Selection and Cropping

Before

After

Hair Picture 1

On hair picture 1, my objective was to cut out the woman and as much of her hair as possible. My main target was to cut out as many intricate strands as possible without showing much of the white background. First, I used the Magic Wand to select big sections of the picture such as the woman’s face, shoulders, eyes, and the hair nearest her scalp. After selecting as much as I could without selecting the background, I activated the Quick Masking tool, which shaded in the areas I had not selected. Making it easier for me to spot areas that I could still outline more hair or areas that needed to still be cut out. Then I began using my smudge tool, by making it very small and using it to smudge my masking color off and away from thin strands that had be shaded in. Once I had enough hair un-shaded and was satisfied with the amount of feather I had done on the hair with the smudge tool. I began to use the eraser tool, again making it very fine, and then using it to clean up the edges of the hair. Once I was done with that, I went back and touched up some of the areas of hair I had previously smudged up, to make the strands more visible. I also worked by turning off my colored channels and just used my black and white channel to spot areas that still appeared rough or jagged edged. Once I was finished touching it up. I inverted my selection and cropped it out. Without the white background, I could see that some strands of hair had been cut out as well. So I grabbed my smudge tool again, and smudged the broken strands together mimicking how they flowed in order to make believable but false strands of hair. Finally, I went back and touched up around the edges where white background could still be noticed. 

Hair Picture 2

On hair picture 2, my objective was to cut out the child and as much of her hair as possible. First, I used the Magic Wand to select big sections of the picture such as the girl’s face, shoulders, eyes, and the hair nearest her scalp ( Like, I had previously done with the first picture.). This time it was more difficult to select with the magic wand, because there were many color tones in this picture, and the wand would make selections outside of the person or parts I was aiming for. So I selected as much of the person as I could. Some of the background was selected as well, but I fixed this when I activated the quick masking mode, by filling in the portion that was left un-shaded. I used a similar technique as I did in the first picture, by alternating between smudge and eraser to uncover parts of the pictures that had been left unselected. This time it was more difficult because the girl’s blonde hair had green sheen to it and it made it very confusing to make selections. Therefore, I feel as though I left a lot of green halo on her outline. I think I could have done better on this picture, if I was allowed the use of the color range selector. But I did get a lot of practice with the quick-masking, Eraser and smudge tool.