In this quick tip, I will show you how to easily isolate hair in Photoshop. This technique can be used to create a mask for your subject’s hair, which can then be used to apply different color treatments, or even to create a completely new hairstyle!
First, open your image in Photoshop. Create a new layer above your background layer by clicking on the “Create a new layer” icon at the bottom of the Layers panel.
Select the Brush tool from the Toolbox, and choose a soft-edged brush from the options bar. Set your Foreground color to black, and begin painting over the areas of your image that contain hair.
As you paint, you will notice that the brush strokes become harder to see. This is because the brush is creating a “clipping mask” for the layer below it.
A clipping mask is an invisible boundary that allows you to edit only the pixels within that boundary. In this case, we are using the clipping mask to edit only the pixels on the layer below that contain hair.
Now that we have isolated the hair, we can apply any number of color treatments or styles. For this example, I will simply change the Hue/Saturation of the hair.
To do this, select the “Hue/Saturation” Adjustment Layer from the “Create new fill or adjustment layer” icon at the bottom of the Layers panel. Clip this layer to the layer below it by clicking on the “Clip to Layer” button at the bottom of the Properties panel.
Now adjust the Hue slider to change the color of your subject’s hair. You can also experiment with different colors by clicking on the “Colorize” checkbox.
Conclusion:
In Photoshop, there are many ways you can isolate hair. This quick tip showed you one way to do it using a clipping mask.
You can also use other methods such as selections or channels. Experiment with different techniques until you find one that works best for your particular image and desired result.
