horse smooth cutout:

[MJ50]

hi folks,

i have hi-res images of horses and i have to cutout from background one of pic i attached so please guyz let me guide how to make smooth cutout of horse hair already pointed out with selected red circle, i ll be very happy with your guide, thanks

[James Allen]

Hi MJ,

Someone here will probably have some good advice. In the meantime, there are a few Photoshop plugins for masking things like hair, and a number of masking programs.

Mask Pro 4 was being discussed here not long ago.

http://www.ononesoftware.com/products/mask-pro/

There are tutorials on YouTube about masking in Photoshop too. You might look up 'masking hair in photoshop'.

Sten mentioned a good masking service overseas that you can use cheaply online. That post is here:

http://www.talkgraphics.com/showthre...king-of-images

[MJ50]

Thank you very much for your response, one more thing in Photoshop CS3 we have extract filter so can we use it for removing hair?

[Big Frank]

I have used Corel Knockout 2 in Photoshop but I can't say I'm a satisfied owner. Maybe I wasn't using it right, that's usually the case! But on top of that it was a plugin filter I never got to work in Xara. I therefore still do all my masks by hand. Yeah, it's laborious, but the results are pretty much better than any filter I've used (depending upon the hour, of course!).

[Albacore]

Yes use the Extract Filter if you want but do a search on the subject as there are loads of stuff on this tool. Also have a look at this resource and see what you think as there are many ways to do this: http://www.photoshoproadmap.com/Phot...-in-photoshop/

[molucca]

An approach in Xara. I sliced away the more easy areas. When the colors are close, it is more difficult to use a masking application. Then I used a plugin running from Xara. I used a mode that can select keep and drop colors. Thin areas like hair get mixed with the background and are not eaisly separated.

Rich