hair

My final video course of 2011 for the lynda.com Online Training Library is now live. Titled Photoshop Masking & Compositing: Hair, it lives up to its name, showing you how to mask and composite the most fragile of all photographic details, hair, in that most powerful of masking applications, Photoshop.

(Yes, I'm aware that the term "follicle" specifically refers to the root of the hair, not the part we see and therefore need to mask. It's all about the alliteration, dammit!)

My goal is to boost both your skills and your confidence. As well as pass along lots of useful, in-the-trenches techniques. All in just 3 hours and 6 minutes! Here's an illustrated outline of the four feature-rich chapters and the fun, challenging projects that accompany them: Read more » 

Just a note to let you know that I've begun work on my next video course for lynda.com, which will be called Photoshop Masking & Compositing: Fundamentals. The course is slated to be 9 chapters long, and it will set in motion the stuff that you need to know to mask a photographic image with absolute authority against any and all backgrounds. Many courses will follow, including (but not limited to): Advanced Blending, The Pen Tool, and the ever-thrilling Hair. The last of which will include "tough stuff"!

At Photoshop World, I had many folks come up to me and tell me that my two back-to-back Channels & Masks sessions were their favorite at the conference. Which was awesome, because those sessions were based on my old content. This next course is a new take on things. Here's how it all starts, with an artificially colored foreground set against a similarly adjusted background. (Based on a Fotolia image from TessarTheTegu, BTW.) It's a wacky multichannel effect. And, really, isn't he just the duckiest toucan you ever laid eyes on? I love how he has pretend teeth to scare off the predators. (That's not Photoshop, that's natural!) Don't you just want to take him home and make bird-love to him? I know, me too.

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