Altering BG on semi-transparent layers; hair, glass, veils.

I'm working with a stock image of a girl in a dress, and I've dealt with this problem before; part of the background is visible through translucent parts of the dress, and her hair, which cannot easily be fixed with magic wands and with polygon selects. The background is a neutral grey, while the final product will have a mixed green and brown background. (earth, trees, foliage)

Is there a way to make a layer mask based on the degree of a certain color? For instance, the closer you get to this neutral grey color, the more transparent? The way I've solved this in the past involves extremely careful deletes and extremely careful erase-brushes at 2-10% flow rate. Is there an easier way to do this?

hi,
I am just a novice... and your probably more ..experience than me...
I find some times using the magic wand and right click and click color range .... it might help in your case

Lurkily said:

I'm working with a stock image of a girl in a dress, and I've dealt with this problem before; part of the background is visible through translucent parts of the dress, and her hair, which cannot easily be fixed with magic wands and with polygon selects. The background is a neutral grey, while the final product will have a mixed green and brown background. (earth, trees, foliage)

Is there a way to make a layer mask based on the degree of a certain color? For instance, the closer you get to this neutral grey color, the more transparent? The way I've solved this in the past involves extremely careful deletes and extremely careful erase-brushes at 2-10% flow rate. Is there an easier way to do this?

jerrylb said:

hi,
I am just a novice... and your probably more ..experience than me...
I find some times using the magic wand and right click and click color range .... it might help in your case

It's a good tool, but it does a different job. What I'm trying to do is similar to selective color adjustment. For instance, when you try to turn all the orange fur on a tiger blue. (Like this, a project I had fun with) Only in this case, I want to turn a certain color transparent. The level of transparency needs to be based on the amount of a color visible. (The more of the color you see through the object, the more transparent it will be.)

Take this image as an example. You can see through part of the model's hair, and also part of the model's clothing near her behind. When I put it on a green background, I don't want her translucent clothing to show grey behind it, I want it to show the green background through the clothing. Using a selection will normally cut hard-edged holes in the picture, not provide partial transparency. Currently, the only way I know to do this is via a combination of very careful opacity adjustments and eraser-brushing, with color adjustments to restore the normal color after making the area transparent to my tastes. This is quite prone to accidental over- or under-erasure, and for me, rarely looks natural.

I don't think you posted where you intended to post, ijkl.

I'm still looking for a response on this question; even a confident response that there is no way to do such a thing would be welcome.

The project that prompted this question is resolved, but as this is something I encounter regularly (if not commonly) I'd still like to hear a response on this one.