so make a copy of the blue channel let&#39;s drag it and drop it right here on the plus icon so now we need to make sure that the background is absolutely white and the hair is as dark as possible we can take care of the rest all right so press control or command l for levels this is one of those rare scenarios where i actually use levels don&#39;t hate me for it but you can also use curves here as well control or command m that&#39;s also equally usable anyway control or command l for levels now take the slider on the right most side to the left and just when you begin to lose the hair stop so just about right there you need to find that sweet spot we are losing all of the hair on the left hand side so we might have to take it a little bit to the right this seems to be a nice place to be at you can also play with these sliders make the hair as dark as possible okay there we go now we don&#39;t have to make it absolutely black and have all of the halo show up this is all right hit okay once you&#39;re satisfied now we can make a selection based on this channel but we don&#39;t have to do it now let&#39;s go back to rgb let&#39;s go back to our layers make two copies again so here we have the background layer press ctrl or command j so the first one is the regular and the second one would be using channels okay we also unlock the layer just double click on it name the layer it will also be unlocked and under it you can create a background let&#39;s create a white background and put it under both let&#39;s turn off the regular for now let&#39;s just focus on the channels now let&#39;s go to channels and make a selection based on the blue copy this one that we created hold the ctrl or command and click on the thumbnail of this channel to make a selection based on that so the brighter the areas the more that area would be selected the darker the area the lesser that area would be selected we want just the opposite of that so to invert the selection press ctrl shift i command shift i all right now with the channels layer selected click on the mask button now take a look at the mask it is pretty amazing isn&#39;t it all of the strands are covered again it&#39;s not perfect a lot of it is going through if you look at it if you turn off the white background have a look a lot of this is transparent as well and for that we have the regular layer let&#39;s turn on the regular layer click on select subject you can use any selection method that you like just to select the insides and click on the mask button you have your regular and you also have all of these strands right here as well with the channels so if i turn that off strands go away if i turn that on strands come back now as you can tell this is not perfect a lot of halos a lot of the blue is also coming along to give us blues don&#39;t worry we&#39;re gonna take care of that i&#39;m with you so let&#39;s go to the mask of the channels hold the alt key or the option key click on the mask of the channels how do we take that away here&#39;s the trick select the brush black as the foreground color no we are not just simply gonna paint black change the blend mode of the brush not the layer of the brush to overlay that way it will paint less on areas which are closer to white and more on areas which are closer to black so it will paint more here and less here so decrease the flow to about 10 percent and just paint around the hair make sure these areas are black it&#39;s not affecting the hair that much that&#39;s what it will do left hand side is fine this is good now once you&#39;re okay with it increase the flow to 100 change the blend mode to normal and then it can cover the rest of the areas if you want to do it quick just hold the controller command click on the mask of the regular layer press ctrl shift i command shift i to invert the mask and then just simply blast it on controller command d hold the all key or the option key click on the mask to see the layer and there you go the problem here is that the mask is fine but it&#39;s also bringing along a lot of blues so how do we take care of that pretty simple make a group of both of these so regular and the channels hold the controller command also select the regular press control or command g now on top of it we&#39;re going to create a brand new layer the problem here is the color right so all we have to do is to sample this color and paint and we need to limit that just to the hair so hold the alt k the option key and click on this button that way it will be limited just the hair somehow accidentally i&#39;ve increased the smoothing let&#39;s decrease it back to zero so you can either paint it or if you just want to change the color change the blend mode from normal to color there you go so sample this color and paint sample and paint how easy it is sample and paint and that way you can take care of the rest of the mask if you have painted extra right here simply erase it no big deal and that my friend is pretty much done by the way if you only wanted the channel slayer just for the hair areas and not for the body because sometimes it can create some outlines that you didn&#39;t want just open up the group go to the channels mask right here and just erase the extras so hold the alt k the option key click on the mask take the brush black as the foreground color and take it off that&#39;s all hold the alt k the option key click on the mask again and boom you won&#39;t have those weird outlines you still have a little bit of it again how do we take care of that we already learned it in this video but just to give you a short refresher select the smudge tool right here strength 20 is fine and you can just push it in slightly there you go there we go that&#39;s how easy it is to do it you can also contract the selection you can fill it again there&#39;s lots of tutorials on filling up halos and taking care of it you can watch them right here linked in the description last but not the least if the contrast between the hair and the background is a mixture of both brightness and color like in this case just start with select and mask so you can just select any of these three selection tools and click on select subject that works too or go into select and mask and refine it further click on the mask button once the selection is active and it usually does a pretty good job if not you can go into select and mask choose decontaminate colors work with all those settings and after that you can always manually adjust the mask as well you can hold the alt option key go to the mask use the overlay technique that we just learned in this to refine it but in this case we don&#39;t really need it in all of these techniques excluding the hairbrush technique because in the hair brush technique we create our own edge so in all of these techniques sometimes you might want to refine the mask it may not be always perfect so to refine the mask what do we do we use the overlay technique what is the overlay technique that is simply changing the blend mode of the brush to overlay and then painting on the mask with a lower flow we have already covered it in this lesson so if you select the brush go to the mask and then if you zoom in let&#39;s say we change the blend mode to overlay no matter