Basic Hair Selection

1. Go ahead and open a photo of someone who has wispy hair. In Figure 1, the example I'm using
shows an image with some cleanly defined edges around the woman's clothing, but she definitely
has some flyaway hair, too.

Figure 2

Refining the Edges

3. When you're ready to start working on the person's hair, click the Refine Edge button in the
options bar to open the Refine Edge dialog (see Figure 3a). Press F to cycle through the View
Figure 1 settings to get to Black, since a black background shows off the light hair in this selection really
well (see Figure 3b). If the person in your example has dark hair, try a white background instead.
2. Use the Quick Selection tool to put an overall selection around the person. Spend a minute or two
to get the selection as close as possible around all of the well-defined edges, but don't worry TIP
about the hair yet. Just get the overall selection to be very close, as you see in Figure 2. Don't
even try to select the hair edges at this point. On the View menu, each view option has a letter next to it, which provides a quick shortcut key to jump
directly to that background view. It's probably a good idea to memorize your favorites; I like Black (B),
White (W), and Black and White (K).
Figure 3a Figure 3b

4. Turn on the Smart Radius checkbox and drag the radius slider to around 10, as shown in Figure
4a. You should immediately see a big improvement, as shown in Figure 4b. Seriously, folks, if
you've ever doubted how powerful this Edge Detection stuff is, take a look at what it's doing
here. Press the P key to see your original and then press P again to see your current selection. All
we've done so far is move one slider, and our selection is already starting to pick up more hair!
 Figure 4b

Refining the Radius

Figure 4a 5. Okay, we still have some work to do. In my example, we can definitely see the gray background
behind the model peeking through around the edges of her hair, especially near her shoulders.
And the hair is still way jagged. This is where we call in the ringer. The big dog. The head
honcho. (Okay, I'll stop.) The Big Kahuna here (sorry, last one) is the Refine Radius tool. It's the
little brush icon (circled in Figure 5) just below the Zoom and Hand tools at top left in the dialog.
 Figure 6a

Figure 5

6. Just like other brushes in Photoshop, the Refine Radius tool has a size setting that can be
controlled with the left bracket ([) and right bracket (]) keys on your keyboard. Resize the brush
to cover the entire radius of any flyaway hair; then simply start painting around the edges of the
hair. As you paint, you'll reveal part of the original background, so you can see just how far out
you'll have to paint to get all of the hair (see Figure 6a). When you release the mouse button, sit
back in awe as Photoshop selects the hair but leaves out the background (see Figure 6b).
Sometimes Photoshop needs a few seconds to catch up, so be patient when using this tool. I
know, I sound like a total Refine Edge fanboy—but you have to admit that this tool rocks!
Figure 6b

7. Continue brushing around the edges of the hair to bring all of the wispy hair edges back (see
Figure 7). You can paint in one long brush stroke around the entire head, or use smaller strokes in
more concentrated areas. Honestly, I've tried both techniques, and I haven't noticed better (or
worse) results from either method.

Figure 8a

Figure 7

Ready to Mask?

8. The selection is looking good now. Choose Layer Mask for the Output To setting, and click OK
when you're done (see Figure 8a). Now we have her selected from the background, on her own
layer, with a layer mask attached to it. Since there's already a mask there, you'll just see a
transparent background behind your model (see Figure 8b).

Figure 8b

9. Open a background image where you want to place the copied image. For my model, Jessica, I'm
using a background that has a lot of bright natural light in it, since Jessica has light on both sides
of her hair, and I think a bright background fits her best. With your background image open,
switch back to the original photo and select the Move tool from the toolbox (just press V). Drag
the photo to the new background and position it where you want it—for this example, I'm placing
Jessica's image (see Figure 9a) on the right side of the background (see Figure 9b).
Figure 9a

Figure 10

You might remember that I previewed the selection on a black background in the Refine Edge dialog; I
couldn't see all that gray coming through. That just goes to show you that the background plays a big
role in compositing! If I had placed my model on a dark background, I wouldn't need to bother with the
edges. But since that's not the case, let's look at a way to refine the hair edges even more. We're going to
use a layer style called Inner Glow. It's become my go-to technique for refining hair edges.

1. Click the Add Layer Style icon at the bottom of the Layers panel and choose Inner Glow. When
the dialog opens, click the Color swatch toward the top of the dialog to open the color picker.
Then click an area somewhere in the person's hair that's closest to the overall hair color around it,
as shown in Figure 11a. (Don't click on any dark roots or shadows.) This step sets the color of the
glow, as shown in Figure 11b.

Figure 9b

Extracting Hair More Precisely

Our project is looking pretty good. We selected the person in the original shot, and lots of hair detail
came along for the ride to the new background. But if you zoom in and really look closely at your edges,
you'll probably see a problem. In my example, there's some gray left over from Jessica's original
background image (see Figure 10). It's visible in this example because I placed the selection on a bright
background.
 2. Depending on how far the background encroaches on the hair, adjust the Size setting to make
sure that you'll be taking all of it away. Then adjust the Opacity setting at the top of the dialog to
make the fix brighter or darker, depending on how bright the new background is (see Figure 12).
When you're done, click OK to close the dialog.

Figure 11a

Figure 12

3. This trick works great, but it leaves us with one tiny problem. The Inner Glow effect is applied to
the entire photo. In my example, even the edges of Jessica's jacket get that glow. Now, in this
photo I actually like all that radiance. I think it works, since Jessica has so much natural light
coming from behind her from the background. If that look doesn't work for your particular photo,
you can remove the effect from areas where you don't want it. Choose Layer > Layer Style >
Create Layer. This command puts the effect on its own layer, so it's no longer a layer style (see
Figure 13).

Figure 11b
 Figure 14a

Figure 13

4. Click the Add Layer Mask icon at the bottom of the Layers panel. Select the Brush tool and set Figure 14b
your foreground color to black. Then just paint away the inner glow from any areas where you
don't want it (see Figure 14a and Figure 14b). As I mentioned before, this trick is one of my favorites for refining wispy hair edges. It's the one I turn to
most often when selecting hair. As you can see in Figure 15a and Figure 15b, regardless of whether I
zoom in or zoom out, Jessica's hair looks pretty great against the background where I've placed her.
Pretty cool, huh?
 Summary
Well, that wraps up this example. It's impossible to give you the perfect formula to extract hair for every
photo, but Photoshop's Refine Edge dialog, along with the tips we've covered here, should give you the
tools you need to tackle just about any image. Have fun!

By: Matt Kloskowski

Collected by Agus supriyanto

Figure 15a

Figure 15b