the Hair
page 1
Using the same practice image and the same file.
Using the same practice image and the same file.
load the work image of the head, duplicate the layer and hide the original. Rename the dupe layer 'hair' and moce it to the top of the layers.
using whatever means you choose (I used the magic wand selector tool), remove the parts of the face.
to check, make the ears, face, face shadings, head and neck layer visible but keep the hair layer as the avtive layer. Now you have a guideline of what you want for the placement of the hair . . . .
use the color picker to pick up a medium color from the hair color, add a new layer and flood fill with that color. You can see by the layer pallette that the new layer is above the hair layer.
make the new layer invisible, activate the hair layer . . . use the color picker to select a dark area of the hair, then using the magic wand set to a tolerance of 30, click in the dark area of the hair.
unhide and activate the layer you painted; (make a floodfill on the same layer or add a new layer for the darker area; I chose to add another layer because they are easy to merge if I'm not happy with the appearance) floodfill the selection with the darker color.
hide the added layers and activate the hair layer again; using magic wand, set tolerance to 20 and click in light areas of hair (if the are mor light areas, hold down the shift key while making additional clicks - reduce tolerance if necessary so it isn't picking up all but the dark; use the color picker to select a dark area of the hair, click on top layer (I added yet another new layer for the lighter hair color) and flood fill with light color.
unhide the haircolor layers and see if you are happy with the color choices . . . now I see in mine that the dark color is TOO dark to suit me; since I used seperate layers, it's an easy job to activate the layer for the dark color, select it and change the color by what ever means I prefer.
selected layer, selected all and floated, flooded with new color
Now that you have your base for your hair, you can merge the hair layers into one layer and name it hair color; make all other layers invisible before merging the haircolor layers . . . from here until the strands are in place, there are a lot of personal preferences in tools and how to apply the hair; but to assist you, with the hair color layer active, copy/paste the layer to a nre image for a color map to pick colors from. You might want to save it in case you loose patience in the fine tuning of the hair and decide to give it up for a day or too - now is the time to save your main image also.
As much as I hate to say this, there is no EASY way to do hair and make it look realistic! Hair strands are time consuming and totally dependent on how much time you want to spend on your project.
There are hair brushes but the strands never run the direction you wnat them to go, so is better to make your own per image you are working on; but for beginners, this might seem a little awsome; this is an example of hair made using brushes I created (not for this image)
you need a new layer to accomplish this, you alternate between the haicolors you chose and the brushes to cover the hair area and then use the eraser to shae the hair (did not shape it here), apply more brushes (I move them in small circular strokes to get the color depth with the medium color and then use the light and darker colors to create the strands appearance).
Here it is with a little reaser shaping . . .
and here are the brushes for PSP8 & 9
and here are the brushes for PSP6 & 7
This is a technique where you use a dot hair brush to paint in the hair by changing colors and just applying stroke after stroke . . .
I didn't do a very good job since I was in a hurry - hair takes time and patience! But, I think you can see the difference; the hair strands brushes make a much finer hair (fineness depends on size of brush) while the dot brush gives more control if you can drag a smooth stroke which isn't easy using an optical mouse with no mouse pad help the tracking.
I'm not going to do one using custom built hair brushes for this image because it's just too time consuming. There are other means - wig tubes made by others and strand tubes - when used, changing the color may not be a pleasant experience but it'll work if you want to fight it.
left to right . . . hair strands brush, dot hair brush, both . . .
whichever way you go, after the hair is applied and you are happy with it, you have one step left to give it contour; using the darken/lighten brush in PSP8 & 9, or the smudge brush with the lighten setting in PSP 6 & 7, brush through the hair in curved strokes just in a few places to add jighlight to the hair.
Hair strand tubes I've made - you will have to colorize them to get the color you want.
Tutorial by CSGreen
12-16-2002
