Coloring Your Hair For The First Time

welcome back to another very exciting tutorialhere at the photoshoptrainingchannel.com. my name is jesus ramirez and you can findme on twitter @jrfromptc. in this tutorial, i'm going to show you howto change hair color in photoshop. we're going to be working with this stock photo, and i'mgoing to show you how to change this woman's hair color to black, red, blonde, and green.keep in mind that when doing hair color changes, it's a lot easier to go from light hair colorsto dark. one of the reasons is that lighter hair tends to have more detail, and therefore,you can make more adjustments. going from dark hair to light hair is much more difficult.for example, turning black hair into blonde hair is nearly impossible in a lot of cases.that's because the detail is lost in the shadows

and darkness of the hair, and the color changesoften don't look realistic. but in this tutorial, i will show you what i would do in that situation.it won't be 100% realistic, but, depending on your photo and your goals, this might begood enough. another thing that i want you to keep in mindis that everyone's hair is different. the numerical values for opacity or other adjustmentsthat i use on this photo may not work on your photo. so you will have to experiment andsee what works for you. so pay more attention to the principles and the techniques, anddon't worry too much about the numerical values that i use. also, for some color changes,there might be more than one way to get the same result, which is why in this tutorial,i'll cover three ways of changing hair color—all

non-destructively, of course. so let's getstarted with the tutorial. so the first thing i'm going to do is to clickon the quick selection tool, that way we can make a selection out of her hair, and we canapply the adjustments only to the hair, and nothing else. so let me create the selection.i'm going to click on the layer. i'm simply going to click and drag to select the hair.currently, my selection tool is a little small, so i'm going to increase the size by hittingthe right bracket key on the keyboard, and i'm going to continue selecting the rest ofthe hair, and you don't have to be very precise here. we're going to use the refine edge toadjust the selection and we're, also, going to paint on the selection later on.

so, you don't have to be too exact, but tryto get the larger areas of the hair, and if you make a mistake here, you can hold alt,option on the mac, and, in a way, the selection on her hand, and this looks like a prettygood selection, so i'm just going to work with this. now that i have the selection,i'm going to click on the refine edge button in the options panel. i'm, also, going toclick on smart radius, and i'm going to increase the size just a little bit. also, with therefine edge tool selected, i'm just going to paint these areas here to refine that edge,and any area where there's stray hair sticking out, that way we have a nicer selection. andwhen you're done, you can press ok. now, instead of applying the selection onto this layer, what i'm going to do is create

a new group, then i'm going to apply the layermask to that group. the reason i'm doing this is so that i can stack multiple adjustmentlayers inside of that group, and it will only affect the hair. if i want to make any changesto the mask, i only have to do it on the group and not on each individual adjustment layer.and you're going to see what i mean in a moment. i'm going to create a hue and saturation adjustmentlayer, and i'm just going to make sure that that's in the group, so click and drag onit and drop it in the folder, and you'll know that it's in the group because there's anindentation here to the left of the icon. if they were outside the group, you wouldsee that the icon is closer to the edge. so, click and drag it, put it in the folder andyou'll see that indentation there.

so now with the hue and saturation slider,i can make any adjustment that i want. for example, i can desaturate the image, and myadjustment only take effect in the hair, because it's inside of this group, and this layermask is controlling the hair. now, if we wanted to turn her hair black, we would desaturatethe image, using hue and saturation, but the contrast is not good. we want to make thatdarker, so what i'm going to do is click on the new adjustment layer icon and select curves,just create a curves layer and darken that up. we can drag that down, like so. now, atthis point, you can actually click on the mask, and you can come and make adjustments,paint with black, for example, to hide some of those effects. so, i'm going to click onthe brush tool, and increase the size by clicking

the right bracket key in the keyboard, andjust paint that in. make sure that you have a soft brush, so i don't have a soft brushat the moment; i'm going to click on the soft brush. make sure that hardness is at 0%, andi can continue painting in areas that i need to. now, if i go over to the line, that's okay,i can paint with white, and bring back those adjustments in that area. so that's what youwould do at this point. you would go around and see what areas you need to adjust in orderto better improve the mask. so, as you can see, you can paint with black and white onthe layer mask in the group. and, by the way, when i paint a layer mask, i usually havemy hand on the x key on the keyboard. notice

the colors here. every time i press x, theyflip, so black hides. so i can hide the effect here, press x again, it flips it to white,and white reveals, so i can paint with white to reveal that effect. so that's a littletip there for you when you're painting on layer masks. i know that i can come in and further refinethat layer mask, but this is going to be good for this tutorial, so i'll leave it there.now the hair looks pretty good, but it's a little bit unrealistic in some areas. if idisable this group, you'll see that the hair is not just one solid color, there are differentcolors and tones in different areas of the hair, so i'm going to try and bring that inon to my black hair, to sort of take it one

step further and make it just a little bitmore realistic. so what i'm going to do is i'm just going to disable this group thatwe're working on, have the original layer active, then click in the channels panel,and hold ctrl, that's command on the mac, and click on the rgb thumbnail here, and that'sgoing to create a selection of all the bright pixels in the image, then i can come backinto the layers panel, click on the original layer, and duplicate it by pressing ctrl j,command j on the mac, and, now, we have a layer that only contains the bright pixels. i'm going to enable the group that we areworking on, enable the original layer, i'm going to open this up, click and drag thatlayer on the very top. notice what happened.

