Newbie with a few questions

[Kayasha]

Hi! I am so happy to have found this forum! I am freelancer who wears many hats - web design, graphic design, virtual assistance, and now book cover design. I am really loving designing covers for authors, its a lot of fun and I've met some great people. I am relatively new at using PhotoShop - I used PaintShop Pro for years and it got the job done but now I really need the advanced features of PhotoShop. So now I am using PS CS6.

Touching up photos of people is pretty new to me. The author I design for are self-published, so they don't have a lot of money, therefore we are using stock images which I edit the best I can to try to make look unique for them. One thing I get asked a LOT is to change hair color, or make hair longer, or make the ends curly. I've struggled quite a bit with making hair longer/curly. I tried cloning from a different source but it doesn't look very realistic to me.

Does anyone have any tips or tutorials for changing hair color and length of hair?

Second, my hubby surprised me with a new macbook 15" with retina display, a wacom tablet, and all the software I use (Dreamweaver, Photoshop CS6, etc.). I have never owned a mac before and I am wicked excited, however all of my actions, fonts, brushes, textures, etc are all saved on my PC. What is the best way for me to get them over to the mac? Sorry this is a total newb question! :redface: I have so many of these add ons and I definitely don't want to re-download or re-purchase.

Any help would be tremendously appreciated. I look forward to meeting you all and learning a lot about using PS.

Thank you!

Kari

 

[Renegade]

Welcome!

All of your TTF and OTF fonts can be copied over to your MAC from your PC. For PC Postscript fonts, you'll need to copy them to your MAC and convert them to OTF using a program such as TransType Pro. I highly recommend Suitcase on your MAC for font management.

All of your actions, brushes, textures, patterns, etc. are in PS format, so they can simply be copied from PC to MAC.

I do a lot of book covers, too. Both on the design and print end. I can't tell you how many designers go all-Photoshop with their work! The big design firms use InDesign for the entire layout, including all text. The background OFC image is usually the only part of the design that involves Photoshop. Just some food for thought, I couldn't live without ID and PS working hand-in-hand.

Hair is probably one of the hardest things out there to mess around with. For coloring, I use the color channel that best enables me to select the hair, then create adjustment layer(s) from the selection. To add curls and whatnot, stealing someone else's hair from a better photo is the way to go, then use adjustment layer(s) to blend it with the original.

 

[Kayasha]

Thanks so much for the reply! Can I copy the fonts from my windows font directory into the mac font directory (which I have yet to even look for)? Or do I need to manually install each one?

Hey I am really curious about Indesign. Most of my background is in creating web graphics but now that I am designing for print its a whole new animal. What elements would you use ID for? For some reason I thought it was mostly used for text layout.

 

[dv8_fx]

Welcome to the forum. Kayasha.

There are a few topics with regards to coloring hair in General Photoshop Board and here in Photoshop Newbies. Just do a search for the subject you need.

Here's one I found to start you on your way - Hair Treatment.

Enjoy your time and take part in the activities and discussions you'll find here.

 

[Kayasha]

Thank you!!! I appreciate your help very much.

 

[Renegade]

Thanks so much for the reply! Can I copy the fonts from my windows font directory into the mac font directory (which I have yet to even look for)? Or do I need to manually install each one?

Hey I am really curious about Indesign. Most of my background is in creating web graphics but now that I am designing for print its a whole new animal. What elements would you use ID for? For some reason I thought it was mostly used for text layout.

You can copy the TTF and OTF fonts from the PC font directory to the MAC font management program, it will add them to the right place.

I use InDesign for everything! I usually doctor photos in PS, then place PSDs in ID for everything else. Live type can have effects applied, as well as vector shapes and logos. You can open up vector art in Illustrator, then copy-and-paste the paths straight into ID and manipulate them. When flowing copy for book text, ID will use masks from PSD files for text run-around. I could go on forever lol!

To me, the biggest thing is not rasterizing the book title text, or any other text that requires effects like shadows and bevels. Those kinds of things could only be done in PS back in the day, but now they can be done on-the-fly with ID.

I've recently been thrown to the wolves doing a ton of data merge, and I gotta say that InDesign does it 100 times better than Word lol! It's a very powerful program.

 

[ibclare]

HI Kayasha, welcome.

Surely you have all the info you need on fixing hair, but I have found that brushes made specifically for hair (I should just say hair brushes but it always sounds so weird!) are invaluable. Whatever way you make your hair selection, there are many ways to add to the changes you do with it. Sometimes, something as simple as the hue/sat adjustment or a layer adjustment photo filter can get you going. When I use brushes, I sample for almost every stroke I make. Of course this is all done on layers separate from the original. I start by making layers below the hair/model selection. If the results look good enough, I might even remove more of the original hair and replace it. If I need to do strands on top, I will use an eraser or masking to blend it into the existing hair.

Here are some of the brushes I use. Of course in the brush palette, you can rotate them, size them, etc. The kind of nasty ones, lol, that look like wigs but are hair pieces laid flat, still work very well for adding curls and such. I get the majority of my brushes on deviantarts.com.

Getting really excellent selections of hair by trying to isolate it is very difficult. It works better if the backgrounds will have color similarities. That is why I am never satisfied with any extraction process alone. But ... it does depend on the intricacy of the work!

Show us some of your stuff when you get your new hair techniques going.