CHECK FINAL DETAILS
FOCUS ON SMALL DETAILS AND CHECK YOUR IMAGE AT DIFFERENT ZOOM PERCENTAGESQUICK TIP: DELETE SECTIONS FOR ADDED REALISM
Feel free to delete parts of the background colour of your hair in some areas, leaving only the detailed hair
visible, this will work well on the edges and will leave your hair looking very realistic.TIE COLOURS TOGETHER
In this tutorial we have used Dodge and Burn
techniques to tie the colours together. Create a
new layer called ‘D&B’, go to Edit>Fill>50% Gray.
Change the blending mode to Soft Light and then
paint on it using white for highlights and black for
shadows. For better results and more control, use
a normal soft brush with 100% Opacity and 2%
Flow and constantly change the size of the brush
to match the areas you want to affect.14
CORRECT UNNATURAL SHINY EDGES
As a result of the model being shot on a
white background, her left leg has an unnatural
shiny edge, so create a new layer on top then
change the Opacity to 30%. Next, select a colour
from a darker area on the leg and paint with a
normal Soft brush at a low Opacity, between 3-5%,
until you are happy with the result. Use your
model’s mask to make a selection so you are only
painting on the edge of the leg.15
CLEAN THE LAYERS
Now that you have almost finished your
image and you know which areas of your model’s
skin and outfit are visible, it makes sense to add a
clean layer on top of the model layer. To do so, just
create an empty layer, name it ‘Clean’ and use either
your Healing brush or Clone tool to manually sample
small areas to correct. Make sure that your tool is set
to Current And Below on the top menu in order to
use them on this empty layer. The reason to use an
empty layer is to ensure the file is flexible and enable
you to go back and correct mistakes by simply
deleting your cleaning layer.16
ADD NOISE
To better blend all of the elements, we have
created a new layer with everything merged. Call it
‘Noise’ then add a Noise filter of 2% checked at 100%
zoom and it works pretty well.17
SAVE YOUR IMAGE AS PSD OR PSB
Your final image should always remain
available for re-editing or corrections, especially after
a long workflow as you might want to double check
your work with fresh eyes a couple of days later to
see if there are still things to be corrected.18
SAVE YOUR FINAL VERSION
Keep in mind that depending on the usage of your image you should save it as a flattened PSD or a
JPEG in full resolution or web resolution. For displaying on the web, flatten your image and change the colour
space to sRGB and change the resolution to 72 ppi. After this make sure to click Save For Web and do not just
save your document or you might risk losing your editable PSD file.TECHNIQUES CREATIVE HAIR RETOUCHING