Professional Hair Processing in Photoshop
Posted by: BRYANCONFIDENTIAL
Via: Photoshop Star
I’m sure you’ve wondered how colored hair always looks so perfect in magazines, even when you know there’s been some tampering with. We’ll I’m in a giving mood, so I thought I’d share with you one way the professionals give that edgy color to otherwise dull hair, with a few clicks of a button.
You’ll need a few things first though. Any version of Adobe Photoshop from CS2 or higher—try grabbing the demo of their latest version here. Once you have Photoshop, grab a picture of a friend that you think would be suitable. Don’t have any friends? Me neither…that’s why I use Google Image search, or feel free to use mine. Open up the picture and move on to the next step.
It’s a great start, but let’s bring some shine to the hair. Select the Dodge Tool (Brush: 100px, Range: Highlights, Exposure: 30%) and color in some highlights, as shown below:

The hair is a little soft in some spots, so select the Sharpen Tool and add in a bit of sharpness where needed:

Now that we have a good canvas, lets throw some paint on it. I prefer to create multiple strands and make them different colors. For this effect use the Polygonal Lasso Tool to create selection, and fill selected area with color of #ef8008 (or a color of your choice) on the new layer.

Create five more selections and fill each of them with different colors (#f51464, #cd1bd4, #416fb4,#41b0b4 and #b1ce06)

Press Ctrl+D/Cmd+D to deselect and apply Filter > Blur > Gaussian Blur with the following presets:

Change layer mode to Overlay:

Next, duplicate current layer by pressing Cmd+J/Ctrl+J and reduce the layers opacity to 20%.

Now that we’re done with the top fringe of the hair, lets move to the lower part of hair. Create a new layer and make a new selection with Polygonal Lasso Tool, then fill this selection with the color #b1ce06.

Add five more lines in similar order and color as used previously.

Select > Deselect and apply Filter > Blur > Gaussian Blur with similar settings to these:

Change layer mode to Soft Light to see your result:

To increase the intensity of color, duplicate layer with Cmd+J/Ctrl+J and set opacity to 60%.

And voila!
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