WANTED: Hair "stylist"

[JShimshak]

I'm almost done with this one, but the blue & yellow spots all over the HAIR are driving me crazy.
I've tried a couple of things, but they weren't working very well.

Anyone have any good tips on fixing the hair?

ORIGINAL PHOTO:


WORKING PHOTO:

I tried to keep this as close to the original as possible. Re-created the background, fixed the skin areas, and re-created the black sweater.

[glennab]

Hi JS

I'd use areas of the hair that are good and clone over the blobs with a relatively small brush (5-7px) at about 80% opacity and contiguous to a good patch of hair, trying to keep a consistent color and direction to the hair around it.  It's possible that you can keep a lot of the strands intact if you clone carefully.  Any place where there wasn't a perfect match, I'd take the smudge tool at 3-4px and possibly 15-20% opacity and blend from the good hair into the questionable areas, following the flow of the hair.

I hope Mary also jumps in to help you, because she does gorgeous hair, and I'd love to know how she does it.

You've done a wonderful job on this lovely young lady!  Nice work.

Glenna

[cmpentecost]

Hi Jeremiah,

I have to agree that hair is probably the hardest part of a restoration, but I think Glenna's tips are about what I'd recommend.  Keeping the direction of the clone or healing brush tool the same as the hair strands is very important.

Make sure that who ever the hair dresser is, that he or she gets tipped well!

Chris

[mschonher]

Hi Jeremiah,

Firstly, you have done a beautiful job on this photo.  I agree with everyone that hair is difficult. I'm going to try to explain as best as I can what I've done to the hair.  I will have further comments on hair in general after I tell you what I did.  So Glenna hang on!

First I fixed the bangs by selecting a similar area to the left of the damage using the lasso tool set to 6 pixels for softness.  I then rotated that selection (edit, transform, rotate)  I tried to get the same angle as the bang I was replacing. Adjust if needed with levels. Sometimes after that level adjustment I drag the layer to the icon to dupe it to make the hair look stronger....if needed.   Flatten.

New layer, clean up the spots with healing brush starting in the dark areas, preserving as much darks as possible.  Use replace and darken when needed. Repeat with the medium and light areas.  Flatten.

Left side of Hair.New layer. Using a small soft brush set to 18% choose a color from the lighter  parts of the hair begin painting in strands and following the natural curves of the hair that's already there. Working on a new layer gives you all the control you need to make any adjustments you might need to the opacity and color.  When it looks pretty good do a gausian blur 2.5 and flatten.  Make a new layer, go back and strengthen some of the areas remember that the strands will be softer at the beginning and ending of the stroke.  An eraser set to 35% makes a great softening tool for this purpose.  Repeat these steps with the mid tones and darks adjusting the opacity of your brush as needed. Flatten.

Right side of hair. I softened the edge by making a selection just outside the edge of the hair. I used the lasso tool with 6 pixels, then moved the selection into the hair to soften it up. Flatten. 
I added some darks by sampling a dark area. Set my brush to 15-20% and did a double 2.5 gausian blur. Adjust opacity if needed. Flatten.  Made a new layer and added some lights to the hair, did a gausian blur and flattened.

As a last step I duped the background 2 times and set one to screen and one to multiply. Set each opacity to 36% then added a hide all layer mask.  I brushed in some lights and mid tones and darks as needed.  You will need to adjust the brushes opacity to 26% for the darks and medium areas and 58% for the lights. Flatten.

I really hope this helps.  If you have any questions at all just ask. 

Mary   :)

[mschonher]

Hi Glenna,

First of all, thanks for the compliment.  I'm glad you like my hair  :crazy:


I hope the explanation I posted gave you some good information that will help with hair. I have just a few comments on why I think hair gives us all so much trouble. I'm going to list what I think is the wrong way to go about hair.  I don't want to tell you or anyone else that their way is wrong if they're getting the results they like.  This is just my method. I don't like the blur or smudge tools at all, they don't give you enough control over your work plus you cannot get a long elegant line with that smudge tool. At least I can't and the hair ends up looking too choppy, especially ladies hair. Using a paint brush and new layer provided me with endless options to redo anything that doesn't look right.

