How to: Open a digital barbershop

Posted by Dave

Hello World.

This is my first Photoshop technique tutorial. I’ve made a couple of posts (here and here) showcasing some photo-manipulations of celebrities with different hair-colours from their own (mine have all been red thus far). This is the technique I use to do those images. This is by no means the only way of achieving such an effect, and is probably not even the best way to do it, but this is how I do it.

This tutorial was written for Photoshop CS3 (currently the latest version), but can most likely be achieved using earlier versions as it only uses basic tools.

Step 1. Open your image:

Fairly self-explanatory, really. Open up the image you’re going to work on in Photoshop. The higher the resolution the better. Also, dark hair works better than light hair. And, try to avoid a photo that has loose strands of hair that fall down over the face too much. OK, maybe not so self-explanatory.

I have chosen this shot of Angelina Jolie, which is a perfect candidate:

Step 2. New “Color Fill” layer:

Create a new “color fill” layer by clicking Layer>New Fill Layer>Solid Color…

In the box that comes up, set the mode to “Soft Light” and the opacity to around 80% (you can change this at any time later):

Step 3. Make it all pretty and colourful-like:

When you click OK in the previous step, you will be presented with a colour selection box. Pick the colour you want the hair to be (at this stage, the whole image will be washed with that colour, but we will fix that soon).

When you’ve selected a colour, your image should look something like this:

Step 4. The tricky bit:

This is the step that makes the whole thing work. It’s also the hard part.

The “Color Fill 1″ layer that we created in the previous steps has a layer mask on it, which allows parts of the layer (ie, the colour) to be hidden or shown at will. You do this using the paint brush tool and “painting” the mask on. White paint makes the layer visible, black paint makes it invisible.

Press “D” to reset the paint colours to black and white. Select the paint bucket tool and fill the whole canvas with black. This should hide all of the colour fill.

Then, select the paint brush tool. Right-click anywhere on the image to set the paint brush options. Select a basic rounded brush (not one of the fancy-shaped ones) and set the size to something small-ish (10-50 pixels usually). Set the “hardness” slider to 0%.

Now, paint the areas that you want to be coloured (the hair). You can press “X” to switch between black and white so as to get it exactly the way you want it.

And you’re done!

That’s basically it. You should now have something like this:

Optional steps:

To make it look a little less “wow”, but a little more natural, there is one extra step you may like to do.

With the mask still selected, take the brush tool and make it huge (so that the subject’s face sits comfortably inside it). Make sure it is set to Hardness: 0%. Align the brush around the ends of the hair-line (the overhanging bits, the fringe, etc). In this case, around the face. Set the paint colour to black and click once. This will gently fade out the colour slightly to produce a more natural look:

The benefit of this method is that you can easily change the colour of the hair a second time (or third, etc) without re-doing the whole thing. Just double-click on the colour-picker icon on the “Color Fill” layer and choose a new colour. It will be instantly applied.

So that’s it. I’m interested to know what you think. This is my first tutorial, and I have a few more up my sleeve that I may post in the future. Before I do, however, tell me what you think about this one. How can I improve it? More example pics, or less? Go into greater detail about the tools and steps, or should I assume a higher level of knowledge? Or was it so awful that I shouldn’t do any more, ever? Let me know in the comments.

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Tags: photoshop, tutorial

Wednesday, September 26th, 2007 Articles, Pictures

18 Comments to How to: Open a digital barbershop

Sweet. I’m a GIMP user instead of Photoshop, but I think I’ll be able to figure out how to do this. That’s way easier than I expected. If I ever get some chops done, I’ll be sure to post them.

RagManX on September 28th, 2007

Dave on the other hand, is a gimp.

TomHB on October 4th, 2007

Thank you, Thomas, for your ever-enduring support…

Dave on October 4th, 2007

i’m trying to understand that “hard” part but i can’t….. i can’t do it… could u plz, explain me how to finish this??? thnks!

Carlos on October 22nd, 2007

could u plz explain me the hard part.. i can’t understan it

Carlos on October 22nd, 2007

I can try, Carlos, but could you give me a little information about what problem you’re having? Is it something like the mask itself isn’t working, or are you having trouble getting the right areas painted? Or something else?

One thing I can think of off the top of my head is maybe the “layer mask” isn’t selected. In the layers palette, click the mask thumbnail once to select it before you start painting the areas you want (it should be the right-hand thumbnail on the layer).

Dave on October 22nd, 2007

i can’t do the hard part and it looks so easy …can you explain it with more details like to retarded ppl i spent 1 hour and nothin …

Kr on October 25th, 2007

Hmmm… both Carlos and Kr, you sound like you might be having the same issue. I’m having a little trouble understanding what problems you could be having, probably because the instructions make sense to me (…’cause I wrote them…).

One thing I can think of is that maybe your color fill layer is being created without a layer mask for whatever reason. This shouldn’t be happening as far as I know, but it could be I suppose. To manually add a layer mask to the color layer, make sure the correct layer is selected in the palette, then click Layer>Layer Mask>Hide All. This will create a layer mask on the color layer that is already filled with black, and will hide all the added colour. You should then paint over the layer mask with white to reveal the bits you want to see again.

I hope this helps you guys. If you’re still having problems, get back to me on this page again and I’ll see if we can fix this.

Dave on October 25th, 2007

your tutorial is not that so clear, so just like carlos we’re having a problem in understanding it. maybe you forgot something from this turtorial so we are not able to get it. the part on using the brushes in changing the color of the hair. can you do a precise elaboration from that part. thanks!

Starry on October 25th, 2007

The fill part is not working for me. I wash out the photo to the color I want the hair then when I press D nothing seems to happen. Then I select the paint bucket tool and right click on the photo and nothing happens. There must be a missing step, or I am doing something wrong.

olivia on October 26th, 2007

dave man …can you make a small movie tutorial with this and post it on youtube …if it’s not to much to ask

Kr on October 26th, 2007

how do you color the hair???
if you don’t mind sharing some tips…
i’m having trouble finding the paint bucket tool myself… i need to import the picture from ADOBE photoshop to ADOBE image ready

hehehehe

please give me some tips on how to color the layer or hair?

thanks

jerome on November 16th, 2007

When i tried to use the paint bucket to color it black..it only filled a section of the picture…am i stupid?

Stephanie on January 4th, 2008

hello!
i love your tutorial!
\it’s the best.. it’s really clear unlike some of the other tutorials i tried earlier.
thats for this and keep up the good work!