Erase around thin wispy hair?

Chat about the original Pixelmator.
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2021-04-20 06:36:36

I am currently working on a project that requires removing or changing the color of the background around very fine and wispy hair. See the attached example. What is the best way to do this? I am okay with losing some hairs from the image in the process but I am trying to maintain as many as possible.
I have tried "color adjustment" and it did not work because it did not get around enough of the hairs. I tried the "color selection tool" but it is not very efficient and it is not letting me get into all the small spaces. I tried the "quick selection tool" but it removes too much of the hair.
Hopefully you can direct me or guide me to a tool that will work. I really want to save as much of the hair as possible in the image but I need to get rid of the background or just change the background's color.
Thanks and have a great day.
Image
User avatar

2021-05-05 12:55:13

I believe we've communicated with Starr about this by email, but in case anyone else comes across this post with a similar question, here's one workflow you can try:

1. Choose Edit > Select Color. Using the Select Color eyedropper, select the darkest area of the hair and adjust the Radius slider until the flyaway hair turn white in the selection preview. Click OK to confirm.
2. Click Q on your keyboard to activate the Quick Mask mode to touch up the mask, if needed. Using a white brush, paint over the areas you want to keep or with a black brush over the areas you want to delete.
3. Press Q again to exit the Quick Mask mode.
4. Press Shift-Command-I to invert the selection.
5. Press Backspace to delete the background.