Tutorial: Don’t get tangled up with hair.
The poll said you wanted more tutorials, so here you go. Clipping hair has been the most annoying and disappointing project for many designers. You either spend way to much time getting each strand of hair, or your photo ends up looking like they have rubber hair. Well I have a very simple way to clip the most frizzy hair and have it look very natural. Below is a step by step guide to clip hair like a pro.
Step One: Set up your image
This style of clipping works best with a well contrasted image. If doing a photo shoot try and use a white background. Or if you are purchasing art find some with models against a white background. Once you have your image open it up in photoshop, and then duplicate the layer. You want to make sure you have an original layer, and a layer to extract the hair.
Step Two: Extract time
This is the fun part. Go to the main menu, choose “Filter” then “Extract”. This will open up a new window with the extract tools. Choose the Marker icon in the upper left hand corner. On the right hand side you will see the brush size option. You want to choose a size that will cover half of the image edge and half of the white space.
Step Three: Start tracing
Once you have the brush size chosen start tracing. You want to trace over the edge of the image. You will see that the brush size gets much larger on my image over the hair than it is on the skin. For the hair make sure your brush covers all of the hair, so that the white splits are covered too.
Step Four: Fill and preview
Once the image is fully traced, choose the paint bucket icon in the upper left hand side. With the paint bucket click inside the green traced image, this will mask out the desired area. Once that has been filled click on the “Preview” button on the right hand side. This will let you preview and edit the image to make sure there are no blemishes.
Step Five: Clean up
Zoom in on your image and use the “Clean Up Tool” and “Edge Touch Up Tool” on the left hand side as needed. Make sure there are no gaps or funky breaks in the image. These tools should fix any problems. Once you are done press the “OK” button on the right hand side.
Step Six: Clip the body
Your top layer will now have the extracted head and hair, but you will need to rock the body. On the original layer make a clipping path with the pen tool, and then mask out that layer. This will give you a top layer of the hair, and a lower layer of the body.
Step Seven: Add your background
Now you are free to add any background you desire. You will see that the hair looks natural and flows with whatever is behind it. This might take some practice, but will be well worth it for the final piece.
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