jarl_72 wrote:

http://www.creativepro.com/story/feature/21155.html

robmetfan wrote:

How dificult of a task would it be to take a picture of a brunette friend of mine, and make her blonde?

How long would it take to do something like this? How "real" can it be made to look? Anyone have an example of this sort of thing I can look at?

Lets say its a... 320 X 240 picture, whereas her hair takes up approx. 10-20% of the picture.
Something worth noting, she does't have a digital camera, only a webcam. So the picture's aren't of the best quality to start with. Not sure if that makes it easier (the new hair color doens't have to look as perfect since the original picture isn't of highest quality) or if that makes it harder. She has always wondered what she would look like as a blonde, and
lately she's been acting very "blonde" so I figured I'd see what I can do about making her one. (=

(Yeah I know it's a stereotype... who cares. I'm blonde myself).

Nice idea, but it misses the hardest part - selecting just the hair.

The key there is to take the photo with as much color and lumosity contrast as you can get. Shoot your brunette friend against a light blue or green background. Try to make the lighting as even as possible on the background. Also, do put her too close to the background or the color of it will bleed onto her.

This will make selecting and cutting the background much easier. It still isn't that easy though. Most selection tools have a hard time with partial transparency, which you get with hair. True brunette hair isn't nearly as bad as blond hair, but it is a problem.

The method I find that usually works best is to try different color modes. Look for the most contrast between the hair and everything around it. With my green background, I seem to pick the "a" channel in LAB mode the most. Copy that layer - making an alpha channel.

Then use Levels to increase the contrast as much as possible without completely cutting out the partially transparent areas of the hair. It will take a bit of practice. After this is always takes some additional editing of the alpha channel to select just the hair. I usually just get to work with the brush tool.

I use this method to cut out background and put my digitally created ones in behind.

Clyde

jarl_72

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Changing hair color using photoshop