we just gave that black hair some extra colorin there, and even though it's a little more realistic, this effect is a little too strong,so i'm going to bring down the opacity, maybe to about 20 or 30%. i'll leave it at 31, ithink that's good, so that's before, and that's after. it's very subtle, but it makes thehair a little more realistic, because you'll start adding just a little bit of color. andi'm going to zoom in just so you could see. that's without color, and that's with color.and, of course, you can adjust the opacity accordingly until you get something that you'rehappy with. i just like adding a little bit of color so that the hair is not completelydesaturated. at this point, you can start making other adjustments, for example, youcan even create another curves adjustment

layer, and simply start working with the highlightsfor example. if you want to bring up these highlights here higher, you can. just bringthis down, and, of course, you can work with the opacity and adjust it accordingly. and, obviously, since we're working with onlyone layer mask, you can come in and hide the effect anywhere you want to, and you'll onlyhave to worry about that one layer mask. i'm going to go ahead and undo that. so, i'm goingto collapse this folder and i'm going to rename it, and i'm going to call this "black hair."now i'm going to create a new group. i'm going to hold alt, option on the mac, click anddrag that layer mask, and duplicate it. so, now, we have the same layer mask in this group,and we can start creating new effects. so

this is how to create black hair. but if youwant to create red hair, well, you can use the hue and saturation, just like we did before,but i want to show you how to do it with the selective color adjustment layer, and i'mgoing to show you several different ways in which you can change the color of the hair,because everybody's hair is different, depending on how you took the photo, the lighting, thetexture. there are so many different variables that,sometimes, hue and saturation might not be enough. sometimes you might want to use selectivecolor, so i'm just giving you different options, so in your image, you can try them all outand see which one works best for you. so, in this case, i'm going to click on this dropdown menu—the colors drop down menu, choose

neutrals, and i can subtract cyan, and that'sgoing to make the hair red. and i can add just a little bit of magenta, and a littlebit of yellow, and we have red hair. so that's before, and that's after. you can, also, comein here and add a curves adjustment layer, and start playing around with the contrast;maybe you want to change the blend mode to luminosity, so that you don't change the color,you just change the luminance values. that's before, and that's after. and, of course,you have the opacity slider to lessen the effect a little bit. so i'm going to collapse this and i'm goingto call this "red hair." and i'm going to do what i did before. i'm going to createanother group. hold alt, option on the mac,

click and drag the layer mask on to the newgroup, and this time we're going to change her hair color to blonde. again, we couldhave used hue and saturation, select the color, but now i'm going to show you a differenttrick. we're going to use the gradient map adjustment layer. and, as you can see, thegradient map applies these colors to the luminance values of the layer that you have selected.for example, the darkest colors here are going to be black, because we have black here. thebrightest colors are going to be white; white is here. this is another way in which youcan make hair black. so if i double click here on the gradient, you bring up the gradienteditor. you can click on this swatch here, and then at the midpoint, i can click anddrag that to the right, and you'll see that

the hair gets darker. if i double click onthis swatch and select red, now her hair is red. obviously, we don't want to do that. what i want to do is i want to show you atrick so we can get started, at least, on making her hair blonde. i am just going tocancel this for now, and what i'm going to do is click on this down pointing arrow, clickon this icon here, and select photographic toning, press ok, and it's going to give youthis list here—different tones that you can apply to your image. now, this one herelooks a lot like blonde hair. this doesn't look perfect, but it looks a lot like it.so, we're going to use that as a starting point. this one, here, if i right click onit, and choose rename gradient, you'll see

that it's called gold number 2, and that'sthe one we're using, gold number 2. so select that, and with the layer active, you can changethe blend mode to screen. now it looks good, but, maybe, not perfect.so, if you're not happy with the results, you can try adjusting the colors by goinginto the properties panel and double click on the gradient map to bring up the gradientmap editor. and i'm going to start adjusting these swatches. these are just the startingpoint, and i know that i don't want white, and i know that i don't want black in here,at all. i'm going to double click on this color here, and the darkest color i want issort of a dark orange, maybe, something like that. the brightest color is fine, and i don'treally need this brown and this light green

