Making a grey background black around hair

[Kim Howells]

Hi Damo.  I thought to make the bricks black, I could use the black eyedropper in levels, but all that does is change the colour of the image.  How can I make it black, and preserve the colour and brightness of the hair?

100% crop

[Damien Symonds]

May I also see the whole photo for reference?  I need to know what other edges will be affected by the adjustment.

[Kim Howells]

[Damien Symonds]

Ok, the rest should be fairly straightforward masking on the black Solid Color layer, yes?

Inevitably you're going to lose some strands when blackening.  And inevitably some tips of hair will change colour a little.

Is this ok?

[Kim Howells]

Yes, that's fab.  What did you do?

Shouldn't the black eyedropper turn that area black rather than just changing the colour? 

[Damien Symonds]

12 hours ago, Kim said:

Shouldn't the black eyedropper turn that area black rather than just changing the colour? 

Sorry, I don't understand this question.  Isn't black what you want?  That's what the eyedropper does, it changes the colour of the point at which you click, forcing it to be black.

[Damien Symonds]

I found I had to change the levels layer's blend mode to Luminosity - did you try that too?

[Kim Howells]

Yes black is what I want, it wasn't doing that.  I'll try luminosity when I am back home, thanks.

[Damien Symonds]

Have you seen this thread?  Remember that you only need to blacken immediately adjacent to the hair with the Levels layer.

[Kim Howells]

Very weird.  The black eyedropper just isn't working.   The white one does exactly what it should.

 

[Damien Symonds]

Have you double-clicked on it to make sure it's really set to black?

[Kim Howells]

BOOM there's the issue, thanks!