For a long time I've held firm to the belief that in my compositing work, the "refine edge" is worthless. Why? Maybe I'm just stuck in my ways but it just never seemed to work as well as I thought it should. However, Glyn Dewis may have convinced me to give it another shot. In this very straightforward tutorial he shows a fairly simple series of techniques to create a precise mask using this tool.
While I do find this method interesting, the most useful bit of the whole video (in my opinion) is at roughly 08:20 when he starts talking about working with fine hairs. It's definitely clever and whether you use overlay masking, refine edge or some sort of over-priced plugin...that one is something you should pay attention to.
Via ISO1200
well... did you notice that all these tutorials use images who have high contrast edges?
his hair in front of the sky is no real problem either.
i mean this example is tailor made for refine edge.
unfortunately that´s not what i have to face every day.....
why don´t they use an image of a green huntsman in front of a not totaly out of focus forrest? :)
Hence the importance of getting it right in camera. Piss poor planning an all that ;)
Thanks for posting this Mr. Bickley. Good info here.
I agree with e3242-most tutorials have real good examples of whatever process you're trying to learn.
Mr. Bell-do you know e3242? Was that slap really necessary? Nudge, nudge, wink, wink and all that...aside.
I agree with you-getting it right in the field does save time and effort.
Apologies if it came across that way but I'm saying while Photoshop's good, nay great, it still hasn't got eyes of its own so the more prepared you are beforehand, the easier your time's going to be in Photoshop with stuff like this.
We know that because we've been around a bit. Live and learn, eh?
Less PS I have to do means more time outside.
I do agree. I've seen a lot of tutorials and only very few have the very difficult extractions that some of us deal with. And even on some of those custom brushes may sometimes be used to complete the effect.
Not a bad tutorial. I think that could help a lot of people in their everyday selecting. I don't know that i would do the levels correction to the Gaussian blur move though. That really killed the crisp edge that he had. As a quick fix it's very nice though.
Saving masks as selections and using refine edge is definitely a time saver. I tend to save both masks and then save out the effect of the masks on the subject as separate layers so I can paint on them directly. This helps In cases where a client provided image does not afford a clean or easy mask (and therefore no amount of painting in or out a mask will do). In which case I will paint in the fine hairs myself, cloning them from the model.
In some cases, having a bright edge is beneficial with regards to the lighting, especially when considering back lit shots as your final scene.
Other than ensuring the lighting in both the masked and background image looks correct, one nit pic I have is with noise or grain mismatch in shots. Not all, but there are times when the model is cleaner than the background or the reverse. As clean as your cut is, such issues create a feeling that something is not right, or that it still looks a little fake. Therefore, a final finish of adding some subtle noise globally, however slight, helps to make the image blend and that it was shot from the same rig in matching conditions.