Portrait post production

[L&EPhoto]

I'm having some difficulty with this. I need a general opinion on my post production skills. I'm specifically having a problem with extracting the subject from the background in the hair area. With the before and after pictures its obvious that I had to do some major touchup on the hair where the background comes through.

Before:



After:


Thoughts? I used the extract feature in CS3.

[Katie_Belmont]

There are much better ways to do this. Unfortunately I have to leave for work right now but I'll try and post a detailed description tonight. I'm in photography class and we just talked about this last class.

[wulf]

It is much easier if the background is staying roughly the same colour and tone. Here, particularly because of the "drop shadow" effect, it is very obvious that the background has been changed. Was there a particular reason you needed to use that brown rather than just cleaning up the white?

Wulf

[Katie_Belmont]

Sorry. I set down to explain and realized that you didn't have a link to a larger version so I couldn't explain it step by step.
The extract function isn't a very good way to do it because it's so basic.

What you might try that would work better in the hair region is using select-> color range and select a white value and increase the fuzziness. Then deselect the shirt and teeth. That should give you more of the area that shows through his hair.

But as Wulf said, that is only helpful if you're switching it to a different colored background which, for this, seems unnecessary.

[L&EPhoto]

The goal is to learn how to move the subject to different backgrounds along with the fact that I had no chromakey backdrops at the time. Since posting I played with Select > Color Range and can now completely understand the reason for "Green Screen" backdrops.

Thanks for the advice. I'll post my attempt using select > Color Range and get some opinions.