Once again, adjust the levels of the Alpha 2 channel to achieve the maximum amount of contrast you can without blowing out the details.


With one of the Alpha channels selected, go to the dodge tool in the toolbar. It looks like a pin with a round head (see above). Set the 'Range' drop down to 'Highlights' and the exposure to around 50%. If 50% instantly blows out your details, try setting it down a bit. Run your dodge tool over the edges of the hair and notice that it will step up the contrast of the light areas only. Run over them as many times as you need to seperate them from the background.

With the Alpha channel still selected, switch to the burn tool (it looks like a pinching hand. Set the Range dropdown to 'Shadows' and the exposure between 20 and 40%. Run over the same areas again, noticing that the burn tool darkens only the shadow areas, increasing even more the amount of contrast between the foreground and background.

Our newly modified Alpha channel. Once you've dodged and burned the edges, you can use the pencil tool on pure black to run around the perimeter of the background to color it in and then switch to pure white and run over the interior portions to turn them pure white. Remember, we're looking for a 2 color, black and white image.

Select the other Alpha channel and do the same procedure on it using the dodge and burn tools. Once you've defined the edges, use the pen tool with pure black and pure white to color out the rest of the images, getting our 2 color image. Note how much detail is left in the image, the individual hair strands are clearly visible!

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