how much you paint on the black areas with white it just won&#39;t paint or no matter how much you paint in the white areas with black it just won&#39;t paint when you have the overlay blend mode selected and the color on the brush is black it will paint more on the areas which are closer to black and less on the areas which are closer to white so right now black is selected right so if you go to this mask and have a look if we paint on this area you would notice that it&#39;s painting more on the darker areas and very less or absolutely not on areas which are absolutely white the more darker it is it&#39;s painting more on those areas now this image looks a little scary i understand that sorry about it but it&#39;s a good example similarly if you have white as the foreground color and you try to paint on black it won&#39;t paint but if you try to paint on an area which is closer to white it will paint more the less and less closer it is to white the less it will paint and on top of that if you have a lower flow it gives you more control so in this area some of the background is still showing up so we would go with 10 flow blend mode overlay and paint here with black it takes care of that if we directly painted it without overlay see what would happen it also covers up the hair as well but if the blend mode is overlay it will paint less on the brighter areas and absolutely won&#39;t paint on areas which is 100 white so now when i paint it even if i accidentally try to paint inside it just won&#39;t let me paint so by now we have talked about selecting the hair and all of the different scenarios we have talked about refining the mask one major thing that we just cannot ignore is removing halos when it comes to masking hair we just cannot forget about it no matter how good of a mask you have except for the hairbrush technique and the blend modes technique no matter how good the mask is it will carry the color of the previous background and if the previous background is too colorful and the new background is very drastic in color in comparison to previous background it will definitely show up the hair is so thin especially around the edges that it will take in the color of the old background and those are halos that we need to take care of so there are three ways to remove halos in photoshop the first one we already covered we simply created a new layer and we started brushing with the color of the hair we took a sample of the color of the hair and we painted there and changed the blend mode of that layer to color that&#39;s the first method the second technique is simply filling it up with paint and the third technique is using the clone stamp too i&#39;m going to show you an example where we&#39;re going to use both so first of all let&#39;s make a selection of the subject we have our new background right here so click on select subject at the top and let&#39;s click on the mask button now as you can see it&#39;s bringing in the color of the older background if we simply try to create a brand new layer and clipped it and changed the blend mode to color here it might not work sometimes when the brightness of the new background is different it just doesn&#39;t work so if you take a sample and you try to paint right here with the color blend mode let&#39;s increase the flow it kind of doesn&#39;t work there are still gaps here see it just looks awkward so that technique won&#39;t work so let&#39;s simply try filling it up and here&#39;s how you do it starts the same you create a new layer and keep the blend mode to normal pull the alt key of the option key and click on the line between these two layers clip it just the way we did before and fill it now when you fill it keep in mind that we have to fill the outside hair only for the inside we&#39;re going to use the clone stamp too so let&#39;s zoom in hold the alt option key click to take a sample if you cannot take a sample let&#39;s go to the eyedropper make sure sample all layers or current and below is selected sample size can be three by three or five by five let&#39;s not choose point sample otherwise it can sample a grain or a color that you didn&#39;t want five by five average is fine take the brush hold the alt k the option key click to take a sample and just paint on the outside areas instantly it&#39;s taken care of take a sample and paint on the outside now why am i asking you to not paint on the inside because it will make it flat so if we do it see it&#39;s just not looking alright now you can take your time to do the entire area and for these inside areas you use the clone stamp tool so take the clone stamp tool and hold the alt option key click to take a sample and simply fill it just like that similarly right here as well hold the alt k the option key click to take a sample make sure sample is current and below and fill up these areas that&#39;s all and just by doing that we have taken care of the halos in this small area so here&#39;s the before as you can see the previous halo showing up here&#39;s the after here&#39;s how we take care of that zoom out take a look before after now you can do the rest of the areas just a reminder you don&#39;t have to remove halos if number one you&#39;re using the hair brush technique and number two you&#39;re using the blend mode technique so there you go that is everything about selecting hair in photoshop and these are the techniques that i recommend as of recording this video you&#39;re free to use this video as a guide and if in future there&#39;s an update to the techniques that i recommend i will mention it in a pinned comment to this video thank you so much for making it to the end of the video it truly means a lot and to show my gratitude i wanted to give you something it might not be that exciting it&#39;s a little boring something but it may be helpful so you can download this complete flowchart it might help you with selection of hair and along with it definitely you can download the hair brushes as well by the way this is the link to download all of it this is a secret link only appears on the screen not on the description and only for you who have made to this part of the video so thank you so much you are very special actually you&#39;re one of the five percent of the audience who make it to the end of the video it means a lot and there you go my friend that is my attempt at creating the ultimate guide for selecting hair i hope it was helpful and if it did help make sure to give us a like and also don&#39;t forget to subscribe and not just subscribe ring the bell so that you my friend don&#39;t miss any other feature tips tricks or tutorials i would like to take this moment to thank all of these nice and amazing people for supporting picks imperfect on patreon and making these videos free for everybody forever thank you so much for watching i&#39;ll see you in my next one till then stay tuned and make sure that you keep creating i truly appreciate your time wake up honey i made you breakfast fresh coffee and bagels too a new day is waiting for us we got lots of fun stuff to do let&#39;s go to the zoo and feed the monkeys

Transcript for:Ultimate Guide for Selecting Hair in Photoshop

Transcript for:
Ultimate Guide for Selecting Hair in Photoshop