Headshot, Black-BG, Jet Black hair

vdotmatrix

The head shots were great. The CEO of the company had to have black hair, on the Blk-BG so now All I can see is the face....The hair light just missed.

Anyone have any adjustment LR brush combos they like or PS techniques for bringing outa little definition in the hair?

BinaryFx

Can you link to a decent quality JPEG version of the image (just a crop would be fine of the hair and background)?


Stephen Marsh

vdotmatrix

BinaryFx wrote: »

Can you link to a decent quality JPEG version of the image (just a crop would be fine of the hair and background)?

Stephen Marsh

Man....I wish I could. I forgot that to get any help someone needds to be able to see the patient...I can't risk someone seeing this before the job is fullfilled.... craptacular...thanks for responding anyway...

vdotmatrix

I tried an adjustment brush ( NOT IN THIS IMAGE) with 100% highlights, a lot of +shadow and a little clarity....

I tried a few thing in PS with layes and blending modes and masks...

Dunno if even Scott Kelby can do much..

The hair light just missed and this wa at the end of a 4 hour shoot

rwells

You might want to go the other direction...

Try to lighten the background, not her hair.


It will be a major pain, even down to pixel level, but you can do it that way.

If you have a good program that "auto mask" well, that would be fairly painless.


Just a thought. What do you have to loose...

vdotmatrix

rwells wrote: »

You might want to go the other direction...

Try to lighten the background, not her hair.


It will be a major pain, even down to pixel level, but you can do it that way.

If you have a good program that "auto mask" well, that would be fairly painless.


Just a thought. What do you have to loose...

That's why I come here.. Automasking.....not much differnce between the 2 and something like topaz remask need a contrast differential to work...but I will research..big thank you

BinaryFx

Thanks for posting an image, as I originally said, it only needed to be a tight crop of the hair to the background.

It is possible to pull out some very usable detail in this image.

If using ACR/ALR, then try using the "Fill Light" setting. One could also try the adjustment brush with a high exposure value, although fill light may provide a better result (you will need to experiment).

If using Photoshop, then there is of course the "Shadow/Highlight" command.

Additionally, one could always copy the blue channel and paste it as a layer. Then invert the layer and set the blend mode to overlay or soft light - then give the image a bit of a blur (which in some ways is similar to manually creating a fill light or shadow highlight effect).

Sometimes Lab colour mode will show a colour difference in the "a" or "b" channels as the hair may be a subtly different colour to the background, independent of the lightness of the two areas (not so in this case).

Sometimes converting to CMYK can help. The K channel of CMYK might end up being a good channel to copy and blend or mask into the original RGB image (the black channel can be created many different ways using different profiles or settings).

You should be able to get to a very reasonable result in the hair without overly affecting the background or the rest of the image.

Attached are some quick samples. These are not final examples, just showing the raw edits and what is possible as a starting point before any finesse is applied. I would re-darken the background in the final image as the edits to reveal the hair have lightened the background up too much which may reveal noise.


Hope this helps,

Stephen Marsh

vdotmatrix

BinaryFx wrote: »

Thanks for posting an image, as I originally said, it only needed to be a tight crop of the hair to the background.

It is possible to pull out some very usable detail in this image.

If using ACR/ALR, then try using the "Fill Light" setting. One could also try the adjustment brush with a high exposure value, although fill light may provide a better result (you will need to experiment).

If using Photoshop, then there is of course the "Shadow/Highlight" command.

Additionally, one could always copy the blue channel and paste it as a layer. Then invert the layer and set the blend mode to overlay or soft light - then give the image a bit of a blur (which in some ways is similar to manually creating a fill light or shadow highlight effect).

Sometimes Lab colour mode will show a colour difference in the "a" or "b" channels as the hair may be different a subtly colour to the background, but not in this case.

Sometimes converting to CMYK can help. The K channel of CMYK might end up being a good channel to copy and blend or mask into the original RGB image (the black channel can be created many different ways using different profiles or settings).

You should be able to get to a very reasonable result in the hair without overly affecting the background or the rest of the image.


Hope this helps,

Stephen Marsh

YEASH!!!!!!!!!! I can't wait to start!!! I will post what I do . This is great ...Thanks for the steerage....

v.

vdotmatrix

BinaryFx wrote: »

Thanks for posting an image, as I originally said, it only needed to be a tight crop of the hair to the background.

It is possible to pull out some very usable detail in this image.

If using ACR/ALR, then try using the "Fill Light" setting. One could also try the adjustment brush with a high exposure value, although fill light may provide a better result (you will need to experiment).

If using Photoshop, then there is of course the "Shadow/Highlight" command.

Additionally, one could always copy the blue channel and paste it as a layer. Then invert the layer and set the blend mode to overlay or soft light - then give the image a bit of a blur (which in some ways is similar to manually creating a fill light or shadow highlight effect).

Sometimes Lab colour mode will show a colour difference in the "a" or "b" channels as the hair may be a subtly different colour to the background, independent of the lightness of the two areas (not so in this case).

Sometimes converting to CMYK can help. The K channel of CMYK might end up being a good channel to copy and blend or mask into the original RGB image (the black channel can be created many different ways using different profiles or settings).

You should be able to get to a very reasonable result in the hair without overly affecting the background or the rest of the image.

Attached are some quick samples. These are not final examples, just showing the raw edits and what is possible as a starting point before any finesse is applied. I would re-darken the background in the final image as the edits to reveal the hair have lightened the background up too much which may reveal noise.


