Tutorial: Hair Separate Out Hair From Clean Backgrounds
The example edits are slightly different from the tutorial below.
Clipping Magic can help you 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 typically work well. Random photos with busy backgrounds typically do not work, or require a fair amount of labor to get a decent result.
To separate out the hair, do the following:
1. Start as usual
Mark foreground and background as usual, until you have a decent rough-cut result where the hair is cropped into a bit of a bob, but otherwise pretty good.
Original + Marks Result
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2. Highlight the hair
Use a Hair Brush and highlight the hair.
Stay pretty tight to the area that is actually partially transparent.
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3. Eyedrop
The algorithm works by using two palettes: one for the foreground and one for the background.
Carefully eyedrop 100% foreground and 100% background colors.
As soon as you've added some colors to each palette, the foreground should start separating from the background.
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Tips & Tricks
Cycle Background Color
Cycle the background color to better see what the result would look like when put onto different backgrounds.
Add / remove colors from the palettes and alter the highlights until you're happy with the result.
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Color Sections
Hair sometimes has a different color on the left vs on the right side of the face. Similarly for the background.
Since the algorithm is quite sensitive to the palettes chosen and the actual colors in the image, it can sometimes help to separate the image into different Color Sections and use a different Hair Brush for each.
Original + Marks Result
Single
Hair Brush
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Bad Colors
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×
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Original + Marks Result
Two
Hair Brushes
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Better Colors
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✓
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Halos
If you include a lighter color in the foreground, the partially transparent pixels at the edge of the hair can be mis-classified as lighter than they should be and cause a halo effect.
To resolve this, you can either try using a separate Hair Brush for the lighter section of the hair, or you can remove the highlight from the light section (and thereby the need to include the lighter color in the foreground).
Original + Marks Result
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Halo
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×
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Remove halo color
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No Halo
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✓
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Conflicting Colors
Hair oftentimes has highlights that partially match the background, or cause halos.
Be sure to not highlight these parts, or they will be partially removed.
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Conflict
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×
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Original + Marks Result
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✓
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Gradients
Backgrounds often look flat but are actually gradients. This can lead to 'dirty' areas in the result.
Be sure to pick up all relevant background colors to get rid of the dirt.
Original + Marks Result
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×
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Original + Marks Result
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✓
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Download Result
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| Export | Lorum Ipsum - edit settings |
| Shadows | Lorum Ipsum - edit settings |
| Crop | Lorum Ipsum - edit settings |
| Colors | Lorum Ipsum - edit settings |