Tip:
Highlight text to annotate it
X
Today in Photoshop we are going to be learning how to change the color of
someone's hair. Whether your hair is graying and you want to feel youthful or you are youthful and want
to be expressive and crazy, Photoshop can help you make all those poor or exciting color
decisions in a digital environment first. The first step in changing the hair color is
to make a selection of the hair.
As with everything in Photoshop there are a million ways to make the selection.
For hair I recommend grabbing the quick selection tool and then painting over the
hair. This doesn't need to be perfect because when you are done go up to the top
of the screen and select refine edge in the options. I would first recommend
turning on the smart radius check box and turning the radius up quite a bit.
Next start painting over the edges of the hair with your refine radius tool.
Hold alt to remove areas from being removed and use the left and right
square brackets to change the size of the tool.
This tool will help you pull the hair from the background. Now keep going over
it as Photoshop is sometimes stubborn in determining that you want the tiny hairs.
Patience is key during this part as it will take some time. Feel free to adjust the smooth,
feather, and contrast sliders depending on your image. Now before you
criticize me, yes the selection is easier to make on a white background, but the
refine edge tool also works with patience on other backgrounds. You can see that it
also pulls the hair from the areas that overlap her body, not just the
background.
Don't be afraid to mix in a few other methods of selection and use layer masks
to help better your results. Refine edge doesn't always get you 100% of
the way there. When you have the hair selected to your liking, click ok.
Next duplicate your layer and create a layer mask from your selection by clicking
the button on the bottom of the layers panel.
Now this layer only contains the hair.
Next, create a hue and saturation adjustment layer and then hold alt to clip it to
the hair layer.
Turn on the colorize check box and slide the hue and saturation bars to get
the desired color. Subtle changes in colors will be more efficient, but
drastic changes can take place. Feel free to paint black and white on your layer mask to
tweak specific areas. So there you have it, your hair color has now been changed
quickly and painlessly. So how does it look? Just make sure and ask for second opinion
before taking the plunge in real life.
So as always if you liked this Photoshop tutorial be sure to subscribe, rate,
comment, and share with your friends.