High End Hair Straightening Retouch

[ali_bahman]

Hi,

I am wondering if there are some special techniques used for hair straightening haire and reforming the look and shape.

I know that somehow it can be done with:
- Copy/Place straight hairs from different spots/photo.
- Smudge in a new layer.
- Liquify to align hair strands.
- Draw with a brush.

But sincerely does anyone have any special techniques or more ideas how to achieve this style.

look at the attachment as an example.

cheers

[ali_bahman]

no one?

for that image its kinda difficult to get that almost perfect look.

[RobertAsh]

what exactly are you trying to achieve? what are you asking? are you saying you took a lot of effort getting from the right-hand image to the left-hand image and you're asking if someone has some special techniques to get there faster?

[ali_bahman]

the attachment is an example form some other retoucher its not done by me. and actually its in the opposite direction, the right part is the "After" the left one is the "Before"

I am asking that what i have listed in my first post are the complete list techniques for making this kind of retouch, or there are any other techniques for doing this?

if you notice how the hair was retouched, I see it is kinda difficult to achieve that and somehow it looks like it is done in a different way that i have listed.

[4personnen]

I'd copy and paste from another part of hair, (w/ warp)
I'd clone in darken mode,
I'd smudge,
But I don't know really if there's a better way, I barely see tutorials about hair...

[amica999]

Ali, have a look here:
https://www.digitalphotoshopretouchi...utorials-dvd-2

There is a sample of the inverted highpass for hair...

[CoreyByas]

All I have really seen is hair taken from various image from the same shot..

[Florin]

Hi. I believe that hair texture maybe is one of the the most difficult parts of a good retouch. Old, damaged images like I'm restoring every day always need some retouch or total reconstruction but new pics... wow, this is still more delicate. The texture must be realistic, shapened, clear... I do not like the copy/paste stuff taken from another image, maybe this could help some extreme situation but it's not a technique, just a life jacket for the moment.
I remember that Russell Brown has some free hair brushes in his site. Some tutorial too? I don't remember very clear but u could try. Very good ones, I'm using 2 or 3 of them customed for my 800dpi workflow. But, manipulating fresh, good looking and high resolution hair texture it's really a big game. Take care

[RobertAsh]

Originally Posted by Florin

Hi. I believe that hair texture maybe is one of the the most difficult parts of a good retouch. Old, damaged images like I'm restoring every day always need some retouch or total reconstruction but new pics... wow, this is still more delicate. The texture must be realistic, shapened, clear... I do not like the copy/paste stuff taken from another image, maybe this could help some extreme situation but it's not a technique, just a life jacket for the moment.
I remember that Russell Brown has some free hair brushes in his site. Some tutorial too? I don't remember very clear but u could try. Very good ones, I'm using 2 or 3 of them customed for my 800dpi workflow. But, manipulating fresh, good looking and high resolution hair texture it's really a big game. Take care

Florin, you do amazing work. Thanks for sharing some of your wisdom and insight with us on this difficult topic.

[Florin]

Thank you, Robert. I try to do the best and learn more every day, that's all.
One of the actions we could make is creating our own customed brushes. Sometimes it could help more. Just pay attention to the small layer size and resolution, it must correspond with the real hair alignment, I mean the distance between the points which will draw the hair/lines. I tried and did this fine creating a new layer over the image, add some 15-25 small points following the hair texture location and saving it like a new brush in the Edit menu. Regards

[julianmarsalis]

You can find a million tutorials on skin but hardly anything decent on hair kind of sad because it separates the retouchers by a lot those that can do hair and those that can't...

[Florin]

If someone wants my brushes set I'll upload them into a free server for downloading, no problem.

[Daviskw]

With a high res picture you can make a hair brush with smaller diameter hairs. With low res, as this example, it is harder.

Below is not worth a darn but with the right resolution to start with you can just draw in hairs to straighten and look at least OK.

