: How to decontaminate black edges on hair I have a pretty decent knowledge of Photoshop, and have used masks and levels etc to remove backgrounds a fair bit (as well as the edge refinement

@Kaufman565

I would try using the image itself as a layer mask, since the lightness of the hair against the background is roughly a mask already. e.g.:


Select all, copy
Add a layer mask to the colour layer
Alt/option-click (mac) the layer mask to edit it directly
Paste


Then, brightness/contrast this mask, and paint in the mask of the main part of the face by hand.

This, in combination with other techniques might work!

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@Pierce403

There's many, many ways to mask in Photoshop. All vary in quality and time required. For creating a mask for hair, I highly recommend spending some time with the Masks panel. There's other ways to do it, but the Masks panel is probably the quickest and often yields great results (and more specifically, Refine Mask).

The best explanation I've seen for it is Russell Brown's Adobe TV video:

In this episode, Russell Brown demonstrates how beginning and advanced users can quickly and easily create professional quality masks using Photoshop CS5's Refine Mask panel.


Masking Basics in Photoshop CS5, with Russell Brown at Adobe TV


There's other tutorials on hair masking with the Masks panel. Tip Squirrel's Michael Hoffman goes into more detail here:


Capturing Details with Refine Mask


If nothing else, that should give you a great start. From there you can edit by hand with the brush tools, or use other methods to get the mask into the exact form you need.

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@Caterina889

Things like this actually require the user to the use a brush on the mask and paint in the hair.

You won't get decent results with black edges against a black background using any automated method.

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