How to Change your hair color

That’s right you can go blond in just a few steps. In this tutorial I’m going to show how to change a Dark hair color into a Blond and then red-haired and even blue!

You can star using this picture or just use any pic you like. Of course the values I’m going to set are for this picture. If you use your own maybe you have to change the settings a little.

The first thing to do is to select the hair. Use any methos of masking that works for you. In this case I use a Quick Mask, because I think is fast a efficient for hair. You will find it at the bottom of the tools panel or just hit Q.

Grab the Brush tool and select Black as you’re foreground Color. Use a Soft brush and start painting the hair. Yes, it’s red. Don’t Panic, it’s red because it’s a mask.

Once we cover the hair just hit Q or click once again on the icon I’ve showed before. You’ll get a mask like this:

As you can see the mask is selecting everything but the hair. We need to invert the selection. To do this go to Select > Inverse or just Hit Ctrl + Shift + i.

Now we copy the selection and paste it in a new layer.

Now with this new layer is that we start working. First of all we need to create an adjustment layer. We’ll use Color Balance. So click no the half filled icon on the bottom part of the layers panel and choose color balance.

Ok, now this adjustment layer is on top of the two other layers but we don-t want to modify the original, only adjust the one with the hair. To do this we need to convert our adjustment layer into a clipping mask. Just click on de Adjustment layer, go to Layer > create clipping mask and that’s it. You should get this on you layers panel:

Now Double click on the half filled icon you have on the layer and use these settings:

Now you see that the color is getting lighter but to get blond we need more than this. So let’s create a new adjustment layer. This time we’ll use selective color. Do the same you did with the previous Adjustment Layer and make it a clipping mask.

Selective color works for adjusting the colors one by one. We’ll start with red, which is the first by default.

Now select color: Yellow from the dropdown menu in the upper part.

Last we’re going to modify the Black color.

And we’re done! No, not quite yet. Change the hair layer’s blend mode to Screen. Now We’re done!

Your image should look like this:

DIFFERENT COLORS

RED:

If you want to get the hair red, just delete the  Selective color adjustment layer. Open once again the Color Balance Layer and use these settings. (If you starting with a new image you just add a color balance adjustment layer)

Of course it will vary from pic to pic so, have fun and try until you get what you’re looking for.

MAGENTA:

We do this with the color Balance layer. Use these settings:

BLUE:

Open the Color Balance layer and set these values:

Add a Selective color Adjustment layer. Select the color blue and set these values:

now choose Cyan color:

And that’s it. You can try different colors like green or orange, just vary the settings using color balance and selective color.

Hope you’ve enjoyed this tutorial. Show me how it worked for you!

If you want to be up-to-date with new tutorials coming out you can follow me on twitter @violettuts or just check the facebook fan page.

See ya!

Violet.

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