Hair Enhancements Tutorial

Hello again . . . this is the second entry in my line of photo enhancement tutorials. Well I'll be beginning where I left off last time with the last tutorials finished product. Break out your photoshop ladies and gentlemen . . . and lets get this show back on the road.

First thing first . . . open a new layer and label it "Hair" or something else that brings that to mind. Anyway . . . this tutorial is rather simple so I won't be explaining ever single step that I followed but I think it is good enough that you should be able to follow along.

Once you have the layer labeled hair get out a soft brush and use a bright color . . . in my case I used yellow. With the brush brush out a few lines that follow the contours of your subjects hair. Like the image below.

- Follow the natural lines -

Alright . . . once you have that done . . . change the layer blend to "Hue". This should make the bright lines in your models hair look more natural . . . but it also probably made it kinda disappear. Anyway . . . from there go to (Image>Adjustments>Hue/Saturation) and play around with the settings with "Colorize" Selected until you have something that you believe you can live with . . . and looks really good and natural. Like so . . . 

- Play to make it darker -

Alright . . . at this point your highlights should be looking much more natural. Play around with them to make the highlights look darker . . . In an ideal world the highlights should match the eyes and hair . . . making them pop rather then distracting from them . . . but it is your picture so do what you think feels and look good.

Alright . . . for the touching up . . . If your picture has sharp lines where the highlights meet your models hair at this point . . . go to (Blur>Gaussian Blur) and play around with this until it blends to hair and highlights together. If after you use the Gaussian Blur tool the highlights spill over to somewhere you don't like use the eraser tool with the opacity and flow turned down low and touch it up as needed.

- Play with it ! ! ! -

At this point you should just play with the image to get the look you want . . . Here is my final image.

- For Comparison -

Basic Photoshop Tutorial

Okay all you photoshop beginners out there . . . I'll be slowly adding basic body enhancement tutorials over the coming months. They'll go from very basic to the more complex complete body make-over type tutorial. The first tutorial I'll be posting tonight will be a very basic beginner level tutorial showing you how to change the eye color of a person very quickly.

Starting Image

Alright . . . let's get started. First thing . . . get the image that you're going to be using in the tutorial . . . any good image with the eyes showing clearly will do. Now open up Photoshop, and create a new layer called "eyes". The new layer is so we won't edit the original image . . . and only overlay onto it. Anyway . . . zoom in on the eyes and lets get this eye changing show on the road.

- Example -

Alright . . . yours should look something like mine at this point . . . opened and zoomed in on one of the eyes with a new layer created that you'll be working on. (Note: I usually have another "window opened so I can see how my changes are affecting my work. Do this by clicking "Window > Arrange > New Window" in photoshop).

Alright . . . now select around the one eye with the Elliptical Marquee Tool making sure to get the entire iris when you do so . . . don't worry about it being neat at this point . . . you'll be correcting it later. Now scroll over to the other eye and hold shift while you select the other eye's iris. At this point both eyes should be selected and we should be ready to move onto the next step.

- At this point -

Now that you have both the eyes selected . . . find a color that you would like the person to have. I used a light green color because it would highlight the girl's natural skin color and hair color. Anyway . . . now that you have the color you want . . . select the paint bucket and fill in the eyes. It should look something like the image below at this point.

- Eyes Filled In -

Now that you have the eyes filled in . . . add a layer mask. This is where you'll be doing the bulk of the little amount of work that goes into this basic but nice effect. Lower the opacity down to around 15 or less and select a small brush and make sure black is the foreground color. Now make sure the layer-mask is selected and slowly work around the eyes removing the excess green that is around the iris . . . and make sure to remove the green covering the pupil. Keep doing this until you have something that looks like the image below.

- Coming Together -

Alright . . . at this point your picture should be mostly complete . . . all that is left to do really is touch up the edges around the eye to make sure they look as real as possible . . . you can play with the blending mode to see if this helps your image out any. Also you can quickly change the color by going to (Image>Adjustments>Hue/Saturation) and play around with settings. Here's my completed image.

- Subtle is Best -

Best of Wishes and more stuff to come ! ! ! Subscribe to my RSS feed to get know when a new tutorial has been added to this series.

Thoughts

Well . . . I do believe that I might be placing tender on a former fiery passion of mine, and that is the investigation of diseases. Granted this isn't a formal thing or anything . . . my investigating is more of the reading type . . . so don't expect any pictures of dying disease ridden children.

Starting back on my path of reading up on various ills befalling the beloved human race . . . the first book I investigated was "The Hot Zone" by the genius author Richard Preston  . I've had previous exposure to Richard Preston before with a book that he actually wrote after "The Hot Zone" named Cobra Event - Which I'd recommend to anyone -.

So far the books main focus is filoviruses. This would include such virues as Marburg and the Ebola virus which has received much attention in recent years due to the gruesome nature by which it kills it victims. I'll add more details when I've finished the book . . . and I'll give a complete review.

Call of Duty IV

Well . . . I just went back and played around on Call of Duty IV: Modern Warfare for awhile, and remembered . . . GOD THAT GAME IS BEAUTIFUL. Everything about it is awesome. The missions, the gameplay, the shooting, the sounds, the level of intensity . . . I mean running along you can see all kinds of fighting in the distance . . . the explosions all around you . . . it makes you feel like you're in a real war-zone. A bit of advice to anyone who hasn't played it . . . Do So Now ! ! !

1:09 AM and Nothing to do

Well . . . it is currently 1:09 AM on a Sunday night (it isn't the next day until I wake up or the Sun is showing) and I have little if anything to do. I'm checking out the net . . . mostly reading through political articles and such. I'm actually thinking about popping open Microsoft Reader, and reading abit on a book or two.

Peace