The Gaussian blur and an eraser set low are my good friends when it come to painting hair. I sometimes uses many layers to accomplish the look I'm going after but I flatten between those layers. 

Most of us, myself included, put in too much detail.

It's scary to put in the darks but oh so necessary.  The medium and light areas won't show up unless you have them.

Make sure your edges are soft and if the hair has a lot of wisps like Jeremiah's photo, don't loose them and don"t be afraid to add them is necessary.  You can always soften them.

Don't invent colors if you can at all help it. Always take your samples from the photo. Sometimes it is necessary to lighten or darken the color though.  Click on your sample and move the cursor up or down as needed.

I hope this helps and if you have any questions just ask.  I'm more than happy to share.

Mary

[glennab]

Hi Mary

Thanks for Coiffure 101!  Obviously your method works, because the young woman's hair looks so natural.  I WILL be copying your post into my "HOW TO" folder for future practice and use on the photos.  I'm always happy to learn something that'll make my restorations better, and YOU are definitely the hair guru.

Hugs!

Glenna

[schen]

On a photo where each damage area is small, I use healing brush and sample from another area with similar texture regardless of color or brightness.  Healing brush tries to blend in the color/brightness from the surrounding with new texture.  It does not always work well but most of the time some minor adjustments will fix it.  Worst comes worst, there is always "undo".  When using healing brush, the damage area needs to be completely covered.  Otherwise, it blends in the damages.  If the damage is not isolated enough, I will use clone stamp to create more isolation first.  Occasionally, select-copy-paste-transform-adjustment-merge down is used.  Clone/healing may result in patches with some discontinuity.  I will use smudge tool with very fine diameter to go across the discontinuity along the direction of the hair strand.  I have not learned to paint hair yet.  It is one of the items in my "to do" list.

[klassylady25]

How to "saved" and put in my file.  Thank you for sharing. 

[Mhayes]

Great tips everyone!  The photo looks great!  :up:

I'm glad Mary mentioned the use of the lasso tool as I think it is often overlooked in favor of the clone tool. Not only is it a great tool for repairing the hair, but it's a great choice for repairing plaids and stripes. With the lasso tool, I like to use the short cut keys, since it is so much faster and saves some steps. Starting on a copy of the background, I make a selection with the lasso and then hit Crtl J (Cmd-Mac), which makes a copy of that selection onto its own layer. Next hit the V key (short cut for move) and use the arrow keys to position the selection. The nice part about this is that you will see your selection as a "Transform," which means that you can take your mouse or pen and come around any of the corner squares until you see the double arrow. This will allow you to rotate or even size your selection. Should you want to do an even sizing, hold down the shift key as you pull inward (better to not go much larger). Once you are where you want to be, hit the Enter key to take you out of Transform. If you like what is done, hit the Ctrl E to merge that layer with the one below On plaids and strips the Polygonal Lasso (below reg lasso) gives you a better use of a straight edge. By using the short cut keys you are able to move and transform quickly. If you need something more than rotating or sizing your selection, you can still go up to Edit>transform>choices of skew, distort . . . And as long as you don't hit Enter, you can try different transformations. This is really helpful when you want your selection to wrap.

   
Margie

[schen]

If I may add to Margie's, when the selected area is pasted to a new layer, you can adjust level, color, etc before you merge it down.  The discontinuity between the new layer and the original layer can be healed after merged.  For hair, I usually use smudge with very small diameter.

[mschonher]

Margie and Schen,

These are all good tips for doing hair. Isn't it wonderful that we have so many options?  I'm sure they are all helpful. 

I forgot to mention that I take a slightly different approach to babies' and young children's hair.  Babies have so much scalp showing through it takes a lighter hand.  Actually every head of hear presents it's own challenge. Don't you find that what works great on one photo doesn't necessarily work on another?  I think that's what keeps us all fascinated with this kind of work.

Margie, I really need to learn those shortcuts, what a great time saver!

Mary

[JShimshak]

 :up:
Thanks for all the great tips!
Mary... that hair looks fantastic! Hope I can get it as good as yours.

Jeremiah

[mschonher]

Jeremiah, feel free to us it if you want to.

Mary