hello everyone! ^.^

I'm holly [ newsies- ] and today I will be teaching you guys how to color a model's hair for your graphics!

in this tutorial I used photoshop cs 6

first things first, at the bottom of your layers window, select the little circle that is half-shaded, half not shaded (the fourth icon from the left) and then select "hue/saturation"

once you have your hue/saturation layer, name it whatever you would like. I'm going to name mine "red" to keep things simple.

you may have noticed a little "properties" window popped up when you made the "hue/saturation" layer. don't mess with that yet, just leave it alone for right now.

make sure the hue/saturation layer is above the model in your layers window.

then, right click on the hue/saturation layer and select "create clipping mask"

this clips the layer to your model so whatever changes we make to it only effects that layer

once you've done that, then it's time to mess with the hue/saturation.

remember that "properties" window that popped up? now it's time to mess with it!

the hue slider changes the colors on the image. the saturation slider changes how intense the color is, like a brightness/darkness. and the lightness slider adds in white and black.

on there, use the hue, saturation, and lightness sliders to create the color you want. I'm going for a red color for mine so you can see the settings for the color I'm doing in the screenshot below.

now, as you can see, we performed the hue/saturation on our whole model, not just the hair.

select the little white rectangle on your hue/saturation layer in the layers window (the purple arrow in the screenshot below). that little white rectangle is called a layer mask. layer masks allow us to erase certain parts of a layer that we don't need. it also gives us the ability to paint it back in if need be.

after you select the layer mask rectangle on your hue/saturation layer in the layers window, switch to the paint tool (the blue arrow in the screenshot below).

make sure the foreground/background tool is set so the black is in the front (the green arrow in the screenshot below). the black erases and the white paints it back in.

then, just erase all the hue/saturation color off your model so just the hair is colored.

now, that red looks a bit unnatural so I'm going to add another hue/saturation layer to give it some more depth and make it look more realistic. again, just move the sliders to get the look you're going for.

you can either place it above or below your first hue/saturation layer, depending on the look you want to go for and which looks better. don't forget to clip it to your model! as you can see in the screenshot below, I named my new hue/saturation layer "yellow" and placed it below my "red" layer.

again, we'll need to erase the color that is not on the hair.

I'm going to show you guys an easy way to create the same layer mask that your first hue/saturation layer has without going through all that erasing/painting again.

select your first hue/saturation layer in the layers window. then, right clock on it, select "duplicate layer..." and then click "ok".

then, select the layer mask for the duplicate layer.

drag the layer mask from the duplicate layer to your new hue/saturation layer.

then click "yes" and your layer mask has transferred to the new hue/saturation layer! you can delete the duplicate hue/saturation layer now.

ta-da! that is how you can color hair on your model! :)

I hope this tutorial was helpful and I did a good job explaining things!

also here's my finished cover with the colored hair :)