If you photograph people or even furry animals, then at some point you’re probably going to have to make some kind of hair selection that lets you cut your subject out from its background. While cutting out hard edged shapes like body parts covered in skin or clothes are often fairly straightforward, hair can still be quite a challenge. In this video from Tutvid, Nathaniel Dodson shows us some methods to help assist with this process.
Utilising Photoshop’s Calculations feature to create multiple smaller alpha masks of different parts of the hair, then combining them into a single selection mask, it’s a technique that requires a little more work than other hair selection methods.
Some shots, however, will demand that time if you want to get perfect and believable results if you’re cutting people out and trying to stick them onto another background.
While other software may provide much easier methods of selecting hair, you can never know too many Photoshop features or techniques, and this one can be applied to help overcome many other problems as well. What other tips do you have for making difficult hair selections? Let us know in the comments.
