Hair textures help!

[Karmarie Zar]

I'm looking to update Karmarie's hair to make it more realistic, anybody got any ideas on how to do so? or even any video tutorials ?

[Elensa Jari]

Grab yourself a set of proper Photoshop brushes for hair, use a white brush to clear out your current hair image, then draw from there - use a single solid colour first, then use black to touch up and add volume/shadows.

[Athan Marr]

Now how do you do what you just said, lol?

[Karmarie Zar]

I'm in the process of doing it now, but Elensa if you got skype and could possibly run it through with me?

[Elensa Jari]

You can start by downloading something like these:

http://all-free-download.com/photoshop- ... oshop.html

Once you've got them, you'll have a .abr file - this is a Photoshop brush file. When you open up Photoshop, your tool bar with have a brush tool - on mine, it's the 8th icon down on the bar on your left. Click on that, then go up to the main tool bar, where you'll see a circular brush icon with a number attached to it - this shows you the brush shape and size. Click the arrow next to it and a small menu will appear. Next to the font size number on that menu is a second arrow: click that, then press "Replace Brushes". A menu will open up allowing you to navigate - use this to locate the .abr file and load it.

From there, you'll have a new list of brushes, all designed for adding hair. Pick your hair colour from the RGB menu, create a new layer (using Layer > New Layer), and make sure the brush is set to normal. From there, paint onto your blank canvas to create your hair. Once you've done this, change the brush colour to black and repeat the process (but not dragging the brush - use simple clicks!) - this will add darker highlights to the hair so that the edges become visible.

Honestly, though, I *really* suggest you spend a few hours playing around with the brush features. They're super useful. Patterns are also pretty handy, as is the Clone Tool, but those are different features you might not have tried just yet. Give it a go, and let me know how you're doing with it.

[Elensa Jari]

Oh, on thinking about it, the other way to do it: find someone with hair that you like, then use the clone tool to move it onto your image. Here's how:

1) Roughly copy the hair you're wanting to use. That's a simple select > copy > paste job. Paste this into your skin image as a new layer.

2) Click on the Clone Tool. This sits a few icons down below the brush tool.

3) Select the layer of your chosen hair, then press alt and click on the area you wish to 'clone'.

4) Select your hair layer and use normal clicks/drags to 'clone' the hair of your chosen image onto it. That way, you'll get identical textures placed onto your skin. Works beautifully with facial textures too, for reference!

[Karmarie Zar]

Thanks! And I just got a bunch of patterns now too...l