Tips on lightening hair?

[pawsplay]

I'm trying to recolor the green-haired boy from Actor1 to be a blond. I'd like him to be a close match for the light blond hair color from the generator. However, when I try to use the dropper, I end up with a blazing yellow-orange. I can't find a filter or color setting on GIMP that seems to easily do what I want. I experimented a little with using a semi-opaque layer of white to tint it, but it feels like I'm basically re-drawing the hair, and frankly, I'm not sure my skills are up to that. 

Any advice would be appreciated. 

 

[Jalen]

To be honest, trying to recreate blonde through a filter or color setting is incredibly, incredibly difficult, especially if it's a light or natural blonde that you're after. You'll either end up with an orange-gold or an ugly green-yellow, in my experience. I tend to just redraw hair anyway when I recolor it, but generally with every color but blonde you can get away with the filter. 

I wish I could offer more advice than this! Your best bet is to either try to color it in by hand, or request someone else do it. 

 

[Lunarea]

Here's my technique for recoloring to blonde (I use Photoshop CS6, but there should be the equivalent of all commands in Gimp):

1) Copy just the hair (or as close as you can get to selecting the hair) onto a different layer.

2) Use Desaturate to turn it completely grey.

3) Use Color Balance to add yellow and red until it looks golden or orangey brown.

4) Use Brightness/Contrast to make the hair lighter for a light blonde.

5) If needed, use Hue/Saturation sliders or the Vibrance tool to make the colors more muted.

6) Select "shadow" areas and make them a darker orange.

7) Rejoice at the pretty blonde hair.

Hope that helps anyway.

 

[pawsplay]

Thanks! Well, at least I now know I wasn't making it harder than it needed to be.

 

[cosmickitty]

I usually color replace from a blonde I like.... but lunarea's suggestion sounds 100 times better

 

[pawsplay]

I really wish I understood better how the color brushstrokes were done on the original art. I can imitate some of the colors, but I've had to resort to lots of smudging to envaguen my poor brushstroke technique. Here's what I got:

 

[Lunarea]

Jalen can probably answer that better, but I don't think smudging is involved at all. Just using the right brush.

I really do encourage you to try the method I posted above.

This is literally under 5 minutes of work, and most of that time was spent erasing pixels to isolate the hair on a separate layer:

 

[pawsplay]

Nice. That is definitely a better color than I was able to create before. It's a little darker than I was going for. Maybe, I'll just go back and remake his sprite to have hair that is more yeller to match. 

EDIT: Okay, I am fairly happy with this. Thank you so much for the tips.

 

[cosmickitty]

Jalen can probably answer that better, but I don't think smudging is involved at all. Just using the right brush.

That would be a super useful tutorial if someone did it


That looks much better, took out all the stray pixels you had the first go around

 

[Jalen]

I could have sworn Penta made a tutorial about that, but I thiiink hers was only about coloring the hair with filters and whatnot; I'll have to dig it up again and see. Once I find some free time, I'd be more than happy to put together a freehand hair recoloring tutorial if there isn't one already! 

Luna, I've never used your method before -- that looks great! I'll have to jot it down for myself :>

Pawsplay, that looks wonderful! I'm glad you could figure it out and you're happy with your results. uwu