Selecting fly-away hair can be one of the toughest assignments in Photoshop. The Extract command can be helpful. Third-party plug-ins, such as Mask Pro (www.extensis.com) and KnockOut (www.corel.com), are great. But sometimes the easiest way to select those random strands of hair is right in your Channels palette.

Open the image in Photoshop. Open the Channels palette. Click on each channel, one at a time, to find the channel with the greatest contrast between the strands of hair and the background behind them. (Ignore the rest of the image, you’re only interested in the area around the individual strands of hair.) In our sample image (PhotoSpin.com, #0770118), the Blue channel offers the best contrast.

We’ll duplicate that channel by dragging it to the New Channel button at the bottom of the Channels palette. With the Blue copy channel active in the Channels palette, we can use Levels or Curves to maximize the contrast. Again, we’re interested only in the fringe strands of hair. (Note that I’ve used the command Window> Arrange> New Window for [image name] to open a second window for the image, in which I’ve zoomed to monitor a specific area of the image.)

Using the Lasso tool and the Fill command, in combination with the Brush tool and the Eraser tool, we can easily fill in the subject and delete the remaining areas of the background. (In the upper window, only the Blue copy channel is active and visible. In the lower window, only the Blue copy channel is active, but all channels are visible.)

When the mask is complete, click on the composite channel at the top of the Channels palette to make it active, then Command-click (Mac) or Control-click (Windows) on the mask channel (Blue copy, in this example) to load the channel as a selection. You can delete the background, fill it with color, or invert the selection and copy the subject, ready to paste into another image.

7 Comments

1. Sarah said on — March 31, 2008 @ 9:55 pm

   What are the steps involoved in “using the Lasso tool and the Fill command, in combination with the Brush tool and the Eraser tool, to easily fill in the subject and delete the remaining areas of the background?”

   Thanks,
   Sarah

2. gilbert maceda said on — May 29, 2008 @ 10:19 pm

   i appreciate this tutorial, thanks for that! But can you make it a video to make easier for me, thanks!

3. Marc-Olivier said on — June 1, 2008 @ 12:38 pm

   This tutorial is definitely really useful but I’ve tried this technique on a really curly-hair photo and the result is not that good… The problem is that a part of the white background is still remains in the hair. Any tips?

4. Kristen said on — June 9, 2008 @ 10:33 pm

   I agree with Sara. While I know how to use those tools in normal situations I’m having a hard time understanding exactly what we are doing here that I wouldn’t just normally do the “long” way with out using channels.

5. marcus said on — July 14, 2008 @ 6:36 pm

   I have been looking for this for along time. I’ve seen other co-workers whip it out and get a nice hair selection many of times, but I had no time to look over shoulders. It was so simple. I always thought it was something very complex that they where doing or using a filter of some sort. THANKS DOOD!

6. ON ASSIGNMENT: 9/8 ::: EXTRACT YOURSELF « SuperWolf Pingback on — September 6, 2008 @ 11:02 am

   [...] For those of you who have already built the sandwich, go HERE and/or HERE and start working on the tutorial so you’ll know how to EXTRACT YOURSELF. Try to find a BIG [...]

7. Mike Dennis said on — October 6, 2008 @ 8:20 am

   NICE TOOTORIAL

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