Cleaning up red hair on a white BG?

[psycorpse]

I have a shot that I think is half way decent. My wife really loves it however I can't say that I am totally happy with this. Since my wife likes it I was going to print it to an 8x10. I think that the hair is the last thing that I can fix. I am a newbe in PP. I will post a mostly edited pic as well as a link to the original. If there is information about this already posted please send me that way.

http://www.stlwd.com/IMG_6573.jpg

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,
Mike

[Damo77]

Hi Mike, what kind of cleaning up are you thinking of? Trimming off stray hairs?

[psycorpse]

I suppose that is one way of doing it. I thought I saw a video on youtube where the person doing the PP removed the background and I want to say burned the hair because it kinda looked like this however I am not to sure this is what I would want to do or not. I am game either way. I just think that around some of the curls I see this so I don't know what it would take.

Sorry if this didn't answer your question.

Mike

[Peano]

This is a great shot. I love it. Here's how I would fix the hair:

1. Open a blank layer and paint with white to remove all the ragged hair with traces of the old background.

2. Open another blank layer above that and use the smudge tool at very small size, high strength, and paint in new curls where the old ones were painted over. The smudge tool will drag the existing hair color out as you draw in new hairs, so it'll look perfectly natural if you do it right. (I would use a Sarsa's hair brush; you can find free downloads through Google.)

Also, I think it would help this image a lot to brighten the face a little and decrease the reds in the skin tones but not that nice red hair. (No work on the hair here. Just the skin tones.)

http://img211.imageshack.us/img211/3738/redhairit4.jpg

[Bobster]

looking a little too pale there Peano..

[Peano]

looking a little too pale there Peano..

Looks fine on my monitor.

[manutd101]

Looks fine on my monitor.
Me too. Big improvement.

[PhotosGuy]

http://av.adobe.com/russellbrown/ExtractSM.mov

[Bill Boehme]

looking a little too pale there Peano..

I don't agree.

Looks fine on my monitor.

Me too. Big improvement.

The edit looks outstanding on my monitor also. The original is far too saturated and the color balance is off.

[Bill Boehme]

http://av.adobe.com/russellbrown/ExtractSM.mov

Old dog learns new trick. While my head did not explode, my socks did get knocked off. I knew there were ways to do this and this video was very helpful because it was clear and well illustrated. I watched a video on Lynda.com describing a method to achieve comparable results, but it was too disorganized to be very useful in my opinion.

[psycorpse]

The photo edit is outstanding. I thought it looked perfect. Also if you saw my daughter you would think it was right on as she has very far skin. Always have to worry about sunburns. I am about to watch the video.

Thanks,
Mike