How to change Bright Red Hair to Black Colored Hair

Step 1 :
These are the before and after reults.  Keep in mind, I understand that I look better in red than in black .This is just a quick and easy tutorial for those fo you that want to play around with a few different hair colors.



The first step is finding and preparing your photo.  Choose a photo with little or no background and few hair wispies, I had tons of them so you will get to see a fun method to get those little wispies in shape.  Also, this is not a Black to Blonde tutorial!  Please do not ask me how.


Step 2:
To make our color change transition much smoother, we will need to actually prepare our image.  I used this photo:

Notice how the background is still visible, this makes the little strands of hair surrounding my head more difficult to get at.  I duplicated the layer by using the Ctrl + J shortcut, then I selected the burn tool on its Shadows setting and got to work.

You do not want too high or low of a setting, so I chose to work with around 10-15 Exposure.  Start in the outter corner of the image and work your way towards the head.  The good thing about using an image with a dark background like this is you are less likely to darken areas of the hair that should not be darkened, because you are using Shadows and not Highlights or Midtones (the ranges your hair is usually in).

Step 3:
I did a quick crop, the empty space above the head wasn't appealing, and then began the hair color work.

If you feel the need, Save As and flatten your image.  I duplicated my top image once more and deleted the background images that I did not need anymore so I could work with two basic layers.  The top layer will be our Black Hair layer and the bottom layer will be our Original Layer.

Your layers palette should have two identical layers of the red hair image.

Step 4:
Select your top red hair layer image, all changes will be made to the top layer.
The first color change we are going to make is to give the hair the proper shade tone.  A lot of black hair has blue undertones, so naturally, this is a great place to start.

Select Image > Adjustments > Hue and Saturation

Adjust your sliders as shown:

Depending on the image you are working with, the adjustments will vary!

Here is what our picture looks like:

Step 5:
Now let's go to Image > Adjustments > Channel Mixer

If you have never used this before, I would like to encourage you to use it more often!  It is much more sensitive than Hue/Saturation and Selective Color, it works with your channel layers and doesn't take away from the clarity of the image.

I applied these settings:

Our picture should now look like this:

Step 6:
Time to drop down the saturation a tad bit more, the steps in between may seem useless, but I can assure you, they were not.

Let's go to Image > Adjustments > Hue and Saturation and pull our saturation down to -59 one more time.

Next, we will adjust our exposure by going to Image > Adjustments > Exposure

Here are the settings I chose:

And the image:

Now we have an almost natural black color to work with.  As you become accustomed to using photoshop, these adjustments will go by very quickly and without thought.  This is probably why the images I showed here are not identical to the end result (I didn't write down what I did!)  Oh no!  But it's close enough.

Step 7:
Time to pull back the original skin color, you can't tell what you're going to look like with black hair if your skin color isn't there, can you?  Well I can't.

With your Black Hair Color layer selected, click the Add Layer Mask Icon.

 

Step 8:
Make sure your layer mask is selected, you will see a black box around the mask as shown above in the previous step.  Now select everything on your picture by choosing Select > All or using the marquee tool, and then delete.  Your layer mask will now appear black and you should see the background layer.

Step 9:
Select a small-medium sized soft paintbrush with the color white selected.  You will use this to paint back in the color of the black hair, while avoiding any color tone you do not want changed.

Increase the hardness of the brush as you get closer to the cheeks, but keep a softer brush around the top of the hair and the bottom curls.

Your mask should start looking something like this:

Step 10:
The wispies around the bottom of the hair are very easy to color black, but not with the paint brush.  Even if you select a smaller size, the hair will still not have a natural look.  To acheive this, we are going to select the smudge tool and pull the hair color into the picture.

With your layer mask still selected, choose a section of hair that is still red towards the tips of the hair.  Select a soft brush with the strength set between 25-50% and begin to pull some of the color into the hair.  Here is an example of what the hair looks like without the background layer.

Use a smaller size and small brush for more difficult for more difficult sections.  It may end up looking silly, but with both layers intact, it should begin to look more natural.

Step 11:
But we still have some red on the skin, unacceptable.

Let's grab the dodge tool with our settings on Shadows and our exposure at 27%.

With your layer mask still selected, start lighting those red areas, increase and decrease the exposure as needed, you will need to keep an eye out for keeping the skin its natural color.

Step 12:
Step back and take a look at what you've done so far.  Look for any areas that need some touching up.

Here is what the hair looks like without the background layer:

And with our background layer:

Congratulations!  You can now see what you look like with a different hair color, it wasn't that hard was it?