Hair masking is a great tool that allows you to cut out anything really fine. Wires, trees, hair. It helps greatly when you need to cut something out, add a new background or to cut them out to create sprites and new layers.

This button clips adjustment layers to the one directly below. Something that i will be using during hair masking.

Using the quick select tool, to outline the subject, then create a layer mask. double click the layer mask to open the mask properties. click the 2nd brush down, this is the refine brush. paint around the edges of the hair, and avoid going too far into the hair and and sharp edges. this will cur away the fine white that is too difficult to do by hand.

Click the 2nd brush down, this is the refine brush. paint around the edges of the hair, and avoid going too far into the hair and and sharp edges. this will cur away the fine white that is too difficult to do by hand. Don’t forget to decontaminate colours in the drop down on the right hand side. This will create a detailed cutout of the layer.

JAGGIES! this is the result of the quick select and can be easily fixed by using the paint brush tool and painting onto the layer in black, to smooth out the sharp edges of the subject.

 

after some colour correction our model has been cut out and placed over the top of the new background. while the lighting still doesn’t match, this was just a demonstration of what the hair masking tool does. with this in mind, practice as well as trial and error can lead to some impressive results, for instance, being able to create images instead of just merging 2 together. you can begin to add more and more to it. however this beginning to break away from the truth and can be used to forge images, misleading the viewer.

It’s a great too and really useful for changing your work up, but it has a lot of applications that are frowned upon by some photographers. This is because the image is no longer showing the truth and when used on social media, can quickly spiral out of control.