Whiskers in Photoshop >^..^<

[morea]

When removing the background from a picture of a cat or dog in Photoshop, is there a convenient way to do it without mutilating the whiskers?

I suppose I could try to go around them, or even redraw them after I remove the background, but I figure there must be a better way.

Anybody?

<- incidentally, this is my 8000th post! Where's the keg?!? :D

[Ghastly]

It all depends on how much said whiskers contrast against the background, I had a job a few years back..it involved extracting someone wearing a green flowery wedding dress from foliage in the background...not a pretty job :D (the difference in colour value between certain pixels was horrifically small)...It would help me to see the image in order to give better advice..I suppose the best hope would be for them whiskers to have a very dominant presence in one colour channel...from this you could perhaps manipulate that channel just to make a selection, and then step back in your history with the selection saved.


keg?...i never sheen no kegshh...*hic*

[Vikia]

When removing the background from a picture of a cat or dog in Photoshop, is there a convenient way to do it without mutilating the whiskers?
I like to use a layer mask and a soft paint brush to detail around these kinds of problems. The cleanup doesn't leave hard edged pixels and makes it easier to blend into whatever background you do end up placing behind it. And the best part is if you screw up a bit, you can paint the mask in or out as many times as you want.

[MD]

incidentally, this is my 8000th post! Where's the keg?!? :D

What's more impressive is your 23.38 posts per day average. I noticed this handy feature when messing around with my profile a while ago.

[Kool]

You may borrow the whiskers from my avatar. :D

[morea]

You may borrow the whiskers from my avatar. :D

why thank you, Kool! :p

[D-Zine]

LOL@ Kool!

I do it the same way as Vikia. I feel like I have more control that way.

[cbscreative]

If you need a little extra tweaking and use the eyedropper for color, the opacity settings on the brushes help help a lot to blend out the areas that are fixed. This can be very helpful if any defringing is involved. Otherwise, just take Kool's offer.

Steve
www.cbscreative.com (http://www.cbscreative.com)

[Image]

The more contrast you have between the wiskers and the background, the easier it will be to select the wiskers for extracting.

The best way to create high contrast is to explore your channels. Use the channels palette and find the channel where the wiskers have the highest anmount of contrast against the background. When you have found it, duplicate the channel and select it, and then use either curves (cmd+m) or levels (cmd+L) to exaggerate the contrast.

Now you want tooo fill the cat (or whatever) and her hair and wiskers. From here it is extremely easy to use the wand tool to select the greater part of the wiskers and animal, the magnetic lasso tool to grab the nearest outlaying parts, the regular polygonal lasso to grab the thinning areas of the wiskers, and finally the brush tool (keep the hardness at 0, spacing at a measley 25, and a varying diameter), to fill and brush the entire animal and her very minute hair in black (or whatever color).

Reselct your composite (RGB or CMYK) channel and cmd-click your COPIED channel to build it as a selection. Viola! Use that perfect selection and cut cat and wiskers out of your composite image.

Note: You can ALSO create a new layer out of that channel, which would give you the black silhouette of a cat with his wiskers and everything, then set it as a layermask over your composite image. Byt doing this, only everything that is black (ie, the cat and his perfectly selected wiskers) will show of the original image. Selection (the technique aforementioned) is a little shifty because the marquee has a 1 px width, and can compromise the 1 px tiny parts of certain wiskers.


EDIT: I actually managed to find the tutorial I learned that from. It doesnt mention masking but offers graphic representations of the tehcnique.
http://webdesign.templatemonster.com/web/photoshop/tutorials/select-hair-by-using-channels.374.html

[benjo]

I like what image said the only diffrence would be that instead of skiping to brightness and contrast I would select a brush and color to overlay. Then delete anything but the dark area you used to fill the wiskers. Make a selection of that and masked your cats.

Does this make any sense to you?

[Takayuki]

My way of doing it is:

First you make a duplicate layer of the picture. Then you mutilate around the cat on the first layer, that means the wisker's that is sticking out will be cut off, then you use your stamp tool with a soft edge brush and you select the spot of the wisker on the second layer picture, then you switch back to the first layer but turn the view off for the first layer and only have the view of the second layer on, then you just use your brush by controling your size according to the thickness of the wisker and just trace exactly on the wisker of the second layer picture and there!! theres your wisker, after your done tracing just delete the second layer. Hope I got this through, it's hard to explain things.

One thing besure to zoom in when tracing, this way youre able to get a good accurate clean line.well theres many ways to do, just sharing my way of doing stuff.

[morea]

thanks a lot for all the ideas, guys! I really appreciate the tips!