Website Design Tips - Hypergurl

How to create human hair in Photoshop

One of the most regular requests we've been receiving lately is for drawing hair texture. Especially with the increasing popularity of 3D chat services like Second Life and IMVU, where members can customize their avatars.

Creating hair using Adobe Photoshop is as easy as using a brush to draw two lines and then applying filters.

After starting a new document and filling it with a dark color, take an extra soft brush and draw two lines. For starters, make one line a mustard yellow and the second one a brighter yellow or gold color. Later on you can experiment with different colors if you'd like red, blue or orange hair =)

Next is to add noise. Type in 15% and check Gaussian and Monocromatic.

Now add a motion blur. Set it at 90 degree's and around 800 pixels. You might need to play with this a little to get the right hair texture. At this point you may also realise you should have made your two lines in the beginning a little thicker. And here is the result:

If you want to add highlights to your hair texture, add a layer on your image then add two lines of white.

Change layers to overlay and play with the Opacity until you acheive the hair highlights your after. Once again, experimenting is the key. Some people like thick highlights, others like thin.

As you can see, this is a fast and easy way to make hair templates using Adobe Photoshop. Hair templates are popular in virtual worlds like Second Life and IMVU.

If you like working with Photoshop actions, Taunt.com has a terrific hair texture action you can download to help make your design life easier.

Here is a video tutorial shown below for those that have broadband access. It will visually demonstrate how to make hair texture using PhotoShop.

Amazon also has some really useful guides to designing your Second Life.

To start this Photoshop tutorial press the go arrow.