By RT Retouch, 1731952464
Hair retouching can be the most fiddly and frustrating form of retouching, especially when light catches cross hairs.
I tend to swap often between the healing brush and the clone brush as I move around at full zoom, removing or fading the crunchy hairs. The healing brush is handy for editing out distinct, solitary sparkles surrounded by a clean area, whereas I use the clone brush at about half opacity with a fairly hard edge to fade out crunchy clusters by grabbing a darker area from nearby and sweeping over the patch with hairlike strokes. Using these methods in conjunction I can alternate between the two because the healing brush gets rid of the most outstanding hairs, providing a cleaner area for the clone brush to work from, while fading out with the clone brush makes the crunchy clusters finer and more suitable for trimming with the healing brush.
The most fiddly thing I have to do is reconstruct a hair that's been interrupted after removing a cross hair (using either the healing or clone brush depending on which one it responds to better).
For an overall smoothing effect, I overlay a Gaussian blur on the soft layer of frequency separated layers. I usually do this first, as it creates smoother surfaces to work with.
In Lightroom, reduced clarity on a selection can provide a quick fix if I'm only doing a rough edit.
What do you do to retouch hair? I'd love to know your favourite tools and tips.
Edited by RT Retouch
