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Quick tip – Isolating fine lines or hair |
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Written by Robert Mizerek
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Tuesday, 05 September 2006 |
 Recently while reading through one of the forums on a popular Microstock site, I came across a cry for help in isolating an image. Another helpful member of the forum replied with his suggestion, and then commented: “…but I wouldn’t try to isolate something like the hair on a dog”. I thought to myself “why”?
Isolating an image can be accomplished in a dozen different ways. The method you choose depends on the image to be isolated.
Let’s isolate the fine hairs at the bottom of this dandelion
For this method of isolation I’m going to choose the “Extract” tool under the “Filters” menu.
As you can see, I have chosen a fairly large brush, and covered both the hairs I wish to isolate, AND a part of the background at the same time
This is my initial and immediate result.
Not too bad, but wait….
And now I’m going to take it a step further and really define the hairs on the dandelion.
Go to
Image>Adjustments>Replace color.
What we want is to lighten up some of the darker hairs so as to make them appear finer than they really are.
Using the eyedropper to select a dark area, now adjust the fuzziness to fine tune my selection.
You can see some of the dark areas INSIDE the dandelion have been washed out in the process by moving the lightness slider all the way to the right. In the next step we’ll perform “Photoshop Magic” to get them back.
Simply choose the “History brush” to fill back in the areas of the dandelion that were washed out during “replace color” process. The image has been isolated!
Now bring on that dog you were afraid to isolate!
The MIZ
(c) 2006 Robert Mizerek [contact] [bio ]
See other tips from The MIZ – Photoshop WIZ
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Last Updated ( Tuesday, 05 September 2006 )
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The MIZ – Photoshop WIZ