mikedimples wrote:
It's primarily copying and pasting adjacent areas, carefully masking them in to cover up the stray piece. It can take many copied sections to cover one strand. Often, other selections of hair are pulled in from one of the other shots, and specific hair reference photos are taken for the super-elaborate pieces.

Don't look at my avatar for good hair work. It was originally just a post in a "how to do a doll retouch" thread - I wasn't expecting it to be so popular. Now even though I cringe when I see that horrible blurry curl, I don't want to delete it...

Thanks! you really did get good smooth results with that and I will use it for my images since most don't require that obviously retouched but oh so smooth hair lol  Your way is a good way to achieve natural....  BUT I still don't think its how they achieve that hyper-real hair.  I've included a few pictures:

mikedimples wrote:
I think you misunderstood me - I'm not proud of my crappy job.

Believe it or not, I do think that those hyper-realistic hair ads come from basic cloning to remove the strays outside the model's silhouette, then going through painstakingly copying nice, perfectly combed areas and pasting the straight strands over the strands that go in another direction.

I'd wager that the shots you posted have had many perfect sections from other shots from that shoot composited in. It's slow work, but I don't think there's some secret technique involved.

That's exactly how it is done. There's no other way around it, except for burning in hair where you need it and taking it out where you don't.

mikedimples wrote:
I think you misunderstood me - I'm not proud of my crappy job.

Believe it or not, I do think that those hyper-realistic hair ads come from basic cloning to remove the strays outside the model's silhouette, then going through painstakingly copying nice, perfectly combed areas and pasting the straight strands over the strands that go in another direction.

I'd wager that the shots you posted have had many perfect sections from other shots from that shoot composited in. It's slow work, but I don't think there's some secret technique involved.

Lol its not a crappy job! Although I hope you're not right...its very plausible though.  I've experimented with flattening the hair and adding a texture layer and it hasn't looked right, so maybe you are correct about it being composites from other shots.

Thanks for the input:)

mikedimples wrote:
It's primarily copying and pasting adjacent areas, carefully masking them in to cover up the stray piece. It can take many copied sections to cover one strand. Often, other selections of hair are pulled in from one of the other shots, and specific hair reference photos are taken for the super-elaborate pieces.

Don't look at my avatar for good hair work. It was originally just a post in a "how to do a doll retouch" thread - I wasn't expecting it to be so popular. Now even though I cringe when I see that horrible blurry curl, I don't want to delete it...

Could you post a link to that thread, please?  I can't find it. 

Aphoristic Precise wrote:

That's exactly how it is done. There's no other way around it, except for burning in hair where you need it and taking it out where you don't.

+1

Lea Halliwell wrote:
Could you post a link to that thread, please?  I can't find it. 

I probably should have mentioned the threads from RetouchPRO.com. Here's the link, but you have to register to see the images. You'll also get to see the very early version of the doll retouch, back when she had teeth!

http://www.retouchpro.com/forums/critiq … ments.html

Michael Donovan Rulezz wrote:
x

Rofl about to pull another fast one on retouching?

Solstice Retouch wrote:
It takes forever - as Mike said there's no shortcut to it - it's a very long process, often strand by strand and composites of colmbed hair.

In one of my recent shoots we did the same thing - we took shots of perfectly combed hair - and then began shooting after that. We were able to combine the perfect hair pieces with the perfect pose to create the perfect composite.

+1

I ask my clients a lot of hair sources when doing hair. It really helps when the client is retouch oriented so they usually ask me prior to the shoot what I need.