How to remove blue sky from behind hair?

[brekelm]

I'm editing a picture of two lions lying, with their manes in the wind. I have converted it to an .PNG file, to be able to have an alpha channel. Now I'm trying to remove the blue sky while retaining as much as possible of their manes. As you can see, I did a portion on the right side, just by using a small brush. But there is still a blue-ish glow to it. Now I was wondering if there's a better approach to this? Any help very much appreciated!

[Ego Eram Reputo]

Hey Brekelm - welcome to the forum

 

Here's a technique to try:

 

1. Choose the Magic Wand tool

2. Set the Tolerance to around 34% (I got this from trial and error).

3. Select a mid-range shade in the blue halo.

 

 

The Tolerance and click-point can be changed at this point. Choose a combination of the two which maximizes the mane while removing most of the excess.

 

4. Press Delete to remove the highlighted area (light blue in the image above).

 

[brekelm]

Hi Ego (Eram Reputo ;)) Thanks for your reply.

 

Yes, I was aware of the magic wand, it has helped me a lot with other pictures. The downside of it is, like in your instance, when you select an area it tends to make a former smooth line more rough. Here I mean the back of the left lion: I did it already with a soft brush, but the magic wand doesn't have a feather parameter, so the edge can be quite rough (at magnification though).

 

But I will give it another try, maybe with lower tolerance in more separate areas. Th hair on the right was pretty good!.

[Eli]

The background of your picture will not be easy to remove because of the cage's blurred screen/bars/grid that is infront of the lions.

[brekelm]

Yes, that was the price of not being eaten alive 

[Red ochre]

Quote

Yes, that was the price of not being eaten alive

Bah - We've got to suffer for our art!

 

You could try one of the many recolouring plugins. eg.

Recolour choice

Use the eye dropper tool to set the detection colour to the blue in the image. Run the effect.

Set the replacement colour to white and transparency to zero (opacity really) and experiment with different tolerance levels and detection methods. I would think 'Hue only' should work.

Increase 'blend edges' to get a smoother cut out.

Good luck ... don't get eaten.

[brekelm]

Thanks! I've installed your plug-ins and I'm gonna experiment with them!

[Pixey]

Hi @brekelm and welcome .

 

You may perhaps like to take a look at this Wireworm Plugin on MV's website.

 

Here is a tutorial by him, which is also on the above page.

 

And here is the PSD Plugin found on this site by @taoyue

 

Good Luck with the Simba couple .

Edited June 11, 2017 by Pixey
broken links :(

[circlularthinking]

Here is my result, and how I went about it.

 

I used the wand tool and tuned it to select the remaining blue.

I used the hue/saturation tool, and reduced it to zero saturation.

Then I used curves tool to change the cgrey to white, took a little playing around.

Then i used the pen tool on while and zero hardness, this fixed a few areas.

 

This worked well as there was not much saturation in the selected hair, so it's not really missed.  But the result was the best way of a few attempts.

Obviously it takes a bit if tuning and playing around to find the right setting for each tool.

[circlularthinking]

[Eli]

You did a good job. I changed the background and incresased contrast and saturation to make the grid less visible.

[circlularthinking]

So I thought that there MUST be a better way, and I found it...

 

<snip>

 

I will also attach it just to create another backup of the plugin, but it's brilliant.

 

So what you do is you set the primary pallet colour to what you want to become white, which in this case was the blue aura aroud the lion, you want to get a decently dark shade.

 

Then just open the plugin, for this the default setting of "absoluteblackandwhite" did best.

 

This gave a perfect and effortless result!

The next question I percieve is how to best set white as the transparent (alpha channel) colour with partial transparency...  I know there will be a plugin for that surely, but I don't know which.

 

 

[circlularthinking]

WTF???  The link, which is a normal link, when I paste it it shows up as "I have a virus on my system"??  If that a warning about that host?

Does that plugin source infect plugins with viruses and this is the messageboards way of warning?  Or a bad joke?

 

But only the text to the link is corrupted, the link still works, but should you use it?  Well I hope the plugin is safe, it works and does a good job.

Incidentally, if the source for that plugin can be found, it should not be hard to make an option to make the white or black balance to be an alpha channel transparenct ballance as an option.  This would be more useful than just white-balance.

Edited June 17, 2017 by circlularthinking

[circlularthinking]

That plugin lives here, maybe a more likely to be safe version can be found there.  But I honestly doubt I have a virus.

 

Here is a surely safe version: https://forums.getpaint.net/applications/core/interface/file/attachment.php?id=4503   <Balls!  That version does not have the "absoluteblackandwhite" option.  So ignore that one!

 

Edited June 17, 2017 by circlularthinking

[circlularthinking]

So, version 1.2.1 at the above mentioned thread has the right feature.   If you don't like the way the plugin treats the main image, then you can always put the unadjusted version in another layer and then erase the parts you don't want of whichever one is on top with the eraser set on a 9 hardness so it fades in the difference.

[circlularthinking]

IRON67 has found the right plugins to do this job the best.  Follow this link!

 

Edited June 17, 2017 by circlularthinking

[Red ochre]

circularthinking, please read this thread https://forums.getpaint.net/index.php?/topic/28270-megalo-virus/&page=1

[Ego Eram Reputo]

Red Ochre has correctly deduced the reason the link didn't show up. We have set up the forum to kill that URL whenever it is posted. Please only ever download plugins from this forum, or from links posted here by the plugin author.