Hope this helps,

Stephen Marsh

Howdy!

I have played around with this technique using the shadow tool stuck it on a layer, dialed back the opacity...looked good but when I went back into LR, the skin tones were alien.

I tried the K channel but still need to isolate the K channel on its own layer but this is OJT and I am reading as I go... Skin tones are the issue...

All I need to do is demonstrate she has discernable hair and I wont have to reshoot these images....but oh well...

JC

vdotmatrix wrote: »

Howdy!

I have played around with this technique using the shadow tool stuck it on a layer, dialed back the opacity...looked good but when I went back into LR, the skin tones were alien.

I tried the K channel but still need to isolate the K channel on its own layer but this is OJT and I am reading as I go... Skin tones are the issue...

All I need to do is demonstrate she has discernable hair and I wont have to reshoot these images....but oh well...

I tried Stephen Marsh's suggestion, for LAB editing, and it worked pretty well, in about 30 seconds.

duplicate original image layer,, Convert one layer to LAB. Stretch the L channel to get good difference between hair and background. Recompose to RBG, mask the skin back in from the original layer.

BinaryFx

vdotmatrix wrote: »

Howdy!

I have played around with this technique using the shadow tool stuck it on a layer, dialed back the opacity...looked good but when I went back into LR, the skin tones were alien.

I tried the K channel but still need to isolate the K channel on its own layer but this is OJT and I am reading as I go... Skin tones are the issue...

All I need to do is demonstrate she has discernable hair and I wont have to reshoot these images....but oh well...

For a ALR/ACR only workflow, the other suggestion from my OP was to use an adjustment brush with the exposure set to 3-4 and then to paint in over the hair using appropriate brush sizes and auto masking settings etc. I am not sure if this is the "best" approach, however it works and if you are careful there may be no weird transitions between the hair and background and noise may not be amplified too much.

Still in the raw converter, the Fill Light setting is probably the best option to bring out detail from the shadows without exposing too much noise. It should not affect the skintone, however it will probably mess with the blue clothing. If this is an issue, one can darken the blue elements to counter the lightening process.


Stephen Marsh

BinaryFx

kolibri wrote: »

I tried Stephen Marsh's suggestion, for LAB editing, and it worked pretty well, in about 30 seconds.

duplicate original image layer,, Convert one layer to LAB. Stretch the L channel to get good difference between hair and background. Recompose to RBG, mask the skin back in from the original layer.

Apologies, I did not flesh out the suggestion very well. What you describe above was not what I was referring to...

What I meant was sometimes the A or B channels of Lab mode can show differences in tonal values when the L channel is all one value. These channels can be copied and used as the start point for a mask that can be used for colour and or tonal adjustments on the original RGB image. The trip into Lab mode is only to find and use channel content that is then copied to original RGB image.


Stephen Marsh

JC

BinaryFx wrote: »

Apologies, I did not flesh out the suggestion very well. What you describe above was not what I was referring to...

What I meant was sometimes the A or B channels of Lab mode can show differences in tonal values when the L channel is all one value. These channels can be copied and used as the start point for a mask that can be used for colour and or tonal adjustments on the original RGB image. The trip into Lab mode is only to find and use channel content that is then copied to original RGB image.


Stephen Marsh

Hmm. i guess I took the line of least resistance. Simply stretching the L band brought out a distinction between the hair and the background, and then it was pretty easy to mask the face/person/skin back in using the original image.

BinaryFx

kolibri wrote: »

Hmm. i guess I took the line of least resistance. Simply stretching the L band brought out a distinction between the hair and the background, and then it was pretty easy to mask the face/person/skin back in using the original image.

Can you post a sample? The hair and the background are both very dark, which does not give one too much room to play. My first thought was fill light or shadow/highlight type moves...then into more esoteric channel masking and blending moves. I did not look into simpler curve type moves.


Stephen Marsh

JC

BinaryFx wrote: »

Can you post a sample? The hair and the background are both very dark, which does not give one too much room to play. My first thought was fill light or shadow/highlight type moves...then into more esoteric channel masking and blending moves. I did not look into simpler curve type moves.


Stephen Marsh

It looks pretty much like your 3rd image.

The first is the stretched LAB channel. OP could use this to select the background (I think Adobe has better intelligent selection tools than GIMP- for hair and stuff?) and change the color, and mask that back into the original image.

Or, just recomposing back to RGB with that stretch applied to the L channel, and masking back in the skin and shirt I got the image on the right.

I'll admit her hair on the right doesn't look great, but if the OP absolutely can't reshoot it, I think there is enough information there to work with.

Maybe a combination of the two, changing the background to blue, and then leaving more of the deep gloss in the OP's hair.

JC

Actually though, I opened it up in Corel aftershot pro, and maxed out the fill slider like you suggested, and that simple move looks the best. OP would just need to smooth the grain in the background now.

vdotmatrix

kolibri wrote: »

Actually though, I opened it up in Corel aftershot pro, and maxed out the fill slider like you suggested, and that simple move looks the best. OP would just need to smooth the grain in the background now.

You know that does look like a workable image but a daunting task for 3 groups of shots....You guys have been great but what I learned years ago is to get it right the first time on the negative....A little thing like a mis-aimed hairlight caused this disaster. I broke my own rule of shooting/adjusting the key, then killling the key and shooting only the hairlight , adjusting as necessary and turning everything on and fire for effect. thanks for looking at this...I am going to try everything you guys have suggested...I just need to get some separation brom the back ground and I am golden....v.