[ironknee]

hi

usually i use the pen tool in photoshop to trace around people with tame hair...but i need to do one with fluffy hair...


how do i do this? i have a faint memory of a ps plugin to make masks of photos...

i am on ps cs

thanks for any suggestions

[Randman]

Magnetic lasso.

[kaboom]

Good masks will take time. Especially on something like hair.
Use the magnetic lasso as a starting point perhaps, then use various brushes in your alpha channel. Adjustment layers can sometimes help. Adjust curves to make the hair stand out from the background. Maybe isolate a single channel and work from there. Different channels give you different details. PS gives you tons of options, you just need to find the best way to do it.
And remember, a quick and dirty mask is just that, quick and dirty.

[loki74]

seeing as how its a still photo and not a video pulling a decent matte should be fairly easy... is it against a key background or not? If it isnt, well theres a whole lot less to worry about (color spill, etc). But depending on your useage there are some things to consider when doing this.. like shadows and light wrap. These will help the general realism of the final comp.

I would say though, you'll definately want to work in single channels to extract a perfect matte.

Re: ps plugins for matte extraction: a lot of the video plugins that do this also have plugins available for photoshop. I know that Photron's Primatte has a Photoshop version. The plugin route are gonna cost a pretty penny though, and won't do you much good unless the photos were taken against a blue or green screen.

http://www.photron.com/

[ironknee]

thx all...wow never done channels

[budster101]

Try threshold.