Photoshop tutorial – Recoloring hair
Recoloring hair on a photo is a basic technique in photo manipulation...Yet many people are stuck at how to achieve the RIGHT effect. In this tutorial, I will explain how simple it actually is. This is a must-have skill in graphics design, and it's pretty easy to make! So let's start!
Step 1 – The setup
Open up a photo you want to change. I used this picture I found on google:
Step 2 – Selections, the explaination
Selecting the hair is the most vital part of this tutorial. To select a picture means to form a field on the picture. NOTHING more than a field you selected can be edited then, the other part of the picture is simply LOCKED. There are many ways to create a selection, the most basic and straight-forward way is using selection tools. Selection tools are:
With these arsenal of tools, selecting only parts you want to edit in photoshop are a piece of cake. In this tutorial, you'll learn how to use "Lasso tool" and "Magnetic lasso tool".
Step 3 – Selecting the hair
Choose "magnetic lasso tool" from the toolbar... This tool is special because it takes the difference between colors into account when selecting an area. You can specify the difference in the upper bar, with other options aswell. Now, click on the part of the hair you want to begin with... Move it by the outline of the hair, and you'll notice how it selects only the hair you specify by mouse coordinates. This is extra useful when working on big images with good amount of saturational difference. Ignore all little messups you make for now. After you select whole hair, it should look like this:
If you fail at some point, you can aways ctrl+z (ctrl+alt gr+z) and start over. If you're a complete newbie, you'll get a smooth selection in 3 tries or so 
Step 4 – Modifying the selections
I told you to ignore little messups you do because of this. You can modify your selection with normal lasso tool... So switch on to it now. Now, I'll tell you a secret ... By holding shift you'll notice a little plus right next to the cursor... This means you're ADDING to the selection. Doing this won't mess your selection up so you have to start from beginning... On the other note, holding ALT will show you a minus... You guessed it right, this means you're subtracting from selection... Cool, huh?
These are the fields I modified:
Now, since your selection is a lot smoother, we go to the next step!
Step 5 – Refining edge
Now, right click on the selection and click on the "Refine Edge". A new window will popup giving you thousands of new possibilities to refine your selections. Writing what each does is absurd... Each is explained well in that window... What we seek is "Feather edges". Feathering an edge means to give the selection an alpha transparency. So, every change you make will show up transparent on edges, with fidelity you defined. I moved that to 6 to get:
The hair is clearly visible now... Press ok when you adjust the edges the way you want. On to the next step!
Step 6 – Recoloring!
The fun starts here! Right click on selection again but this time click on "Layer via Copy". This will create a new layer consisting only of area you selected! Neat!... Now, go to Image/Adjusments/Hue-Saturation. A new menu will pop-up... Play around with values for a bit, and you'll understand how it works...
Red is my passion, so I've made her have red hair:
... Don't limit yourself to HAIR!... Using the very same technique I've explained here you can recolor ANYTHING you want! How about lips, eyes, shirt, anything you desire can be recolored ... If you want you can make her have forelocks of different shade... Like I did... This picture also serves as my End-Result in this tutorial
Now this looks... Bitchy! xD... But it serves the purpose ...
This concludes the tutorial on how to recolor hair ... Hope you like this one.
Made by Krele ,
DONOTCHANGE
Photoshop tutorial - Recoloring hair,
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