How can you become an admin? What are the requirements?
keditors will open again soon and will accept new editors and admins. the requirements for editors are always the same: being a super cool editor with lots of talent and ideas! the requirements for admins are similar but we’re also looking for nice people; with time to dedicate to this network and its members; with lots of love and passion to share. people who hate on other groups are not accepted, they’re toxic. if you have other questions, please don’t be shy and ask! - daenso
hair coloring tutorial by porkdo-bi requested by lovely anon
Hey guys! As promised to the anon who messaged me weeks ago, i’m gonna make a tutorial on how to change dark hair to lighter colors. This is actually very difficult, given the fact that I never really edit hair colors, plus turning dark to light and keeping it natural is something that is really hard to achieve. But I tried and I somewhat got a nice result by playing with settings after I watched I few tutorials. You can check this awesome hair coloring tutorial video I watched if you want to (credits to Phlearn). It’s actually better than this, the only difference is I’m trying to make it look pastel-ish. I’m gonna end my note here cause it’s very long already. But this tutorial is longer trust me.
Let’s start!
1. First, open you image on it’s full size. If you want to change a photo’s hair color, choose a photo that has a very detailed hair. Detailed as in you can see the strands properly. If you use HQ images, there’s a huge chance for you to make it look close to natural.
So i’m gonna use this photo.
As you can see it’s not that HQ but the details of the hair is good. Also, the hair is kinda brownish and not black. I haven’t tried practicing on black hair yet because it’s more difficult to make it look natural. You can use this to practice on it since I’m gonna post the settings of the adjustment layers I’ll ad as well.
Again, open your image on it’s full size. I start off by lightening the hair using the dodge tool. I use a soft-edge brush (the size of a coin) and set the opacity to 20-35. Now, make sure to lighten it but keep it look natural, if you brushed it over and over the photo will be ruined. Brush it twice at most and trice to the darker areas. We only want to show more detail so don’t over lighten it.
Or, use a curve layer. Just don’t lighten it too much!
This is how mine looks like after adding a curve layer on top of it. Make sure to use layer mask if you use curves.
2. The next thing I do is create a layer mask. (If you have other ways on creating a layer mask or selecting the hair then skip this part).To see the area I’m selecting properly, I add a Curve layer on top of the image and drag the curve up. Then, I select the layer mask and click ctrl+i to inverse the layer mask the I get my brush tool and paint the hair with white.
3. IMPORTANT: CREATE A GROUP AND MOVE THE LAYER MASK THERE. Just drag the layer mask to the group. After that, to make the selection look better, apply gaussian blur. The setting depends upon the photo. I think around 1.0 to 2.0 is fine,.
4. Add a Selective color layer and set the layer to Color. I’m gonna make it pinkish so I’m gonna make it red first. If you want to try a different color, make sure to use a base color that matches the final color you want. Example, if you want to get a light blue color, make the hair color look blue first, if you want pink then use red.
Here how’s mine looks like and my settings.
*now if you just want to change the hair color and not make it lighter you can stop here. To finalize the look thou, flatten the image, find the light source to know where the shadows should be and burn those areas (further explanation below on step 12), resize it to your liking (540 or 268), then apply your sharpening and coloring. If you want to lighten it thou continue until the end of the tutorial.
5. Add a curve layer to lighten it again. Like before dont lighten to much. Make sure it wont ruin the photo when you lighten it. Settings and how it looks are below.
6. Add a selective color layer again and play with the neutrals and the red and magenta (since im making it pink i will adjust the settings of the red and magenta areas of the photo, if you are changing it to different color choose the matching color of the color you like) to lessen the black areas of the hair and to lighten the color more. Again, don’t over do it or it will look awkward and unnatural. Settings and how it looks below.
7. Add highlights. I do it by adding a new layer, getting my brush tool (soft-edge) and setting the flow to 40-60. I choose light color (pink for this one) to make some parts lighter. Then I set the layer as Lighten. Area where I wanted to lighten, before and after
Then to blend it more properly to the photo, I adjust the Underlying layer on the Blending option. I adjust the arrows to separate them by holding Alt while dragging.
8. More lightening. I use Levels this time. I adjust the Red instead of the RGB.
9. Hue/Saturation layer. I adjusted the Master and the Red to get the color I like.
10. Darkening areas. I do this because sometimes some areas turn gray or lighten too much so I add a new layer paint it darker shade of pink/red using a soft edge (and 40-60 flow) brush then setting that layer to Color again. Then adjust the Underlying Layer again.
*You can stop from here (do the flatten and burn thing to finalize) if you get the color you like. In my case im not satisfied yet so I added the following adjustment layers.
Selective color
Levels
Here’s how it looks after the extra adjustments I made.
11. Once done and satisfied with the color flatten the image.
12. Add shadows. On photo the light comes from the front so the sides should be burned (Burn tool, soft edge brush, opacity 10-15) to avoid making the photo look flat. Also, apply burn on the dark parts too. For my example here are the areas that needs some burning.
13. Resize your image to your liking (if it’s to be posted on tumblr then make sure it’s 540 or 268 px) then apply your sharpening and coloring/psd (if you want to) and you’re done!
Here’s my final output!
There you go. I know it still looks awkward but I can’t lighten it more plus you have to match the color of the hair to the lighting of the place (whether it’s indoor or outdoor or at night or day). Just play with the adjustment layers (specifically selective color) to get what you want but make sure to keep them natural.
To the anon who requested this, I’m sorry it took me so long! This is not my kind of editing so it’s hard for me but I enjoyed doing it so I hope this helped.
