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I need your help with a problem that has been driving me up the wall. I've created a web site (my first) for my sister and it's all ready to be uploaded. But I've been held up for a while by a Photoshop problem. I've been trying to extract a couple of hair models in order to put them on a transparent background and display them on her homepage using a JavaScript rotator.

I use the Lasso tool to select the main parts and then extract the hair using the Refine Edges tool in CS6. It all looks good as long as I'm working with it in PS. I see no signs of white scratch marks in either a dark or transparent background. But as soon as I save the image in either gif or PNG with transparency, the scratch marks appear.

Here's what I'm talking about: enter image description here

Can somebody please extract these two images for me on a transparent background and then tell what they did so that I can do the rest of them myself? These are the ones I have real difficulty with.

The files are in Tiff format and I could use either gif or PNG.

Hair Model 2

Hair Model 3

Whomever helps me out of this jam will have my most heartfelt appreciation and all the good karma I can send your way.

user1910723
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  • When you're working in PS, why don't you create a new layer beneath the one you're working with, and fill that with something dark so that you can see all of the pieces you're missing. Also, try the SELECT>Color Range tool, it might speed things up – Robot Woods Feb 27 '13 at 19:58
  • Hi RW, I've indeed done that and as long as I'm working on the image in PS there are no signs of any scratch marks. It's only when I save the file that they instantly appear and can be seen in the Image preview page right away. That's what makes it a mystery to me and that's why I'm asking somebody to do it so I know there's a definitive way to solve this problem. Here's a shot of the image with a dark background while still in PS:http://i46.tinypic.com/dxkcue.gif – user1910723 Feb 27 '13 at 20:12
  • Guys, anybody willing to take a stab at this? I could really use your help here. Thanks in advance – user1910723 Feb 28 '13 at 19:38

2 Answers2

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You're just not cutting out the background properly in PS. The white "scratch marks" are appearing because you've not completely erased the background properly in PS. Remember: GIFs and PNG-8s (in PS anyway) don't support alpha transparency.

Here's one of your files very quickly chopped out with a transparent background in GIF format:

enter image description here

No "scratch marks", see? You just need to get better are chopping this out in Photoshop, I'm afraid.

Either that, or, save the image in PNG-24 format with transparency. Then convert that PNG-24 file to PNG-8 using PNGQuant. (This is probably the quickest and easiest solution, now that I think about it.)

Community
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Chuck Le Butt
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Use the Pen tool to get the most precise selection. Go to Window --> Paths to load the paths palette. Click the white rectangle icon at the bottom of the palette to make a new path. Click the pen tool from the toolbar. Use the pen tool to place little dots (selection points) around the hair you want to select. If you make a mistake, you can go back and move each individual point later using the direct selection tool (white arrow). When you've selected everything, click the path selection tool (the black arrow below the Text tool on the toolbar) and click on your path in the image. Now right-click on the image and select "make selection" from the pop up menu that appears. Set feathering to 0. Now copy that selection to a new layer.

Then take Robert Woods' advice above and create a new layer underneath and fill it with a color so you can see your full selection. If you see parts that want to hide, create a layer mask by clicking on the third icon from the left at the bottom of the layers palette (it looks like a grey rectangle with a white circle inside it) while the hair layer is selected. A mask lets you hide parts of later. A white box will have appeared in the layer palette on the layer with the mask. Make sure that white box is selected (has a border on it) when working with your mask. You can click on the little photo of the image to edit the image or click on the white box to edit the mask. When your mask is selected, the two colors at the bottom of the toolbar should be black and white. Black hides the parts of the image and white reveals them. So if you click on your pencil tool and draw on your mask in black, you will hide the parts of the layer you drew on. If you then go back over them in pencil and color them white, you will reveal those parts. So you can use your pencil or your brush tool to draw black marks over the spaces between the hair that you want to hide. If you mess up, just go back over them in white. You can also set the transparency to less than 100%, but I'm guessing you want to work with 100% in this case.

When you're done with this, create a new path in the path window. When you need to go back to the hair path, just click on that path in the path window and select it again with the arrow.

PixelGraph
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