Can Anyone Do This?

[abrogard]

I'm a newbie. But I'm only trying to do this one thing: extract hair from a background. White hair. From an almost identical background. Simple enough and scads of tutorials on the web showing how to do it. And even Adobe tutorials showing how to do it with the extract tool.

Well, I've been trying for four days and I've tried heaps and heaps. I've learned so much I could probably teach some others how to do this extracting, now.

But I can't get this out. Perhaps I've found the limit of what we can expect.

I wonder what the guys in this forum think.

Here's the troublesome part of the pic:

[iDad]

Each person that does that will have a different result that's a tough on even for the best chopper

[abrogard]

I found a tutorial by Katrin Eismann that might do it. I like the way it goes about it - enhancing differences again and again.. but I couldn't follow it to completion, got lost in the convolutions and where she finished up with this perfect result I finished up with a blank screen

But I'll try again. And again.

I'm actually quite confused about exactly where in her method the actual hairy bits get sorted out.. because 90% of it is all about everything else but.

I wonder if it would help folks like me if some tutorial started with a picture of one single hair on a nearly-matching background and then showed us how to extract that?

Anyway, I'll continue... Ms Eismann's tutorial, if anyone wants to know, is at: http://www.graphic-design.com/Photoshop/remove_backgrounds/replace_background.html

[bostone737]

man, that is tough one to sort out

ive posted these links a couple of times the last few days, may want to give them a looksie

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iUUFIdAsj2o

http://www.photoshopforphotographers.co ... asking.mov

[jerryb]

hi,
if your just using this image to practice the tutorials....

use a different image!!!! in almost all your tutorials there using a fair sharp, clear, clean image .... and also it large resolution image thier using....

the problem with your image.... it fuzzy, lots of noise very noticable on the main image and when you look at the channels there noise all over the place.... which reduces the details and sharpenss of the hair ....

another major issue with this image is that a ver low contrast......

these two major factors makes it extremely difficult to extract the hair using the various techniques you have seen.....

so to practice on i would suggest getting nice size image, that has goood contrast!!! then you will find using the tutorials it much easier to get the results you expect..... i have 2 or 3 models with nice hair contrast and sharpness and clarity, that i practice on...

now once your familair with the various teckniques.... then tackle rought image.... because what you'' end up doing is doing a few things, first to try to increase the contrast .... and once the done you may need to further use a combination of techniques to eventuall get good selection ....

just playing around with i needed to do alittle sharpening.... and some work with the channel mixer, curves and , color range, and some dodge and burn techniues to get the selection i wanted... and i am still a long way being satisfied with the selection ....

[abrogard]

Hi and thanks for the advice, the help.

I couldn't see the point of trying with something 'easy' - because how's that going to help when I'm trying to find out how to do something hard?

Like if this method works, it works and if it doesn't, it doesn't and that's all about it.

Then I realised there could be a lot to be learned about just how to handle many things - the degree of adjustment to be made here and there, which particular choice to be made with some tools (like blending, maybe), how much to use something (like the dodge tool maybe) and so on......

And maybe that's what you mean by start with something simple.

But while there might be something in that what remains is that the whole point is how to deal with this (or any other) poor resolution, unsharp, fuzzy, noisy, low contrast image. That's the real job. That's the job I'm talking about.

I am a very, very new newbie, but I have successfully done a number of extracts of easy subjects, from those tutorials. But when I try to apply the same techniques - which, for all the personal 'technique' with brushes and whatnot, remain very largely kinda automatic procedures with a quite obvious and simple adjustment to be made at each step - when I try to apply them to this difficult subject I get nowhere.

So I mooted the idea of just having an image of one hair ..... have someone come up with a procedure that would crisply and cleanly extract it. Thinking if that could be done then automatically I'd have the answer to doing this whole pic.

Which isn't much different to what I've already posted, really, is it.

But here we go again:

Can anyone give me the procedure (and show the result, perhaps) they used to extract these hairs from the background?

OR: if there's a procedure that will get there but which I should practice first, with 'easier' subjects, then what is that procedure?