color, but i am going to adjust this colorhere, and, maybe, make that a little more yellow; something like this. press ok. andwhat i'm going to do now is i'm going to create a curves adjustment layer and click and dragin the middle here, just to darken up the image just a little bit, maybe, somethinglike that. and, when you're using that gradient map, you may not get the exact color thatyou want, but, you can always add a hue and saturation slider, and, simply, click anddrag the saturation or hue, to maybe, i want this, a little more red, and, maybe, it'stoo saturated, so i can bring down the saturation, and get something like that. at this point, i want to create a new curvesadjustment layer, and i'm just going to darken

it up. this is going to be for the darkestareas of my image, and i'm going to turn the layer mask black, to hide the effect. youcan press ctrl i, command i on the mac, to invert. and i'm just going to paint with whitein certain areas here. i'm, actually, going to bring the opacity down even further, so,maybe, 22%. i don't want these areas to be that bright.i, actually, want these areas to be a little bit darker. these are shadows; this area here.so, that's before, and that's after, and i can always adjust the opacity. what i'm goingto do now is show you how to add non-natural hair colors, so i'm going to create a newgroup. hold alt, option on the mac, click and drag the layer mask on to the new grouphere, and by the way, this is blonde hair,

so i'll rename that "blonde hair," and thisone will be "colorful hair." then, i'm going to create a hue and saturation adjustmentlayer, and i'm going to click on colorize, and, maybe, you want to turn her hair green.now, usually, when i see effects where the hair is an unnatural color, maybe, like greenor blue, or maybe, even pink or something like that, the hair looks unnatural becausethe saturation is bumped way up. so, you have to be careful with the saturation. so i usuallylike to bring the saturation down to zero, and i like to just increase it accordingly,and, maybe, somewhere around 30, and that might still be a little too much. i'm goingto bring it back down to about 24, and i'm just going to switch the blend mode from normalto color, just so i can use the luminance

values of the original image. notice what happened under the normal blendmode. it's a little washed out, but if i just switch it to color, it's got a little morecontrast in it. it makes it look just a bit more realistic, and, actually, at this point,i may want to even bring down the saturation just a tad. it's a little too saturated formy taste, so maybe, something like this. and if you still feel like you need a little morecontrast, you can always go into the curves adjustment layer, and add something like amedium contrast, and then, adjust the opacity accordingly. and, again, i like to bring theopacity to zero, and just add just a tiny bit, something like that. now, when you havethis set up, it's very easy to change the

color. now we can click on the slider underhue, and, maybe, give her blue hair, purple hair, or whatever hair color that we want.at this point, you may want to do that trick i told you about with the black hair, wherewe duplicated the bright pixels in the image. so we can, also, do that for this hair color.so i'm going to press ctrl j, command j on the mac, duplicate that layer—layer 1, clickand drag that all the way up above the color for hair color. make sure that nothing elseis enabled. these three groups are disabled, and that's before, and that's after. if izoom in, you will see that it's not just green. some color in there is very subtle, and ican increase it more so you can see. and i think it just makes it look a little morerealistic. i'll bring it back down because

the opacity was a little high. so, i'm just going to fit to screen here,close this, and that's the green hair. and, as i mentioned before, black to blonde ispretty hard to do in photoshop. sometimes, it can be impossible, depending on your image,but i'm going to show you a few tricks in which you may be able to fool the eye. again,this is not going to be photo realistic, but you might be able to get away with it, dependingon the image that you're working with. so let me bring that image up. okay, so we'regoing to do the black hair to blonde, using this stock photo here. we have this womanwith black hair, and i've already gone ahead and created a layer mask using the same techniquei showed you earlier, just so we can save

a little bit of time. so, as i said before, black hair to blondeis very difficult. if you're going to do it, make sure that the image you're using containsblack hair with detail. if you have big blocks of black hair, it's just going to be too difficult.so, even though this woman has black hair, i can see a lot of details on her hair, andthat's going to give us the best results. again, this is not going to be photo realistic,but i'm going to show you what i'm going to do in this situation. so, i have my empty"blonde hair" folder with the layer mask of the hair. i'm going to press ctrl and thenclick on that layer mask, just so you can see the areas that i'm selecting. and, asyou can see, i wasn't very accurate, which,

like, in the hair, but that's okay, i thinkthis is going to work. and if it doesn't, we'll fix it as we go. so i'm going to pressctrl d, command d to deselect, and i'm going to create a gradient map, and we're goingto use the gradient map we used earlier, this one here, the golden gradient map. and, i'mgoing to select it, change the blend mode to screen, and that's going to do a prettydecent job, but i want a stronger effect. her hair is black and it's really hard toturn it blonde, just with one of these gradient maps, so i'm going to click on the adjustmentlayer, click and drag that over to the new layer icon to duplicate it, and notice theeffect that we get. it, definitely, looks blonde, but we needto work on it a bit, so i'm going to bring

