Help/Suggestions for editing this photo?

[CJDesigns]

Hi, everyone! I am working on editing a photo to make into a professional headshot for LinkedIn. I got the background removed but now would like to work on my hair. 

I always wear my hair up, which makes this a bigger challenge for me than if I had it down, but I want my photo to be an accurate representation of me- just a slightly more polished version. 

Any suggestions about what to do with my hair? I think specifically around the top of my head. If I erase the fly-aways, it will look really weird, but I'm not sure the best way to go about adding in hair to make it look less messy or any ideas of another option. 

Thanks in advance!

Edited October 18, 2024 by CJDesigns
Adding tags

[carl123]

42 minutes ago, CJDesigns said:

Any suggestions about what to do with my hair?

How your hair will ultimately look will depend on the sort of background you decide to go with for the image

Plain colour (light, dark, Red, Green, Blue etc)
Texture
Wallpaper
Arty
Patterned
Grunge

etc

Deciding on the right background could make the hair easier to deal with, so you may want to finalise that first

 

[Ldina]

Agreed! The original background you used when taking your photo will determine the colors and brightness of highlights on your hair. Highlights and reflections look very different with a different background, so if possible, it helps to plan that up front. If adding a very different background (color or brightness) after stripping the image, you will almost assuredly need to do some adjustments to those highlights, so they blend in properly.

[Ldina]

@CJDesigns Regarding 'flyaway' hairs, you can do a number of things. Try a Live Gaussian Blur layer and play with the amount slider. A larger amount will tend to blur out those hairs, so you will need to find an amount that looks okay and not fake. You can use a mask and paint on it with a low opacity soft-edged brush to build up the effect where you want it. 

Flyaway hairs aren't always a problem. Attached is an image I got from a stock site. I stripped the image with the intent of retaining most of the flyaway hairs. I added a New Fill Layer to the background and tried different colors, some light, some dark, some saturated, some not saturated. As Carl mentioned, you need to blend your background so the hair blends in with your background and the highlights from the original lighting don't look awful.

To achieve that in this image, I added a Recolor Adjustment and roughly matched the brightness, saturation and color of the background. I clipped this layer into the layer I stripped, then added an Empty Mask (black mask) to the Recoler Adjustment layer. Using a soft-edged white brush, I painted over the flyaway hairs only, so the recolor adjustment was limited to them. Then I readjusted the recolor settings for a good match. This works pretty well on almost any color background. If I go from a light pink to a dark blue background, I simply need to make adjustments to the Live Recolor Adjustment layer, so the hair highlights look good against the dark blue background.

I've attached an AP file so you can see this approach. Hope this helps. BTW, welcome to the forums.

 

Background Recolor.afphoto

[CJDesigns]

Thank you all for your advice! I'll work on it some more with some different background options.