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complicated hair masking


Kevin Bell

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It might be that I am tired and something just isn't sticking in the tutorials that I have watched but I have tried like crazy to mask out the hair in the attached pic. The client wants to change the color of the hair in this pic to a dark green and the skin tone to be more pail with a very slight green tint. The area on the shirt is giving me the biggest issues, any suggestions on making this work? I have watched a couple youtube tutorials on doing this quick but just cant get the desired result.

Thanks!Midori-Cover-Art2.jpg
 
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Hi Kevin...and welcome to the forum.

I am pleased that you yourself want to achieve good work. We like to support you in this forum, and I can show you a way how you can achieve an excellent result in this case.

1. Open your image in Photoshop.
2. Make two duplicates of the original layer. Name them duplicate and dark green.
3. You work on the one layer named dark green and change the colors to green. With Hue/Saturation and curves you get your effect.
On a layer mask you now paint with a big soft brush (120 pixel and opacity 10%) with black color, starting at the area on the shirt. You paint away everything you don't need. Just leave the hairs and skin tones.
In this process you have to change gradually to a smaller brush.
4.Create a new layer, fill it with 50% grey, set the opacity to linear light. Name it dodge and burn. On this layer you can paint with a small soft brush (opacity 3%) with white to highlight the hair or you can paint with black to darken the hair.

Midori-Cover-Screenshot.jpg

The result should be like this.
 

ibclare

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It isn't easy to recolor hair and just select those fine wisps without coloring the shirt.

You may at some point need to add hair addiitions to a selection of a model. Sometimes I "cheat."

My suggestion for that kind of technique:

Download some brushes to create hair strands. (deviant arts has some good ones)

Stamp/clone over the ones currently there so that it looks realistically like the t-shirt. Now make a new layer above. Pick the color you already used on the hair. You can select it from the paintbrush mode, clicking on the top color square in the tools box, ad click on the color you want. Then you can pick in the color choice window to pick the correct color.

Now on that new layer, use the hair strand brushes to add soft, light colored hair over the tee. They will meet the other hair kind of bluntly. You can fix that with a medium soft or soft brush. Create a mask on the same layer, use the top color - black - slowly at low opacity for the brush, blend it into the hair.

If the color is still slightly off what you want, add a layer adjustment>hue/saturation and make the color the shade and hue you desire.

Both methods described above by chris and sam work quite well for what you need to do. I use the method described above mostly if the selection I made of a model, created a cut out that didn't show all the wispy hairs. Then make a layer below using the same method I described. You may have to pick the color up more than once from different parts of the hair to make it blend with highlights and shadows. Takes a bit of experimenting, but once you get the technique down, it works very well.

So, keep this method to try if you ever need to deal with this for a client or for yourself.
 
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ibclare

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Here is an example of how I did this for a selection I made.

First I cut out the figure, making only a rouch cut of the hair around the head.

Then I made a layer above this and used the brushes to add some hair.

Next I made a layer below and made what looks like a mcuky mess, but the colors cause all the hair areas to blend.


WispyHairs.jpg
 
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If the OP has to do the job for his customer, then it'll be a professional job which is for a magazine or brochure. Therefore, it must be as natural as possible for the viewer.
As much as I like Clare's "hair job", this is not an option here, it would look too artistic.

For better comparison I post here an image detail view of before and after.

Midori-Cover-Art2_chrisdesignDetailoriginal.jpg

Midori-Cover-Art2_chrisdesignDetailgreen.jpg
 

ibclare

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Hey Chris, I never intended it to be for this client. I just thought it would be a nice addition to his tool box if he ever wanted to use it.
 

Kevin Bell

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The client wants the hair almost black and I simply cannot get that shoulder area to look natural...any ideas?
 

IamSam

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Already explained.

Screen Shot 2014-11-30 at 4.43.49 PM.png
 
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Kevin Bell

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Maybe its because im a perfectionist, but The fine light strands just kill the effect think im going to have to just bite the bullet and do something similar to what ibclare did
 

IamSam

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You can include most of the light hairs in the mask using the Dodge and Burn tools, I just left them out for times sake.
 

IamSam

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Another idea is to just clone them out and add them back with the brush tool. It's much easier if you have a tablet.
 

ALB68

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You might consider something like this. I don't think you can be successful matching that fine light hair. This employs a bit of creative cloning. Hopefully you could do a little better job, but you get the idea.
View attachment 50986
 

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Tom Mann

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I thought I'd give it a try, as well. Following the instructions of the OP ... darker green hair, but lighter skin with slight green cast, un-cropped, no change to red shirt.

B4 and after versions attached below. A slightly different take on the hair and skin than Chris. Unfortunately, I forgot to pay attention to the red shirt, so somewhere along the way, it accidentally got a bit desaturated, but that's easy to fix.

Tom M
 

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  • Midori-Cover-Art2-tjm01-ps01a_sRGB-01b_698px_wide.jpg
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Tom Mann

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PS - My "secret weapon" for highly selective color changes (eg, red hair laying on a redder shirt, LOL) is an old plugin called, "Color Mechanic". It's still available, I believe, but I don't think it's ever been updated for 64 bit PS, so I have to run it separately in a 32 bit environment, then finish up in 64 bit PS. I ^highly^ recommend it.

Tom M
 

ALB68

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@Chris and Tom,
Wow!...nuff said! :thumbsup:
PS Tom I have Color Mechanic Pro on a 64bit system - never thought of using it for this purpose though..thanks for the tip!
 
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