Digital Photography » Photo Retouch

Adding Hair Color Highlights to Your Photo

How to apply streaks of color to the person's hair using Photoshop.

1. Open the photo that has the person's hair in Photoshop you want to add highlights to.

2. Click from the "Standard Mode" into the "Quick Mask Mode".

3. Select black from the "Swatches Palette" and use an appropriate sized brush and paint over the person's hair in the photo (when you are in Quick Mask Mode, the brush will paint a transparent red). I used a "Hard Round 3 Pixel" brush and just clicked over the hair where I wanted the highlight. By clicking on the hair with the "Brush Tool", you will still have some original color come through which makes the highlights more realistic.

4. Click from the "Quick Mask Mode" into the "Standard Mode".

5. Now click on Select > Inverse and you should now have only the hair selected in your photograph.

6. Click on Image > Adjustments > Hue/Saturation to make adjustments.

7. Adjust the Hue/Saturation slider to get various colors for the hair. I set the Hue to [-64] and the Saturation to [+34] for the example below.

8. Your new hair color highlights will appear as the Angelina Jolie photograph below.

Last update: 2007-08-03 23:39
Author: Gary Logsdon
Revision: 1.0

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