[jerryb]

hi,
well i don't know if you like my version of the cutout but this is what i did
i probably didn't use the standard tutorial you used because they didn't work for me sooo ...
1. i looks at that section and as before bad noise and little contrast.....
2. so what i did a made a dup layer and on this layer i am going to try and bring out enough contrast and details to work with.......
3. i took my dodge and burn tool and try to hilight a couple of theindividual hairs
3. i did a curve adjustment..... to darken the background and lighten the hair.... to give more contrast ...
4. now at this point i did a a color range selection .... now give me a rough cut out
5. after that i did a quck mask .... and painted out all the rest of the areas i didn't want seen ........ and use the eraser for adding a little more to the selection then went back to normal mode...
6. now i did put in a dark layer underneat to see what was missed and i used the easer to take care of most of the specks and smooth some edges alittle.....

and below is the resutls.....
click on the image for the full size..... the image is in transparent png if you want to import it into your psd file or what ever.... like i said.... not sure if what i did is consider soso or good or what smiling..... but it worked for me...

[abrogard]

Well thanks for that, jerry. I think the upshot is that I'm trying the impossible - because the resolution is simply not there. The image you started with was too close to pixellation before you started.

You've done a great job. I think. Looking at it and comparing with the start I can't see how you could do better.

Because the task is too hard. There's just not enough pixels to play with, not enough resolution, is there?

I notice that 'vertical' hair on the top right, which helps very much to give it the 'hairiness' , is only two pixels wide.

Here's what the two look like when seen together on my computer:


You can see your result doesn't look like any fragile, wispy, floating, 'hairy' but rather looks like a solid 'clump' or something.

BUT, I hasten to add, I realise that might be my fault when I've put the background on. There's a kinda border all around your pic which I've failed to remove or maybe I've put there and it is probably mainly responsible for the 'clumpy' look.

I'm using a lot of words here and not getting anywhere much. I guess what I'm trying to say is that I now think I've been trying not just to extract something but also to make what I extract look better - BE better (more pixels, better resolution) - than the original.

I wonder if that's possible? It is on American t.v., isn't it? Infinite blowups of anything instantly.

Thanks for your input, Jerry, I'll try your technique and see what I come up with. I'm still hassling with Katrin Eismann's method, trying to get it to work for me.. it screws up for me towards the end...

[jerryb]

hi,
yes, like i been saying all along that is a difficult image if you look carefull there a lot of noise in that image, in fact look at your channels it even more noiticable and you couple that with a lose res image.... it hard......

now sometime what yo can do for the whole image.... is maybe do resample large... bicubic smooth or sharper and do it in 10% increments untill you get the size you want .... on a good image works out pretty well not sure on this one but you would have more pixals to work with...

also on someof the strands.... a couple of tricks
a. ttry to use the dodge and burn, set you brush size to the size of the hair to get more contrast...
b. and some casee if it just not there even draw the hair in!!!! add alittle noise to make it alittle more realistic...

i have even done where one section hair edge was bad but copy and pasted a good section blen the pasted section in over the bad hair edge ...... smile....

you may want to look at a thread on the board here called "help cutting out objects"
and just think about what wwere saying about his issue... he had a better picture but the cats hairs edge was fuzy........

you might also want to take a look at russel brown tutorial look toward the bottom for advance masking ....
http://russellbrown.com/tips_tech.html

it a video.... in some respect similar to the tutorial you been doing... but there he had blurring issues in certain parts of the hair so he had to treat that different...

[abrogard]

Hi Jerry,

yep, thanks for your tips. I was particularly interested in the Russell Brown stuff - because of the clear way it is presented, because it seems good technique stuff, because he's got such a droll way of constantly talking himself and his techniques up - and lastly, and mainly, because of where he admits, or tells us, he can't do it.

And what he's saying he can't do would be just about exactly what I'm wanting to do.

This was in the course of this movie tutorial, which he repeatedly says is 'the greatest' (to paraphrase, you understand), he takes us to part of the image and says he can't do it.... so he's just done part of it. Here, this one:
http://av.adobe.com/russellbrown/ExtractSM.mov

And here is the part of the image that he 'can't do' :
http://bayimg.com/cAfolaaDc

I apologise for the 'girlies' if you find 'em offensive - my photobucket thing wouldn't work, my Picasa wouldn't pick up the image, and I couldn't quickly find another image storage/share place.. I didn't realise it would be like that when I uploaded to it... still, they're only girls...

And that hair - the bits he's left out - I think would be pretty close to the hair thing that I'm trying to get. So perhaps that settles it - there's limits to what you should try to do.... ?