I am experimenting with Green Screen work and currently I am using Adobe After Effects CS5 with the Key Light Plugin. I am doing my best to light the screen very evenly and I keep my subject about 8 to 10 feet from the background to avoid any green spill. However, when I key out the subject from the background everything accept for the hair keys out perfectly.  I am losing a lot of wispy hair strands.  In the Key-Light software I manipulate the various control sliders to bring back as much of the hair as possible but the results never look really good to me.  Has anyone been able to overcome this problem and what best practices do you use to achieve the best results with wispy hair from still images. Your constructive feedback is appreciated , thank you.

Here are a few samples of my Green Screen test work on Flickr

https://www.flickr.com/photos/tarik-photographer/

I am wondering the same thing ,
I only ever have used the green screen a few times and always use select color on photoshop then have to mask the hair anyway and paint over the hair to get the color back usually because most people get overspill when they have sent me pictures to manipulate . so I am curious if anyone has some sound advice as well .

there was a thread here about a week ago on this , wish I knew where it was , but most peoples advice was unhelpful because they said not to shoot on green screen but rather grey or white seamless .

https://www.modelmayhem.com/forums/post/957980

don't know if it will help any but there it is .

I have the same issues with Key Light in After Effects.  It does not do hair extremely well because of limited functionality.

Primatte by Red Giant has near perfect results in After Effects... and more of the controls you would love to have... but it is expensive ($499 wait for a sale).  Most of the well known commercial studios use Primatte and enjoy its power... and end results.

The best plug in for Photoshop that I use very frequently has been Fluid Mask by Vertus ($89 on sale).  I can get individual hair strands with no fringing or halos from around the edges of a model usually...as long as I follow the few simple rules...which you seem to understand well...  judging from your comments in the OP.   I sometimes DO use After Effects to produce video keys and still cutouts sometimes...but if im just doing some quick portraits... Fluid Mask is my goto plugin within Photoshop.  Ive purchased 3 other programs over the years and dont use them any longer.

In general... Black and brown and red models hair cuts out very well... but blond hair is sometimes translucent and the green light passes right through it and it gives a misleading edge.  Remember that dark haired models ALWAYS cut out easier than bright blonds. 

Here are some other considerations I have found helpful:   I never use a hair light on my extraction images because the hot spot will never key well.  I have made up some Photoshop Hair Highlight Brushes to make up for the lack of a hair light in these shots... and I add the highlight back in... later on in post.  I avoid complex edges around the hair from the background...the software can not cut fine detail when there is a complex background or pattern behind the model that intrudes into the hair edges... obviously!   I have been using a light battleship gray seamless background paper or flats the last couple of years with near 100% success with the Vertus plugin for Photoshop (Vertus can use any color...not just only the Blue or Green).  I use light gray seamless because it does not cause any color contamination or edge complexity... and it can work pretty well with blond hair. 

The Chroma Key Green or Blue colors are totally optimized for cutting out... BUT... it is SO SATURATED and BRIGHT that it can cause a lot of strong "color bounce back"  if it is  "way over lit".   If you do over light the background...it can become like a glaring green spotlight hitting your model from behind...and it creates all kinds of new false edge problems.  I keep the very evenly lit background lighting approx 3/4 F stop brighter than my key light (max)... using a light meter to double check the actual illumination.  Many new comers way over light their backgrounds because they are trying to get rid of any shadow spots on the green.  They just over FLOOD the background with maximum foot candles hoping to get a pure green...and they ruin their edges because of the overly intense green color bouncing everywhere throughout the studio.  (Move the model 6-8 feet in front of the green screen to minimize this color splash problem).   Some software has the ability to erase or blot out the green folds, wrinkles and shadows...this kind of software does cost... but you will love how it fixes your problems... and it gives you better cut outs if your capture was not the best originally. 

Good Luck with your Chroma Keying experiments.  When you get it under control...it can produce some amazing movies or Mayhem Images!  Feel free to PM.

Great information, thanks for the link to the previous thread and I will be looking into the software recommendations as well

Andrew Cramer, host of VideoCopilot (http://www.videocopilot.net) has some great tutorials on green screens.

You can never mask anything like hair perfectly for the simple fact that any mask contains less information than what the eye sees in the actual image which contains all channels. Usually that is not a problem for motion picture but it is quite visible in stills. The only way to do it without visible issues is manual painting of extra hair after the masking. Or maybe by using the Lytro cinema camera which captures actual 3D depth information.

That is a chronic problem people have with green screen film work. If the hair is whispy or where you can see through you will have a tough time. Better quality camera helps a bit, but I avoid green screen when possible because of that issue. Granted you can always work with what you have by softening and pulling in talent in post.

Unless super necessary, skip green screen. Or make sure hair is smooth and weighted down.

Good luck.

Great information , thank you

this is why I don't shoot green screen with hair.
Better way is to shoot either against a black or white background depending on the hair tone.  Light hair shoot against black and dark hair shoot against white. 
When separating the subject, leave extra around the hair that shows the background.  Don't try to mask it perfectly.  Then have duplicate layers of your subject one above the other.  If you're using a white background with dark hair set the blend mode of the bottom layer to multiply, the white disappears.  Then use a layer mask to paint out the hair sections showing the white and blend the layers together with lower opacity passes along the edges.
If you have a black background for the hair, set the blend mode to screen so the black disappears and mask the top layer in the same way.
Use blending modes to do the work for you and shoot with them in mind.  Makes life easier.

Blond hair with black BG extraction with Vertus Fluid Mask https://youtu.be/VXz-sawg864
Be aware that it i still a x86 software and it is unable to work with big 16-bit files, can
remedy by changing to 8-bit or cutting into small pieces...
Vertus tutorials https://www.youtube.com/user/Vertus001

The other plug-in to check is Topaz ReMask
http://blog.topazlabs.com/tutorials/hai … your-mind/
http://blog.topazlabs.com/webinar/quick … s-minutes/