Learn professional techniques for how to make hair look perfect using Photoshop

Investing in a good hair stylist for your photo shoot will save you a lot of time in post production, notes leading burlesque and fashion photographer Tigz Rice.

However, even on a good hair day, you may still have fine flyaway hairs to clean up, gaps between hair curls or even stubborn fringes that just won’t stay where you want them to.

In this tutorial, we’ll be covering a range of techniques to achieve flawless locks.

20 mins – 1 hour depending on retouching experience

Photoshop (any version)

Photoshop (any version)

I’m going to assume you’re working with a Raw image here, so the first thing we’ll do is to use Camera Raw to correct any exposure or white balance issues and crop where necessary.

If you’ve got Photoshop CC, you can do this on any type of image using the Camera Raw filter (Filter > Camera Raw Filter).

Now we’ve got a correct exposure, select the Clone tool at 100% opacity and work around the outer edge of the hair to remove any stray or fly-away hairs sticking out from the main shape of the hairstyle.

See the next step for the end result of this.

This is what our shot looks like after removing stray hairs.

Tip: For a more realistic hair line, leave the odd stray hair in the shot, particularly around the crown.

Select the Spot Healing Brush to get rid of any stray hairs in the main section of hair.

In particular, look for any obvious hairs travelling in the wrong direction.

Once we’ve got rid of all the fly-away hairs, we can now focus on filling in sections of hair that are missing, such as the central section of the fringe.

To start doing this, create a new blank layer so we can work non-destructively.

Select the Clone Stamp tool and hold down the Alt key to bring up the target picker. Navigate to a section of hair near the area of fringe you will be fixing and click to select the specific pixels you want to clone.

Once you’ve made your target selection, brush over the fringe at 100% opacity.

Highlight both layers in your Layers panel and use the shortcut Cmd/Ctrl + J to create duplicate copies. Your Layers panel should now look like this.

Pressing Cmd/Ctrl + E will then merge these two new duplicate layers together so we can work on a non-destructive copy of our retouching for the next few steps.

To add volume to the hair, go to Filter > Liquify and select a large brush. Gently pull out the edges of the hair to add volume, using short brush strokes to form a gradual effect.

Tip: If you’re working on an image with a patterned or busy background, you’ll need to keep an eye on how your changes are affecting everything else in the image.

Still in the Liquify dialog, switch to a smaller brush and start to correct the edge of the fringe, pulling long strands of hair up and short strands down neatening the length.

Again, doing this in small increments will achieve a more natural looking effect.

When you’re happy, press OK.

At this stage the hair is looking much neater, but we want a much sharper finish on the fringe.

Duplicate the top layer in the Layers Panel and rename it to Frequency Separation.

For this step, you’ll need an action to split your colour and texture into two separate layers, plus another blank layer for non-destructive retouching. You can learn how do this in steps 4-8 of my Frequency Separation tutorial.

Click on the ‘High Frequency’ layer. Select the Clone Tool at 100% opacity, with Sample in the Options Bar set to Current Layer.

Alt-click the skin of the forehead to set your target texture and straighten out the edge of the fringe.

Now click on the ‘Low Frequency’ layer. Select the Clone Tool at 10% opacity with the Sample set to Current and Below.

Select the skin of the forehead as your target colour and fix any colour issues below the new edge of the fringe.

Press Cmd/Ctrl + Shift + N to create a new layer and name it ‘Highlights’. Set its blending mode to Overlay and tick the box to fill the layer with a 50% grey.

This is a non destructive layer that will allow us to dodge out blemishes whilst preserving the original image. Click OK.

Using the Dodge tool, set to Highlights at 5% opacity, brush over the highlights in the hair to give them extra shine.

Once the hair is retouched, you can now go on to make any changes to the rest of your image.

How to remove a background from a photo in Photoshop in this step-by-step tutorial.

Removing the background from a photograph can be a really tricky task, particularly if the subject you want to cut out has lots of hair, or if the background is exceedingly complex. Here, we take you through the process of removing a background from an image to help you overcome that challenge.

First, you’ll need to open the image you wish to remove the background from in Adobe Photoshop. Here, I’m using a photograph I took of a giraffe at Colchester Zoo to demonstrate this technique, which has a very defined boundary between the bit we want to keep (the giraffe) and the background. For images with fine detail around what you want to cut out – such as hair – see our tutorial on how to cut out hair in Photoshop.

I’m using Adobe CC, but the background removal technique detailed here will work in Photoshop CS5 and above, though some elements may look slightly different.

Once you’ve chosen the image you want to remove the background from and opened it in Photoshop, use the slideshow controls above and right to follow the remaining steps in the tutorial (if you’re viewing this site on a computer or tablet – if you’re on a phone, just scroll down).

10 minutes

Adobe Photoshop CS5 or later

Now, you’ll need to make a selection. To make a selection there are various tools you can use, but for beginners, the easiest tools to use are the Quick Selection Tool and the Magic Wand Tool. There’s also the Lasso tool, which can be more accurate but also take longer to use.

For this example, we’re using the Quick Selection tool, which can be found in the tools panel.

Make sure you’re using the Quick Selection tool with the ‘+’ in the centre, by pressing the shift key.

Select the background that you’d like to remove by clicking and dragging around the area. If you accidentally select something you didn’t want to, you can press and hold the alt key on your keyboard to use the ‘-‘ Quick Selection tool and remove it from the selection. Remember to press shift again before continuing to select more of the background, though.

You don’t need to be too accurate with things like hair and fur, because you can refine the edge later (we’ll come onto that in a minute).

When you’re happy with your selection, right click and then click ‘Select inverse’.

Now, click the ‘Add Layer Mask’ button at the bottom of the layers panel (it’s a rectangle with a black circle in the centre), and you’ll see instantly that the background is gone.

It might not look great yet, though, but don’t worry, you can use the Refine Mask tools to improve it.

Double click on the mask in your layers panel (it’s the black and white image next to the preview of your photograph) and then click ‘Mask Edge’ in the box that pops up. You’ll now see the Refine Mask menu (right).

From here, you can make adjustments to the mask to improve its appearance.

First, click ‘Show Radius’.

You’ll see nothing to begin with, but by adjusting the radius slider, you can make sure that the radius is picking up all of the stray hairs and getting rid of the background between them.

If you move your cursor over the photograph, you’ll see a circle with a plus in the centre. You can use this to click and drag over problem areas to help pick up those awkward and tricky areas.

Uncheck show radius to go back to the Refine Mask preview.

Now, use the sliders to adjust the mask until you’re happy with the look you’ve achieved.

To help, you can change the view mode by clicking the small arrow next to the thumbnail image and choosing from the drop down menu.

If you now want to add your photograph to a new background, you can do so by opening up the background image in Photoshop and simply dragging the image you just cut out onto the background image.

You can adjust the size of your image (in the case the Giraffe) by pressing Cmd/Ctrl + T, then holding Shift while you drag the Transform box’s handles.