remove very dark arm hair

[cory5000]

hello, i've looked this up but don't think anyone has done an example on hair this dark and close up. any suggestions to making this better? i want to make the hair either blonde or disappear. thanx -cory

[secretagents]

Can you post a pic please.

Making hair disappear should not be too difficult I guess, making it blond from dark might be a bit more difficult/challenging.

[cory5000]

here's the photo. removing the hair would be better anyway. ive spent two days trying to fix this. any help would be grateful. thanx for reply

[Insensitive.]

ouch......

[santajuana]

I've done this about a week ago, I created a soft light 50% grey layer at 25% opacity and painted hair by hair with white at 100% opacity, I used a tablet to be precise.

[amica999]

Nice result, santajuana...

[santajuana]

thanks!

[skauskas]

Originally Posted by santajuana

I've done this about a week ago, I created a soft light 50% grey layer at 25% opacity and painted hair by hair with white at 100% opacity, I used a tablet to be precise.

what was your flow settings for a brash?

[santajuana]

the brush was 100% opacity and 100% flow, the soft light layer opacity at 25% gives me the control over the hairs, you could try using diferent % of flow but the hair of that lady was very dark so i used 100% flow.

[stosh7]

This one took about 5 minutes .. and no painstaking brushing.

• Rough slelction of the arms
• Copy to new layer
• Full noise reduction with Imagenimic noise filter
• Erase the hands to bring back detail

What do you think?

[jam1212]

Originally Posted by stosh7

This one took about 5 minutes .. and no painstaking brushing.

• Rough slelction of the arms
• Copy to new layer
• Full noise reduction with Imagenimic noise filter
• Erase the hands to bring back detail

What do you think?

I'm afraid that doesn't quite do it for me. Notice how the dark hairs just turn into gross smudges. This is one area where painstaking brushing is absolutely required to get any sort of acceptable result.

[Daviskw]

Below is another version where I just lightened the hair not remove it.

I used a selection and a texture to add to a layer blurred with the median filter.

Then adjusted opacity and sharpened the arm area.

Another quick way

Butch

[chillin]

Do Dodge & Burn

[Kraellin]

airbrush, gaussian blur, add noise, smudge.

[Daviskw]

That looks good craig

Butch

[skauskas]

Originally Posted by santajuana

the brush was 100% opacity and 100% flow, the soft light layer opacity at 25% gives me the control over the hairs, you could try using diferent % of flow but the hair of that lady was very dark so i used 100% flow.

probably.. because I used 100% flow and the hair become some kind of grey but not disappear.. the color of the hair is blond.. but it's is on forehead and I need to save the texture of the skin. any ideas?

[santajuana]

skauskas, with the method I used the hair didn't dissappear, it was just to make them look lighter, the photographer didn't want me to remove completely the hairs of both arms. if you have blond hair, try using, in a new empty layer, the clone tool, set mode to lighten and about 25% opacity or less, maybe more %, and try changing your flow, that depends on the hair, clone every single hair with a small brush. That works too with dark or blond hair.

[skauskas]

great.. it works. simple clone tool.. may be it's not as perfect as I want it to be but after you can always correct with D&B

[santajuana]

u'r welcome, and u'r right, everyone needs to adjust the techniques to make them work!

[Kraellin]

thanks, butch.

seems a little pasty to me. i may re-do it.

[kgirl24]

Originally Posted by santajuana

I've done this about a week ago, I created a soft light 50% grey layer at 25% opacity and painted hair by hair with white at 100% opacity, I used a tablet to be precise.

I think this method is the best method lol. very nice!

[Markzebra]

Lighten and darken blend modes are useful for this type of thing

[Verywierd]

A different approach to D&B. I used a duplicate layer, coverted to B&W, inverted and applied as overlay at around 50% opacity. With a black mask, paint out the hairs with white brush. This will only fade the hairs. Create a merged layer from the results, and use that layer to repeat the above process. About three times will get to where my image is. Some heal and clone tool to tidy up and fix colour by taking an eyedropper sample from the hand, fill a blank layer and paint onto the arm in colour blend mode as necessary. It would have been easy to make the arms completly hairless from this point, but I felt that leaving some trace of hair looked more realistic.

[jonr0613]

nice retouching skills guys...thanks!

[4personnen]

I've just made an attempt with Frequency separation, the low frequency layer with median.
It's absolutely not as good as santajuana, but it gives the impression that the hair are shorter. so I've decided to post it as it could help for other purposes (I'm thinking of baby hair, or torso hair) HTH!
PS: The other arm is untouched, for comparison purposes