Hair filter (stray hairs removal)

[Ivan Zajats]

Hey, Adobe! Make a filter for stray hairs removal.

The retouchers have to do it manually (either with a Stamp or a Healing brush) which takes too much time.

The only existing filter which can be used for this is the Dust & scratches.

But it's hard to choose the values for removing the most contrasting hairs without blurring all the rest. Usually you can only make them less contrast which is not the result we need — it's blurry and has noticeable artifacts.

So, we need a new time saving filter for that purpose.

It should detect the most contrasting single hairs and replace them (like the Content aware fill) with the nearest darker color. The same as we do manually with a Clone Stamp in the Darken mode.

This retouchers' routine needs to be done by a machine. Either on the basis of the Dust & scratches filter or smth completely new. Probably, the new filter will consider not only the micro contrast (brightness), but also the main direction of the hair to better detect those for removal.

[Jqqerry]

Well... I respect your opinion, but the neural network is rather complicated to judge.
And it's a different story to simply just one click on a filter and get results, and get results of good quality.
It's not that I don't blame or respect you.

If you were a photographer, you should have combed your hair so that it wouldn't fly like that when you were filming,
And if you are a retoucher, you will already be removing it directly from Photoshop before you think about which filter to apply.

I think the reason you used dust and scratch is to quickly erase those little Flyaway or stray hair.
But... Prerequisites are invalid. With the pixel radius, you should limit the filter, but is there a big difference between the radius, brightness, and color of the hair you want to erase and the hair you want to preserve? That's not true. And even if you erase some bright hair strands over there, it's still not neat. You won't like it.
That's the limit that can be done if a neural filter is added. (Of course, it's only a simple monochrome background or a simple pattern, and it's likely that it doesn't apply well to complex backgrounds or complex headscales.)

If you don't need professional photos, save time by copying and pasting hair textures.
If you copy and paste the whole hair part, and if you do a little bit of the insufficient part with clone stamp, you can make a quality that is not bad to post on the web. Three or five minutes is enough. If your hair is less messy than that, 10 to 15 seconds...

As I said above, I copied and pasted the hair, cleaned the hair on my finger with clone stamp, and it took about 3 minutes. Even if the filter is newly developed as you wish, the result will be far from what you want.
It's usually faster and better to do it yourself than applying a filter or trying to get an effect with a click, and you'll like it.

[Ivan Zajats]

The preproduction step is important, but even if you hire a mega skilled top/vip hairstylist, there will be stray hairs anyway. As you say, if you were a photographer, you should know it. My sample is a very old test photo just for better demonstration.

I believe in progress and the power of AI (and Adobe:-).

A decade ago we couldn't imagine clever selections, sky replacement or colorizing in one click, etc.

This retouchers' routine also needs to be done by a machine. Either on the basis of the Dust & scratches filter or smth completely new. Probably, the new filter will consider not only the micro contrast (brightness), but also the main direction of the hair to better detect those for removal.

[Ivan Zajats]

Today, when many compositing artists lost their jobs due to the latest PS update, other retouchers still have to spend hours to manually fix stray hairs... Adobe, can't you optimize that with AI as well?! We are waiting for it.