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Changing background color around hair


Kiwiellis

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What's the best way to change the color of this background to bright yellow?  I've been trying to follow the tutorial "extracting subject from green background" because of the hair.  I can't seem to get a clean black & white mask - can't seem to get the background to go completely white and her to go black on the levels layer.  Is this the best method to use in this instance?  If so, do the values on the channel mixer layer need to change based on the particular image.  I played around with the sliders to try to get more contrast than the 0/100/0 was giving me.  Any direction you can give would be so appreciated.  I have a feeling I'm making this way harder than it needs to be. :) 

022018125 DS.jpg

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1 minute ago, Kiwiellis said:

I've been trying to follow the tutorial "extracting subject from green background" because of the hair.  I can't seem to get a clean black & white mask - can't seem to get the background to go completely white and her to go black on the levels layer.  Is this the best method to use in this instance?

No, that shit is NEVER the best method.

Give me a few minutes ...

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I think it might need to be a little more golden yellow to match the smidge of yellow eye shadow above her right eye.  But wow!

Ok, so how do I do this?  Did you extract her, or just mask her?  I've got quite a few other shots from this shoot, and she wants them all with different color backgrounds.  Had I known I would've shot on white instead of that awful pink.  But can't reshoot now. :( 

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It's very simple.  Just this Channel Mixer layer:

  • Red +100, 0, 0, +10
  • Green +93, 0, 0, 0
  • Blue 0, +100, 0, 0

Then mask it on to the background.  You'll be SO pleased to see that you don't need any precision at all around her hair - just let your mask blend gently into the edge of her hair.  The same with her shirt.

The only place you'll need precision masking is around her face.  Make sure you zoom in, and use the Shift key.  Once you've done it very accurately around the edge, switch to a 10% opacity brush, at a bigger size, and gently mask onto her skin a bit, to remove the pink cast that's on the side of her face.

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If you need a setup that allows you to change to a large number of different colours, we'd do it differently.

yellowbg2.thumb.jpg.5857c876e3c200ea685f586a96a6295f.jpg

The Channel Mixer layer would simply have the "Monochrome" box checked, and +100, 0, 0, 0 as the values.

Then you'd add a Solid Color layer on "Multiply" blend mode.  That's the layer whose colour you could change to anything you want.  Start with blue, and fiddle with it later.

The trouble with this method is that the masking needs to be much more precise.  The mask can still go into the hair a little bit, but  nowhere near as easily.

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