When you’re creating portraits, flyaway hairs or awkward facial hair can distract from the overall look and feel of your work. With the Healing Brush and Spot Healing Brush tools, you can paint over stray hairs and Photoshop will blend them seamlessly into the existing background.
Flyaway hairs on a background can distract from the overall composition you’re working toward. Sample it: Hold Alt on Windows or Command on Mac to switch to the Eyedropper tool and click to sample a piece of the background you want to paint with.
Your adventures with hair don’t have to stop with removing strays. Blemishes, imperfections, and distortions in a photo can be distracting to a viewer. The thought of removing stray hairs in Photoshop conjures up thoughts that are equivalent to torture.
It’s not uncommon to hear your fellow colleagues gripe about retouching hair. Michael Woloszynowicz has come to the rescue. He is becoming one of our favorites here at Fstoppers when it comes to Photoshop tutorials. What I enjoy about the video is that once you get the concept down, you can set it up and execute it within minutes.
It applies to backgrounds that have gradients as well as solid backgrounds. It will work on everything except for backgrounds that have lots of patterns. Check out more of Michael's videos on his YouTube channel.
Also as a quick heads up for anyone interested, I will be teaching a few retouching classes at the Fstoppers Workshop in the Bahamas this May. I’ll be going over my workflow and techniques that I use on a regular basis. I kept the cost of my class low so that everyone can make it out. Come out and spend some time with us, you need that break!
A few years ago I was asked by a British newspaper if I could take a dozen celebrities and cut their hair off, to show what they looked like bald. It was a rush job - could I do it in an hour? This is a technique that works with anyone with visible ears. If they have really long hair, you’re going to have to find some ears as well.
We’ll use this photograph of Johnny Depp, an actor known for his glorious locks. It’s important to choose a head that’s been photographed from, as close as possible, the same angle. Start by using Select > Subject to separate Willis’s head from his background, and copy the selection to a new layer. Once you’ve got the head in the right position, apply the transformation and bring the layer back to full opacity. It’s unlikely that the new head will match the original skin tone, and you can use a variety of techniques to adapt it.
Here’s how the composite looks after fixing then color. The new head is a close fit for the head beneath, but it’s not perfect - it’s looking slightly to the left. To fix this, use Free Transform and go into Image Warp mode by clicking the button on the Options Bar. You could replace the background entirely, but it’s often more convincing to patch it with texture sampled from around the image. A little more work is needed to make the effect realistic.
Knowing how to remove the background from your photos is a tricky but handy skill. This step-by-step tutorial will show you how to remove hair from a solid background. It can be incredibly frustrating to move the background from hair if you don’t understand some of Photoshop’s unique eraser tools. Trying to remove the hair from a background can be time consuming and end up ruining your original image if done incorrectly.
In this Photoshop tutorial, you’ll walk away knowing how to remove a background from hair with the Background Eraser Tool. Once you’ve mastered how to remove the background from hair in Photoshop 2024, you’ll be able to tackle any photo or image. We’ll be using an image that shows you how to remove the background from curly hair in Photoshop, but these directions will work with any type of hair.
Step 1: Set up your layers. Open the image you want to remove the background from in Photoshop 2024. Get to your Layers panel by selecting Window > Layers or by clicking on the Layers panel icon to the right of the screen. Make sure the locked Background layer is selected (it should be selected by default). Open the Layers panel menu by clicking on the three little lines in the upper left-hand corner of the panel. From the menu that drops down, choose Duplicate Layer. Pro tip: Create a duplicate layer so you can preserve the original image. This gives you a backup of the original in case you make a mistake or need to start over. In the pop-up box, click OK to create the Background copy layer.
Step 2: Create a high contrast layer. Click on the plus sign at the bottom of the Layers panel to create a new layer. In your Toolbar, doubleclick on the Foreground color to bring up the Colors dialog box. Using the color sliders, choose a color that’s in high contrast to the background color of your original image. Since our image has a gray-blue background, we’ll choose a bright pink. You want to use a bright, high contrast color to work with as you remove hair from the background in Photoshop so you can easily see how much of the background is actually being removed as you work. Once you’ve chosen your color, select your new layer and choose Edit > Fill from the dropdown menu at the top of the application window, or click SHIFT+F5 (FN+SHIFT+F5 on a Mac). In the dialog box that appears, choose Foreground color at 100%. Once you’ve filled your new layer with the Foreground color, move that layer between your Background copy and Background layers in the Layers panel. You can do this by grabbing the new layer and dragging it until it pops into place between the Background layers.
