Preserved Topic: Curved Extraction + Halo Cleaning

I did this today inbetween chasing the monster, laundry, dishes, and other various house work.

First draft, so still a bit "sloppy" (hehe).

Whispies





::edit:: fixed url ::


[This message has been edited by vogonpoet (edited 12-01-2001).]

Cool, WJ...Looks just like a real *page cannot be displayed * error message.

Awwright .

~slaps DB~ hehe try now DB.. well worth the clickage

Finally got it to load WJ. More sweet Slop. Good stuff, man.



I thought I was wrong once, but I was mistaken.

Yeah, call me stupid (No VP, you better don't do it)
but i get stock here:

Here we have it applied as a Layer Mask. I copied the original picture and tossed a layer filled with blue between them.

I left my translator on Miami, and is a little bit messy for me....

And the select inverse part after exit the quick mask mode, well, I change my Quick mask set up always and never remember, what do you want to select?

Just if you have the time to answer WJ!!


But anyway, thanks for this!

Hey man - that's looking good. I have to say that, as a technique it looks excellent. As a tutorial - I was with you right up to the last curves part - and then it's like a magician who says "now watch this closely" and then turns his back on the audience!

I'm guessing that if I downloaded the curve and examined it, I would see that you have knocked down the whites (representing the halo) to a medium brown tone only in the selected area. I didn't download the curve and my guess might be way off, but maybe you might consider disclosing just a teensy bit more in the text of the explaination, since after all that *is* the crucial nugget you are offering. Duplicating the channel with the mot contrast, tweaking and creating a layer mask is not groundbreaking - your last bit is what distinguishes your technique, and it's muddy.

Really - thanks for this! This is nuts and bolts, real life for a lot of us. I recently had to put a woman with grayish brown hair, photographed on a gray background (with a background light causing a gradient on the background) against a new blue background. That was tough! Not enough separation in any of the channels. But still - if you had written this a month earlier it might have saved me some cursing.


Thanks WJ

Wakkos -
top layer: picture with layer mask
middle layer: blue
bottom layer: original picture

Now that it's cooled off, I see a few things that aren't quite right. Expounding on the Curves, something I thought about but am trying to avoid. Yeah, I brought right sides down to about 150/138/128 or so. I'll cap 'em and get them up one of these days.

I did some other experimenting with halo cleaning. Let's say you have picture of some guy with a mohawk that's been dyed purple and pink. Rather than go through quick mask and curves and all that try this:
1) Copy the picture with base layer mask or make sure you have copy of mask in alpha channel
2) Apply the layer mask *gasp*
3) Grab the paint brush and set to Behind mode
4) Grab values just inside the halo and paint
5) Repeat #4 as necessary
6) Grab copy of layer mask and add it back in

Eeeeexcellent!

I'll be sure to keep that in mind the next time I have a "picture of some guy with a mohawk".

The day is getting the better of me. It hurts to look at monitor for more than 2 minutes at a time. Even though I haven't done the update yet, it's all planned out in my head.

Steve, it seems to me that painting or altertering the picture is taboo. Or maybe people just haven't thought of it. If you do it with someone watching, or even suggest it, take a picture as I'm sure you'll get some interesting looks.

Outtie.

Dizziness has prevented me from playing with this to an extent. I'm also typing half blind. Howver, my mind's eye has been working triple time on this.

A little bit of halo is good.

In one of Doc't tuts, copy a layer, fill shape with black, order behind. I hope you know what I'm talking about. I remember trying it for myself and being surprised that the extra layer filled with black does make a subtle difference. I also remember filling the layer with white and being equally amazed. Then with black again, then with white. It was pretty neat seeing a layer that is completely covered having such an affect on the surrounding canvas.

I've also noticed this in a few other places. I have no idea what to call this. Apparent Nearest-Neightbor Brightness Subsidization? No clue.

Well, what ever it's called, I think this is why a ittle bit of halo is good.

First thing is background. Either toss in a mock background similiar to final target, or toss it right in (duh). Chances are very good that you will be using an RGB (or CMYK) channel to tweak the mask (etiher in full or part), so why not do it right in the Mask? That is, instead of copying the channel to an Alpha for Curves, just copy is straight to the layer mask and curve it right there. You can get that little bit of halo right off the bat instead of hit-or-miss with that extra alpha channel.

I gotta stop. I'm taxed out. I'll continue when I can.

edit 11 hours later: Forgot what I was going to say.



[This message has been edited by warjournal (edited 12-02-2001).]