Changing Hair Color

Another good thing to be able to do is change the hair color of a person. In real life, you have to either go to a professional and have it done - or you can buy a box from the drugstore and spend all night coloring it. But since we have photoshop (and no access to the famous people whose hair we color in said photoshop) changing hair color is a piece of cake.

Now, just like in real life, making the change look plausible - or maybe just realistic - is something that takes a good eye and strong veto ability.

Again, start with the image

Claire on the left is the Claire that I started with. I decided to give her fiery red hair - "Wouldn't it be great with the fiery expression on her face?" I thought. So I started out by selecting a color slightly darker than what I was going for, and switching to the Airbrush tool.

  1. If you are working in Photoshop CS and above, I think there is no longer an Airbrush tool in the Toolbox itself - but the Brush tool, set to about 10% opacity and Hardness of 0% should do just fine (the Airbrush tool, if you have it, should also be set as such.) I decreased the size of the brush so I could work with locks of hair easily.
  2. Once you have the brush set, set the Mode to Soft Light if the color you are lightening the hair, Overlay if you are darkening it, and Color if you are changing it. Since I am changing her color, I set the brush mode to Color and lightly went over the head once.
  3. After that, change the brush mode to Soft Light or Overlay, still with low opacity, and go back over the head. Make sure you do not color the skin, and be careful around the edges of the hair - it shouldn't have a halo of color. Try to concentrate on the main head of hair - worry about the flyaways and eye brows later.
  4. Now is the most important step - take a look at your person. Does the hairdo look natural, or as natural as your particular color can look on a person? In using Overlay and Soft Light, you may have put too much contrast in the hair, and it is causing the color to pop too much. If this is the case, set the brush mode to Color and go over the parts of the hair that need to be toned down.

Now, decrease the brush size and do the eyebrows and strands of hair that were unruly. Don't overdo it on the eyebrows - just a little bit should be fine.

And now take a second look at your picture - does it look too photoshopped? Identify why, and then fix it.

I also, for fun, turned her hair a kind of teal blue. It even still looks somewhat natural:

The trick, when it comes to coloring the hair an unnatural color, is to set the brush mode to Color first, then Overlay or Soft Light. Also, taming the saturation will keep it from looking too photoshopped.

However, if you want the hair to be bright, go for it. If you are trying to make your person look as if green was his natural hair color, then make sure you stick to the original layout of the hair - the shadows and highlights are a preset reference for you. Essentially, coloring hair is just like a coloring book - you color within the given lines, within the given framework, and it'll look as if a professional did it.