This is a text tutorial on how to remove the background from hair made from Jolie's video by the same name.


We will be using Layer Mask, Clone tool and the burn tool.

Ok, we will start by opening an image. I am using the same one that is in the tutorial because it is a nice one.


Right click on your layer image and click add alpha channel
- Duplicate layer. On this layer (the top one) colors > curves. Use settings in image below.

Play around with the curves until you get the background as white as you can get it, click OK
Same Layer > colors > desaturate > Luminosity > click OK (check image below)



The layer mask will show everything that is white, the layer mask will shine through. Everything that is black in the layer mask will be masked. We want the face to shine through so we go to colors > invert > now her hair is white and her face is black.
Go to the paint brush tool, make FG color white, Paint her face and neck white. Now paint all the gray areas of the hair white.
Go to the bottom layer > right click > add layer mask > white (full capacity) click add.. (check image below)


Click on top layer > edit > cut click on the layer mask > edit > paste.
A floating selection will be created in your layer dialog. Click on the anchor floating layer item below, so now you have created a layer mask (image below)


Make a new layer, fill with black and put it at the bottom of the stack. When you turn on this layer and zoom in, you will see the gray areas still in the hair. We want to get rid of those.
To fix this, you can use the clone tool to clone the edges.
Click on the image layer, not the mask (image below)


Ctrl click on a bit of hair, paint over the gray areas. (If it is too dark or too light, ctrl-click on a different area of the hair.
Take you time cloning. Zoom in again to see if you can see anymore background (the gray areas)
You can also use your burn tool instead of, or in addition to cloning you can use this tool to fix the residual gray/blue from the background.

Nice job, Molly!

Thumbs up, Molly. Good job!

thanx "O" and Mahv.....

I would love to see some results from you talented people.

I used this tutorial before with fairly good results! I have a photo were the subject was flashed lit well but the background is darker.

What would have to change to follow the same steps in the tutorial?

This is my ugly mug from a number of years ago, although not to far in the distant past!

My Test Subject

Thanks for the help!

I need to try this again. I tried it a year or so ago and it didn't work very well for me. Mostly because I don't have pics that have a plan background which makes it hard to get the contrast needed, and also because doing the cloning looks awful when I try it. .

Go to Bing and type in hair, or beautiful hair etc and it will come up with hundreds... There are some nice ones of Carry Underwood, her hair is fantastic......
http://www.bing.com/images/search?q=car ... &form=QBIR

Uh, question wasn't answered. I'm interested on what to do if the background is dark and the subject is well lit.



I agree sir. A non-planned background is way harder. Then again maybe I'm expecting quicker results then the work needed.

Were you able to make a better contrast using the curves too?

I think my main problem is that I am trying to use lower resolution pics, a high res pic would make it a lot easier to get the fine hairs around the edges of the hair. Somewhere there is a high-pass method. I think a combo of both methods would work best.

One way I defeat dark backgrounds is to desaturate the image with lightness, do an auto levels, and then perform Colors/Curves on the image until I have maximum lightness of the subject's outline (body and hair) WITHOUT blending into the background. Once I have that, I create a thick black outline around my subject (be careful not to blacken out the hair portion). When I am happy with my black outline, I run Colors/Threshold to fine tune the outline further. Now you can select the outline with the magic wand and fill with white, invert the selection and fill the background with black. This reads like its a lot of steps, but its a basic method in creating a black and white mask.

And since its being used as a mask, you can make adjustments (only two colors to worry about) directly on the image mask, without affecting the actual image.

Looks good Mahv...

Thanks mahvin!

Although I may have made 'me' just a bit to white. Hardest part was defining the bold black background since the background was really dark to start with. But I accomplished what I set out for!

On a side question is that pencil sketch of you a filter/plugin or was it drawn? I an see a signature in the lower right corner so I'm guessing drawn. I was trying to pencil sketch myself but I just really don't like the results.

That is an awesome tutorial by Jolie
It's a great way for folks to learn about the threshold tool, curves, and levels.You can do much more with those 3 tools than people realize.

For instance smoothing sharp fonts with the levels tool.

Your entire body should be white, your background black, because a mask basically says, "show me everything white, and make everything black, transparent" this way you can change the entire background behind you, with ease.



That was drawn by Ramon, who was featuring his new contest. He's a great guy and excellent artist. Also created GIMP Paint Studio, also featured on his blog:

http://www.ramonmiranda.com/2011/05/wee ... ahvin.html

There are also several pencil sketch methods that work great, some were converted to scripts. I prefer the manual method as it gives me greater control of the output. I'm not sure if it's posted as a tutorial on Gimp Chat, but I did one for Paint Shop Pro, years ago. The same process can be converted to GIMP, easily.

Duplicate your image, on the copy, desaturate it with lightness.

Do an auto-level on the copy (Colors/Levels).

Duplicate the copied layer, and on that copy, invert it (Colors/Invert) then change the layer mode to Dodge.

On the inverted layer, run Gaussian blur of 15px. (Edit/Copy visible)

Then Edit/Paste Image as/New Layer.

You can lower the blur amount (thins the lines) or raise the blur amount (thickens lines).

Ah! Ok! Thanks for the info! I'm far from an artist. I got trouble drawing a box. =|

I'll give that method a try too! Cheers!