Anyone reccomend a good guide for creating a mask

Stustaff

Looking to mask off a person from a background and struggling a bit as the detail is hard around the hair and clothes.

Any suggested guides or how to's out there?

mwgrice

Stustaff wrote:

Looking to mask off a person from a background and struggling a bit as the detail is hard around the hair and clothes.

Any suggested guides or how to's out there?

Katrin Eismann's Photoshop Masking and Compositing is very highly regarded. I have a copy, and I can say that the first three chapters are very good. I just haven't gotten any further than that for reasons unrelated to the book.

You may have noticed that there's a reading group here for it. Hopefully you haven't posted to that thread.:D

Anthony

Stustaff wrote:

Looking to mask off a person from a background and struggling a bit as the detail is hard around the hair and clothes.

Any suggested guides or how to's out there?

Check this link out.

http://www.russellbrown.com/tips_tech.html

The kindly doctor has a couple of extraction video tutorials plus a ton of other good stuff here... (my favourite place for tutorials along with Radiant Vista)

Anthony

Stustaff

WoW thankyou! the RB extraction here is superb http://av.adobe.com/russellbrown/ExtractSM.mov

I have to go play now.! Cheers

dogwood

Stustaff wrote:

Looking to mask off a person from a background and struggling a bit as the detail is hard around the hair and clothes.

Any suggested guides or how to's out there?

One more: "Adobe Photoshop CS2 for Photographers" by Martin Evening

digismile

The Russell Brown video is really much the same technique as in Katrin Eismann's book. What he doesn't say in so many words in the video is that you need a variety of hard/soft edges depending on what is being extracted. She uses dodging and burning to provide a bit more control over what RB does with levels on the mask. Levels is probably an easier method to use at first.

What you don't really have a sense for in the video is how long it takes to create the path. The more detailed the edge, the longer it will take to create the path. This is the way I most often create my extraction masks. The pen tool is one of the best but most excrutiatingly difficult tools to fully master. All I can recommend is to keep practicing! (I seem to recall a good pen tutorial in Adobe's Classroom in a Book, where it has you trace a number of objects with curves and straight lines. Get's you used to the different type of nodal points).

He also doesn't mention much about fringing. A telltale color halo from the original background is often a giveaway that your photo has been extracted.

But all in all, an excellent tutorial for extracting!

clove

This is the method I use frequently:
http://www.photoshopcafe.com/tutorials/masking/masking.htm