Background edits advice

[new girl on the bloc]

One cannot always have an ideal background when taking photos. I recently took a bunch impromptou people photos and want to edit out backgrounds. What is the best method in photoshop to do this? the methods that i have been doing are tedius and surely must be the long way around. Any advice appreciated.

here's an example:

http://images.fotopic.net/?id=857728&outx=600&noresize=1&nostamp=1

[Leighow]

Beautiful child ! Beautiful pose -- even with the background that is not too much of a distraction.

Actually I have no clue as to how to remove this background. There is so much fine hair everywhere, that I wonder how that might be done.

The only peripheral play that I tried once, was to set a background color that I wanted, and then I cut out the major pieces that I wanted to eliminate. Remining bits were altered by changing their hue.

I tried this a bit with this young lady, but there is so much fine hair that this crude method was close to useless.

HOWIE

[new girl on the bloc]

Thanks Howie! I appreciate your comments and efforts. Perhaps it is just alright the way it is, especially since the background is blurred.

[Conk]

Procreate knockout is one program that is absolutely amazing at removing backgrounds but it does take some getting to know. If you do try it I suggest doing the tutorial a couple times. Hair is not a problem.

[mpaul73]

Yes this one would be a bit problematic because of the fine hair. If it was my photo I would retouch the hair coming from out of her cheek and crop to just above the ear (from the top down), and then crop from the right to inside the ear (i.e. no ear in shot). I think this cropping would put the focus on the eyes which are beautiful. Then if you liked you could fairly easily add a new background to the area to the left of the child. Anyway that is my pennies worth!

Regards
Martin.

[new girl on the bloc]

Colin and Martin - thank you for your comments and advice. I'll work on it and see what I can come up with.

[Sheri]

If you are using Photoshop, you might get some ideas from this tutorial. It deals with hair and background removal. Hope you're not on dialup.

http://movielibrary.lynda.com/html/modDemoPlayer.asp?mod_id=4&mov_id=645&chap_num=7

Regards,
Sheri

[new girl on the bloc]

Sheri wrote:
If you are using Photoshop, you might get some ideas from this tutorial. It deals with hair and background removal. Hope you're not on dialup.

http://movielibrary.lynda.com/html/modDemoPlayer.asp?mod_id=4&mov_id=645&chap_num=7

Regards,
Sheri


Yes, i do have the s-l-o-w dialup but i'll carve out a space where i can view this at some point. thanks for your help sheri!