down the opacity to about, maybe, 64% or so.then i'm going to create a new curves adjustment layer, and i'm going to click and drag that,and bring this down to about here. i'm going to click on the adjustment layer layer mask,press ctrl i, command i, to invert, turn that black. and, i'm going to paint with whitein areas where i want blonde hair to show darker—in the areas like here, behind theear and neck, this area here. and i can always bring down the opacity, and, also, i can paintwith black. i'm not so happy with this area here. so what i'm going to do is i'm goingto paint with black, then i'm going to go into the fade command— edit, fade, so ican fade that large brush stroke, so you can see at 0% opacity, it's exactly what we hadbefore. i painted it away, 100% opacity, as

it's completely gone. so, i can slide thisaround until i find a place that i'm happy with, so, maybe, about 52%. and i can keeppainting with white on that curves layer mask, in areas that i want to darken up. and oneof the reasons i'm having problems right now is because my opacity is way too high. soi can bring that way down to, like, 10% and really take my time, and build upon it ifi want to. obviously, i'm not going to take too muchtime in this tutorial, but you kind of get the idea of what i'm trying to do. at thispoint, what i can do is create, yet, another curves adjustment layer and darken that aswell, maybe, something like that. also, press ctrl i, command i, to invert, but this timei'm going to work on some detail. so i'm going

to bring the opacity up a bit more, maybe65% or so, and use the left bracket key on my keyboard to adjust the size of my brushand make that really, really tiny, and i can start adding some detail in certain areas.and i know this is a little too dark, but i'm just going to bring down the opacity,and i'm using a wacom tablet, by the way, so it, definitely, makes it easier if youhave a wacom tablet. you can do with the mouse, it may take you a little more time, and youmay not be as accurate. so i'm sort of giving her a little more detail in her hair becausewe lost some of it by applying those adjustments, so that's before, and that's after, and, ofcourse, that's a little too strong, so, again, go to zero, and start increasing the opacity,and as soon as it starts showing up, you can

sort of release it, maybe around 74% or so.and, actually, you know what? i still think it's too much; maybe, i'll bring that down.so, we'll leave it at 54%. at this point, you may be happy with her hair,or may not. what i would recommend is creating a hue and saturation adjustment layer, andjust use the hue to fine-tune the color. maybe you want more of a golden look, somethinglike that, and you can decrease the saturation. maybe you only want to affect the color, sowe go to color; maybe you want to affect both the color and luminosity, you can just leaveit at normal, that's your choice. i think, in this case, for me, color might be the betterchoice. at this point, i can work in the layer mask. i see some areas that are not beingaffected by my effect, like this area here,

so i'm going to click on the zoom tool, andzoom in to this area here and simply paint with white in this area, and, actually, maybeincrease my brush size a little bit, and decrease it for certain areas. as i said before, it's really harder to dealwith black hair, especially in these areas here, where the hair is very fine. there areseveral things you can do. you can either clone out these stray hairs. so, for example,i can just disable that, create a new layer above the original layer, click on the clonetool, make sure that current and below, or all layers are selected. current and belowwill work fine for this. hold alt, option on the mac, then click on the area that youwant to sample from, and then, start painting

away those stray hairs. they're a little toodifficult to paint in, so you might be better off cloning them out. so i'm going to clickon the layer mask again, press b on my keyboard for my brush tool, then press d on the keyboardfor my default colors, and press x to swap my colors from black and white, and i canpaint away the yellow here that's not working. obviously, i can continue cloning this areaout, but that's something that you may want to do in your image. another thing that you may want to do is,actually, create a new layer on top of everything. with the brush tool selected, you can holdalt, option on the mac, select the color of the hair. in this case, it's yellowish color,and you can come in there and you can paint

in some hair strands. you can follow the strandsthat are already there and just create new ones. obviously, this is going to take yousome time, but this is one of the things you can do for those black strands that are hiddenthere in the background. so i'm going to just double click on the zoom tool here to zoomout, and this is what our effect looks likes. by the way, these stray hairs, the reasoni created them outside of the group is so that they're not affected by the layer maskbecause some of these strands of hair might go outside the main area where the hair is.so, having them inside of the layer mask may hide those, as you can see in this area here.so you want them outside. and if you do have this layer, just select the top layer, holdshift, select the original group, and press

ctrl g, command g on the mac, so you put thosetwo items into a new group, and now you can see the before, and the after. and that's it for this tutorial. i hope thatyou enjoyed it and that you learned something new. if you have any comments or questions,leave them down below. if you enjoyed the tutorial, don't forget to click that “like”button and share this video with a friend. if you haven't already, subscribe to the photoshoptraining channel now. thank you for watching and i'll talk to you again soon.

Coloring Your Hair For The First Time