Butch

[julianmarsalis]

Originally Posted by Florin

If someone wants my brushes set I'll upload them into a free server for downloading, no problem.

sure sounds great

[Florin]

This is the link:
http://www.mediafire.com/?uhimkzmvzk9dd6k
If you'll look in the samples gallery of my site you'll see everything I was doing with those ones. Mostly I used the #100 (500px) for hair, using rotation (change angle) and different size fron 500px to 200px and the #11 (18 px), from 18px to 50 px to deaw the eyebrowes, moustache etc.
Enjoy!
P.S. I'm working with 800dpi resolution for the 6x8 and 8x10 pics. The brushes will work fine if you'll use this too.

[julianmarsalis]

Originally Posted by Florin

This is the link:
http://www.mediafire.com/?uhimkzmvzk9dd6k
If you'll look in the samples gallery of my site you'll see everything I was doing with those ones. Mostly I used the #100 (500px) for hair, using rotation (change angle) and different size fron 500px to 200px and the #11 (18 px), from 18px to 50 px to deaw the eyebrowes, moustache etc.
Enjoy!
P.S. I'm working with 800dpi resolution for the 6x8 and 8x10 pics. The brushes will work fine if you'll use this too.

Awesome thanks!!!!

[supjak]

Florin, you are great! Thank you for sharing your brushes.

[Florin]

Thank you too. Anything you could need to know more about this item please ask me.

I usually paint the hair after have finished all the retouch of the head. Previously I'm working the hair area making uniforme colors, as you can see in this work file:
http://www.mediafire.com/?5u8yfdzkm0g7liq
Its resolution is 800dpi so it works for practice.

Later I'm doing different strokes, not too large ones and twisting a little the alignement. You'll find more details here:
http://www.mediafire.com/i/?65bkupn69ey2d2c

IMPORTANT: I ignore why but these brushes do not work for me in the CS5, the strokes are not the correct ones. I'm using a CS4 version which is instaled too in my PC and works great with them. Also CS3 / 2 or 1 works fine.
Regards

[4personnen]

That's very kind of you, Florin. Thank you very much. I'll make good use of them.

[Florin]

I'm glad to help
Please forgive my post because I'm a little out of the main theme of Ali Bahman, which is talking about the manipulation of a new picture. My samples and brushes could help better for the damaged or vintage ones but I hope some of you, my friends here, could make use of them.
Have a nice day and thank you too.

[ali_bahman]

thanks guys, and thanks Florin for sharing some useful stuff

[kav]

Looking at the OP example, getting that to look just right could be absolutely brutal. I don't think everyone is seeing the numerous errors/mistakes because the resolution is too low but in the "tidier" version it doesn't pull back in any way and is basically just chopped off when it comes to the edges. You can see how it doesn't connect between the lower portion either. hair is just really tedious if you want it to look right.

[ray12]

This image looks to me like the retoucher spent the tedious time rquired... and painted in 3 colors of hair color... with a very small brush... by hand. Maybe even a tablet... to assist in parallel stroking.

The bun here does not look totally natural...but it is very close... and very nicely done.

Some of the flyaways at the edges were cut out... and the bun looks to be hand painted by a very informed and patient person.

Here is a fun link to painting hair updo's by hand:

http://gas13.ru/v3/tutorials/how_to_...man_hair_2.php

Googling "painting human hair by hand" will give you some other very nice tutorials on creating hair from scratch.

Cheers,

Ray12

[Pari Retouch]

Yes, I think Kristina have painted the hairs in the image OP has mentioned, even I do paint the hair a lot of times maybe around 50% of my hair job is to paint but that depends on type of image.

Most of the hairs you see in the image retouched by me is painted: http://www.modelmayhem.com/portfolio/pic/23778009

Hope this helps

[marioav]

thats painting, combined with cloning & warping some pieces of hair from other place or pictures. i have no idea to make it with the same quality by other way.

[RobertAsh]

Pari,

1. How long did that hair take to retouch?
2. How much of it was hand-painted and how much was cloned and made to fit?

Could you post the original for comparison?

[Pari Retouch]

12 hours for the complete retouch, that means 10 hours for hair and 2 hours for rest
About 40% is painted, I cloned the little stray hairs only no larger clones in this.
No I'm sorry, the photographer didn't gave me permission to show the original at all.