Hair
Clipping Magic can automatically separate out hair from clean and distinct backgrounds. Gradients and some noise typically work, as long as the colors involved are sufficiently different. Studio shots and photos with e.g. a clear blue sky as the background usually work well.
Clip Tip:
This feature can also be used to extract shadows and handle complex objects with lots of holes in them such as trees. See below for details
Step-by-step tutorial
In the tutorial below we remove the background from the hair in this photo. You can follow along with this written tutorial, or try out this image for yourself in the Editor. View Example In Editor »
The example edits are slightly different from the tutorial below.
1. Upload image
Clipping Magic automatically determines that your image contains hair and applies yellow marks to it:
Original + Marks
Result
2. Touch up Optional
While the automatic yellow marks usually work well, you can always edit them to suit your needs. Use the Hair Brush and the Eraser to add and remove hair marks.
Original + Marks
Result
Clip Tip:
Stay pretty tight to the area that is actually partially transparent.
3. Advanced touch up Optional
Zoom in and add select background and foreground pixel-level marks in the hair area to erase veils or bring back lost strands of hair.
To make this easier, the foreground and background brushes are automatically shrunk to single-pixel size when over hair.
Original + Marks
Result
Clip Tip:
Zoom far in - you really want the marks to hit as close to 100% foreground or background as possible.
Tips & Tricks
Cycle Background Color
Cycle the background color to better see what the result would look like when put onto different backgrounds.
Original + Marks
Result
How It Works
The algorithm works by taking the colors along the boundary of the hair marks, assigning them to foreground and background based on the initial clip, and then reconstructing the interior based on that. This means that the boundary of the hair region must be consistent with the foreground and background colors inside of it.
Cover The Boundary
Normally you want the hair marks to cover the dashed yellow-black foreground-background boundary. If your marks are close to the boundary but don't cross it, then chances are that will cause the algorithm to misinterpret what is foreground and what is background. This risks introducing gaps or retaining background patches in the result.
×
Original + Marks
×
Result
Be sure to cover the boundary well.
Don't Cover Conflicting Colors
Sometimes the color of the person's shoulder can overlap with the colors in the hair background. Accidentally covering the shoulder with hair marks will then cause the algorithm to include these overlapping colors as both foreground and background candidates. This at best leads to a mediocre result.
×
Original + Marks
×
Result
Be sure to erase any hair marks that include conflicting colors.
Additional Uses
The hair tool is really a tool to handle partially transparent areas. They don't actually have to be hair, that's just the most common case. Here are a couple of additional ways you can put this to good use:
Extract Shadows
Sometimes your photo already has a great looking shadow in it, and it would be nice to have the shadow as a partially transparent area in the result. To get that, just mark the shadow with a broad yellow brush. This separates it out from the background, and can give you a very nice effect.
Complex Objects
Some types of objects, like trees, bushes, and flowers, can have very complex shapes with lots of holes in them. At the same time, these objects usually have a different color than the background.
This allows you to leverage the hair tool to greatly simplify the background removal task. Simply mark the hole-filled part with a broad yellow brush, and watch all those little holes get taken care of in one fell swoop!
