Can Hair be Virtually Dyed?

lifeinfocus

I am playing with a photo of myself just to gain more experience using Photoshop and Portrait Professional.

It started me thinking, can hair be virtually dyed? - I would like to make my hair a little more silver or for the fun it go back to when my hair was a Polish brown color.

Any ideas, directions, tutorials, pointers?

Thanks, Phil

lifeinfocus

Added a little color using Portrait Pro
I tried hair control in Portrait Pro and was able to add a little color and smooth out the hair.

But I would like a little more control. Any ideas.

pathfinder

Depends on how easy it is to select only the hair, how much contrast there is between your hair and its surroundings in the image.

If you change the hair color, will you also have to change the color of the eyelashes and eye brows also??? Probably if it is going to look correctly. Maybe with grey you can fudge a bit, but my eye brows have flecks of brown, blonde, and grey in them, so which should it be converted to.

If you can select hair neatly, you can alter it. Selections of hair, and not scalp may be challenging to achieve.

Frequently selections can be done easier in a single channel like R, G, B or even a or b in Lab. I don't think you can will be able to just paint a selection with Quick Mask and the brush tool; I think you will need more selectivity than that. Brown hair may show up better in the red or the yellow channels....

Also depends on how closely the image will be examined - a large print up close, or an avatar for the web...

I have no experience with Portrait Pro.

lifeinfocus

Thanks Pathfinder
Thanks for your thoughts Pathfinder,

I know it won't be easy, but I suspect it will be highly desirable for older folks who seem the least happy about having their photos taken, at least that is my experience.

Peano

I used a curves adjustment layer and a B&W adjustment layer (in Photoshop). Also painted with white just a touch on a blank layer in overlay mode.



To darken, I used two hue/sat adjustment layers, both with "colorize" ticked. One layer in normal mode, the second in multiply mode.

lifeinfocus

Peano, thanks for the samples and processes. I think am 10 years younger, well at least in print.

Ah, the beauty of digital photography.

Peano

lifeinfocus wrote: »

Ah, the beauty of digital photography.

Did you say beauty? Yes, indeed, we can go in that direction, too ...

lifeinfocus

Peano wrote: »

Did you say beauty? Yes, indeed, we can go in that direction, too ...

Oh, my sons are gonna love this.

idiotabroad

Thank you for my daily laugh.