Wide's World

Hair Salon

by

Widearea

Porno-Graphix

Replacing Hair Color

This week we will open up our own hair salon using some basic image editing principles to replace the hair color on our adult content. You can easily change a brunette to a redhead, or go for that new wave style with almost any color you choose to use.

The Tools

In past episodes of Wide's World, we have discussed making selections using the bezier tool. That is the most accurate way to create masks and selections of images, but this week we'll use the more easy polygonal lasso tool. It is there on the second row of the toolbar on the left side, just below the crop tool. Simply click, hold and select the lasso tool's icon to switch from the toolbar's default lasso tool to the polygonal lasso tool.

Getting out the hair dye

1. Select File -> Open and locate the image you wish to work with. Straight hair is easier than curly hair. The more intricate the model's hair, the more difficult it is to select the hair from the image with the lasso tool. Try beginning with an image where you know you can draw a complete loop one time around to make the entire selection, then move on to wild hair waving in the wind.

2. Use the zoom tool and enlarge the image enough to easily draw around the hair, like about 600%. Click on the toolbar pallette to select the polygonal lasso tool. Click on any origin point, then move your cursor to another point and click once to connect the two. You will see the lasso tool work for you. Continue in this fashion until your selection is made. When you reach the first origin, the lasso tool will change to an icon with a circle, and then you can simply click again to complete the loop. Your selection will show a marquee with those wild dancing ants.

3. Create a new layer on top of your image by clicking the "New layer" icon at the bottom of the layer pallette window, or select Layer -> New and choose "New Layer" from the pulldown menu.
4. With the new layer active, select Edit -> Feather and choose a feather value, like 2.
5. Select Edit -> Fill and fill the feathered selection with a bright color for the model's new hair. We used red/purple for the wild fun of it. This will look terrible, but when we make some adjustments everything will come into view.
6. In the layer pallete window, try selecting "Soft Light" from the pulldown menu at the pallete top, and experiment with the opacity slider to its right.

7. In many cases this will actually achieve the final result we're looking for, but if your content image is of poor resolution and quality, you may need to make further adjustments to get the desired effect.
8. If this is necessary, try adjusting the layer's hue/saturation/lightness by selecting Image -> Adjust and choose "Hue/Saturation..." from the toggle menu, bringing up the HSL pallette. Play with the sliders or values until you get excited. Note, you can also play around with the color balance by choosing "Color Balance" from the same toggle menu!

9. Save your work. See our asian model with purple hair?

The methods for achieving any effect in an imaging program is really a question of finding what works for you best, and often this will depend on the raw data contained in your image. All images vary differently depending on the environment under which the shoot took place, as well as other factors like the equipment used and the many methods for handling digital images in post-production. For the new webmaster, these are simply elements beyond our control. These variables will always be different for every image you have to deal with. Many times the method described in steps 1-6 will suffice. You can even try just doing step 1-3 and then skip right to step 8. But as in any aspect of life and work, knowledge is surely power. So this week we've learned a couple of different ways to do achieve same effect. I am quite sure there are many other ways to do the same thing, and the key in being a good digital artist/monkey is to experiment always and to simply strive for the desired effect. It doesn't ultimately matter how you get there! Well, thanks for coming by this week and until next time, Happy Webmastering!

Reference/Useful Links

SIGGRAPH - Organization for the dissemination of graphics and interactive techniques.
Janee's PS Tutorials - More stuff to learn.
Two Retards - Retards Inside, just laugh dammit!