Hair Masking

Hair Masking was the coolest of the lessons learnt at Art School ( Not that all your lessons weren't cool  James)

being able to accurately select an object  by separating it from contrast using channels, is quiker and way more accurate than the Pen Tool could hope to achieve

Hair masking a model and placing him/her in a different background can be quite daunting at first but once mastered I never use anything else

First opened up image of model in photo shop

then selected channel with best contrast

On  skin Tones this is usually blue

Duplicate Channel

it is best if can be made a pure white background if possible 

In The Duplicate Channel, open up Levels and  make model  as black as possible without losing hair detail,

then paint the model black

now we have black silhouette  on a white back ground

select the channel to make selection

go to layers

add layer mask and now we have a selected layer, now we can open up back ground from second image

select and copy and paste background to model

now model appears on new background

select layer mask by clicking

choose refine edges, feathering to tidy up edges

a good tip to tidy the white edges of the end of hair is to create clipping mak the clone tool to run

over hair, this way the white edges are replace with real hair color