Step 3: Remove the background around the hair and model. Select the Background Eraser Tool from the Toolbar. It may be hidden behind the Eraser Tool. Next, select the Background Color from the Toolbar and select the image’s background color using the Color Picker in the pop-up dialog box. Click OK. With the Background Eraser Tool selected, you’ll need to make sure certain settings are set up correctly in the Options Bar at the top of the application window. First, in the dropdown menu next to Limits, you’ll see options for Contiguous, Discontiguous, or Find Edges. Since we’re working with hair, with a wispy edge, we want to select Contiguous. As you work to remove the background around other parts of your image with more abrupt edges (such as the arms and clothing), you may discover that Find Edges works better. Just to the left of Limits, you’ll see three icons with an eyedropper. Make sure the icon on the far right is selected. You’ll also see other options in this Options Bar: the Brush Preset and Tolerance. Begin with a brush hardness of 15% or softer, and a brush size that makes sense for the image you’re working with, and start with the Tolerance set to 50%. Finally, check the box next to Protect Foreground Color. Go back into your Layers panel and make sure your top layer, Background copy, is selected. Now, with your Background Eraser Tool, begin erasing the area around the hair. As you work, you may need to adjust the Tolerance level up or down depending on the colors in the foreground image. For instance, there are a lot of blue tones in the model’s clothing which could be accidentally erased using a high Tolerance level; therefore, we’ll reduce the Tolerance down to about 20% while working around these areas. You may also find it’s helpful to reduce the brush size when working in these areas as well so you have more precision over the pixels being removed. You may also have to adjust the background color if your image has a lot of variation in its background. Continue erasing until you have an “outline” around your entire subject. Once you’ve erased the area immediately around your subject, you can increase your brush size and your Tolerance and remove the rest of the background.
- Step 4: Replace the background. Go back into your Layers panel and hide the bright color layer and the original Background layer by clicking on the Eye icon next to each layer. You now have a transparent background, and you can insert any background you wish into the image. Or you can copy this layer and paste it into another image.
- Now that you’ve learned how to remove the background from hair in Photoshop, you can substitute your original backgrounds with your individual brand colors or with more complex backgrounds, adding interest and continuity to your photography.
Master more Photoshop skills. You can improve your photo-editing skills with our library of Photoshop tutorials that will help you create perfectly edited images to promote your products. Browse some of our most popular Photoshop tutorials: How to Change the Background Color of a Picture; How to Make Someone Smile in Photoshop: A Tutorial for Brands; Blur the Background in Photoshop: A Tutorial for Your Product Photos. Quit fumbling with Photoshop and outsource your most tedious edits to Path, your virtual photo-editing studio.
Practical tips for removing hair on different backgrounds
FAQs about removing background from hair in Photoshop help you tailor the approach to your image. How do I remove background from hair in Photoshop? You remove the background from hair in Photoshop using the steps in this post: set up your layers, create a high contrast layer, remove the background around the hair and model using the Background Eraser Tool, and replace the background.
How can I change my hair background? You can change your hair background by removing the background of your image using the Background Eraser Tool or by choosing the Magic Wand and using the Remove Background option. Then, choose a new background color or image to replace your original background with, or leave it as a transparent background.
How do I remove green screen from hair in Photoshop? If you need to know how to fix hair that is in front of a green screen, set up your layers and use the Background Eraser Tool, this time with a red filled layer under your green screen layer. Because green screens are very bright, a greenish hue often ends up in the hair. To counteract this, you can increase the tolerance of the Background Eraser Tool as you erase around just the edges of the hair. If that does not work to your satisfaction, after erasing as much as you can, create a rough selection around the areas in the photo where you see the color green. Then, choose Select > Color Range from the dropdown menu to capture just the greenish pixels within your rough selection.
