Basic Hair Tutorial
Post work hair in 10 easy
steps...
CREDITS
Adobe Photoshop brushes for this tutorial are compliments of Bloodsong and can be downloaded from the following link: http://www.dazedgraphics.com/tutorial/hairy.zip Thanks Bloodsong! These brushes are awesome!
Model is Sakura by Syyd Raven
TOOLS
Hardware: I use a Wacom tablet with the standard stylus on an 800 MHz Pentium III with 256 megabytes of RAM. I imagine that this tutorial can be done with a mouse, but it was written using a tablet. If you use a mouse and this tutorial was helpful, let me know.
Software: I used Poser and Photoshop 6.0 for this tutorial. However, the tutorial can be done in any version of Photoshop.
This process I outlined can vary from image to image and I often use different techniques to achieve different results...
This is just to give you a very basic idea on how I create hair in Photoshop. Ok, let's get started!
Step 1
One of the tricks that I learned while doing hair is bigger is better. The size of the images I use average between 1600X1600 to 2400X2400. This allows you to concentrate on the hair detail. The image we are using is a small part of an image that was rendered in 2000X2000.
Bring in your rendered, bald character into Photoshop. If you want to follow along with the tutorial, just right click on the picture below to save in and open it in Photoshop.
Step 2
Set the color to a fairly dark, neutral color. Don't worry if it is not exactly the color you want for the character, you can correct this later. For this image, I used a dark brown. In this image her hair is going to fall across her face and hang to the left, so I picked the Airbrush tool and set the pressure to about 25% to 35% and selected this brush.
Okay, so create a new layer and name it hair, then using the Airbrush, draw the general shape of your hair. Use long, sweeping strokes for the best results. You can alternate between angled brushes, depending on the direction and flow of the hair.
Step 3
Select the Dodge and Burn tool, I tend to leave it at the default setting, then select this brush.
Create some highlights. Use long strokes and follow the flow of the hair.
Step 4
Now switch to the burn tool and create some shadows in the hair. For best results, burn your shadows, close to the highlights.
After you created some shadows, we are going to "Brush" some detail into the hair by using this brush as if we were brushing her hair.
Alternate between the dodge and burn tool. This will give the appearance of individual hairs. Again, and most importantly, is the make sure that your strokes follow the natural flow of the hair...
Step 5
Let's clean up the hair a little... using the Smudge tool (pressure between 30% and 50%) and the brush below and gently smoothed out rough spots and blend the hair line. I know this sounds like a broken record, but make sure that your strokes follow the natural flow of the hair... (are you getting sick of that yet?)
Step 6
Now we return to the Airbrush and we are going to draw single strands of hair to create more highlights and shadows. This will also allow us to shape the hair a little more.
Let's draw some highlights first...
Set the pressure on the airbrush between 15% and 20% (you will have to gauge the best results for you style and tablet) and select a small, hard brush. I prefer the 3 point hard brush that comes with Photoshop. Now, select a color using the Color Picker tool that is several shades lighter that the brightest highlight. and draw some individual hair strands...
When your done, set the pressure on the airbrush between 7% and 15% (again, you will have to gauge the best results for you style and tablet) and using the same brush, select a color using the Color Picker tool that is same shade as the darkest hairs and draw some individual hair strands, paying more attention to where hair falls on the characters face...
Step 7
Now that we have created shape, highlights, shadows, smoothed it out and created individual strands, we need to color our characters hair. Since we created a separate layer, we can use either the Color Balance, Select Color or Hue/Saturation Tool and adjust the hair color on that layer, without effecting the entire image... You can literally select make the hair any color you want.
Here are a couple of examples of alternative hair colors using each of the tools I mentioned...
But this is what I settled on... I know, kind of boring, but it works for me... I used the Hue/Saturation tool and made the hair just a touch more red and darkened it just a touch.
Step 8
We are just about done. I went back to Step 6 and add some more light and dark hair strands, then I went back to Step 3 and just added just a couple of highlights and finished of by going back to Step 5 and doing a little cleanup on the ends of the hair. Remember (how could you forget at this point?) to make sure that you follow the natural flow of the hair...
Step 9
This is one of those things that I had to learn the hard way... creating shadows where the hair covers the models face. I used to do this after I flattened the hair onto the character, but the easier way is to create a new layer under the hair layer and name it Hair Shadow. Use the color picker and find an existing shadow on your character and select that color. Make sure you are still on the "Hair Shadow" layer, select the Airbrush tool (pressure between 10% and 20%), select a fairly large brush with a soft edge and draw a shadow underneath the hair that follows the flow of the hair...
Step 10
There really isn't a Step 10, I just want to tell you to play around with this and don't get discouraged if it doesn't work exactly the same for you. Experiment! Use this as a starting point to create your own method for drawing hair.
Final Image after a couple of filters...
Good Luck and let me know if this has helped you