Changing Hair Color In Photoshop
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Step 7: Change The Blend Mode To Either "Color" Or "Soft Light"
The hard part is done! We've colorized the hair while leaving the rest of the image untouched thanks to the layer mask that came with the Hue/Saturation adjustment layer. Now we can fine-tune the effect, and the first way to do that is by changing the blend mode of the adjustment layer. By default, the blend mode is set to "Normal", and it works fairly well, but let's change it to something better. Go up to the blend mode options in the top left corner of the Layers palette, click on the down-pointing arrow to the right of the word "Normal", and select either Color or Soft Light from the list:
The "Color" blend mode gives us even more of a colorizing effect, since it changes only the color of an image (when we had the blend mode set to "Normal", it was affecting not only the color but also the lightness values of the hair). Here's my image with the blend mode of the adjustment layer set to "Color":
The "Soft Light" blend mode gives us a more dramatic colorizing effect because it not only changes the color of the hair but also boosts the contrast, which I think works even better than the "Color" blend mode in this case. Here's my image with the blend mode set to "Soft Light":
Choose the blend mode that works best with your image.
Step 8: Lower The Opacity Of The Adjustment Layer If Needed
Another way to fine-tune the colorizing effect is by lowering the opacity of the adjustment layer. If you find the color is too intense, simply go up to the Opacity option in the top right corner of the Layers palette (across from the blend mode option) and lower it until you're happy with the results. Here, I've lowered the opacity of the adjustment layer to 50%:
This gives me a more subtle colorizing effect:
Step 9: Edit The Hue/Saturation Settings To Change The Hair Color As Needed
At this point we're done, but if you need to go back and change the hair color to something different, simply double-click on the Hue/Saturation adjustment layer's thumbnail in the Layers palette (the thumbnail on the left, not the layer mask thumbnail on the right):
This brings the Hue/Saturation dialog box back up and we can change the hair color simply by dragging the Hue slider to something different. We can also re-adjust the saturation of the color with the Saturation color. Since this is an adjustment layer, we're free to make as many changes as we want without worrying about damaging our image. Just for fun, I'll set my Hue slider to 304 to give her hair more of a pink/purple look:
I'm also going to set the blend mode of the adjustment layer back to "Color" and increase the opacity to around 75%:
And here's my new result:
And there we have it! That's how easy it is to change someone's hair color in Photoshop!
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