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Tutorial Request: Coloring Gray Hair


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OK, so I'm old. I know. And, I have some gray in my beard.

My wife saw a picture of me that she really likes and wanted to know if I could color the gray in my beard to be a natural dark brown.

I tried everything I could think of, but in the end I just couldn't get it to look natural.

I'll post up a source picture later, if necessary. (I don't have it with me.)

So, other than turning back the clock or "Just for Men", any idea on how I can fix this?

Thanks!

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I'm up for giving it a try!

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did you try using curves?

Of course! I tried Curves+. But, most of the time I try to use it I just get totally lost.

What I need though, are some SPECIFIC steps/settings.

I also tried Conditional Hue/Saturation. Ugh. It did a great job changing my wife's socks from red to blue. But, I couldn't get it to do anything to my beard except turn it neon green. :roll:

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Hmm...I haven't got any grey haired pictures to try it with, but gradient mapping with a darkish brown in the middle may be able to take care of it.

It's how I gave my avatar/signature picture it's rusted overtone. So maybe it'll work for that?

(Granted, my hair's already brown... but it made it more brown. :P)

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New Layer set to Multiply & then colour the relevant parts brown?

Getting there. But, unless I spend a ton of time with the selection it still looks fake.

BoltBait, can you post the image (even if it's just a part of the section you need adjusted)?

http://boltbait.googlepages.com/ChainSaw.jpg (Dial-up alert: 2MB file)

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I'm going to have to stop, I'm beginning to see BoltBait-beard when I close my eyes.

There is a reason for why your beard isn't as dark as you'd want it to be, two actually, the first being I had misread your request then later realised during the process you had quite dark hair yet a brown beard... The second reason is that the sun is beating down onto your face, so your hair is going to look lighter anyway; see the left side of you head-hair (your right side)?

Anyway, a new set of eyes are needed on this for I'm starting to feel I'm veering off the beaten track, plus, I don't know what your beard looks like in light, so that may be better told by your good self.

Scaled down picture (full size in ZIP)...

http://i203.photobucket.com/albums/aa217/bitwierd/ChainSawHeadPNG.png

The full size picture and .pdn zip is taking its sweet-time to upload, so this post will be updated when it decides to finish.

There are areas I am unhappy with, such as under the chin and the chin itself, but like I said, a new pair of eyes and hands are needed.

EDIT: ah-ha, fully uploaded, and now the Forum is working again, one ZIP with the full size image and the .pdn: http://www.mediafire.com/?fdns4mlgluz

As it's MediaFire, get it whilst it's still there.

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New Layer set to Multiply & then colour the relevant parts brown?

Using this technique, this is what I get:

BeardColor.jpg

Actually, what I did was this:

Create a new layer

On this layer, color in brown all the areas that I wanted to darken my beard.

Feather (Shrink method) the brown area. This softens the effect near the edges to make it more natural.

Add Noise (no color saturation).

Direction blur in the direction of the beard hair.

Change the layer to Multiply and set the opacity for desired effect.

All in all, cheaper than a bottle of hair dye. ;)

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file.php?id=879&mode=view

On a separate layer, I just drew over the areas that needed to be darker with the paintbrush in black. Then I blurred it a little bit (under 10 px) and set the layer's blending mode to "Reflect". I repeated this process on the areas that still looked too light. Then I flattened everything (including the original) and pasted it on a new layer over a copy of the original, lowering the opacity just a bit to keep it realistic...

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On a separate layer, I just drew over the areas that needed to be darker with the paintbrush in black. Then I blurred it a little bit (under 10 px) and set the layer's blending mode to "Reflect". I repeated this process on the areas that still looked too light. Then I flattened everything (including the original) and pasted it on a new layer over a copy of the original, lowering the opacity just a bit to keep it realistic...

Nice job bb00!

That's the most realistic one on the thread. I'll give that one a try.

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