I’ve been asked to do a tutorial on how to change hair colour, although I think it is pretty simple for anyone that has spent half an hour on Photoshop. There are also a variety of different methods out there, I’ll show you my way.

For this tutorial I used the wonderful image from Darnara-Stock, you can find it here. This is what we’ll be making:

Step 1

Open up the image and duplicate the layer (Layer>Duplicate Layer). On the new layer, make a selection round the hair with whatever tool you want, lasso tool, polygonal lasso tool, magnetic lasso tool, elliptical marquee tool or rectangular marquee tool. I usually work with the magnetic lasso tool and then refine the edges with the lasso tool. The most important step is this one, so spent some good amount of time to make a good selection!

Step 2

Make a layer mask from the selection. To do so go to Layer>Layer Mask>Reveal Selection. Then duplicate the layer again and hide the layer beneath it. This is for protection measures. If you can’t see the window below press F7.

Step 3

With the visible layer selected, go to Image>Adjustments>Color Balance. The reason why I don’t use Hue/Saturation is because color balance gives me more options and colour combinations. In the color balance window you can see three sliders, and some additional options below them. You have to experiment a bit to understand how color balance works.

Note: your version may vary from mine, I use Photoshop CS4, don’t worry, the effect is the same.

Step 4

After you have played with color balance and achieved your desired results, click “ok”. You should have a similar image with the one below. If you want to make an exact replica, I used: 0 0 +60 on midtones.

Step 5

Ok after I changed the colour I see that there are sections that should be coloured but they’re not. Damn that first step, I should have put some more effort in it!

Don’t worry we can fix it! Make sure you have the layer mask selected and with a white colour brush paint the parts that didn’t get coloured. In the same way if you went over some other parts that isn’t hair, paint with a black colour brush!

I paid more attention to details and refined the edges using the brush.

That is pretty much it! Easy eh?

Then you can add more colours or do whatever you want, the possibilities are endless! Just duplicate the coloured hair layer and change the colour. Then paint over the mask with a black or a white colour.

If you feel that it needs more saturation, just go to Layer>New Adjustment Layer>Hue/Saturation and boost up the saturation. Then you can add a vignette as well if you want.

By the way, this works for full coloured photos, not only black and white images!

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