How to Add Fake Hair in Photoshop by Making a Hair Brush

In this video we will be learning how to add fake hair in Photoshop by making a hair brush from scratch. Creating a hair brush is a great skill to master because a lot of times, when you make selections, some of the hair can be lost with the selection, so you should know how to add real looking hair using a brush. Here’s the video:

Video Summary

This Photoshop tutorial explores three different ways to create and use custom hair brushes to realistically add hair strands to a portrait.

Method 1: Modifying an Existing Brush (Tablet vs. Mouse)

• Pen Pressure (Best for Tablets): Select a standard soft round brush and open the Brush Settings. Go to Transfer and set Opacity Jitter to Pen Pressure [02:27]. This allows you to draw strands that realistically vary in opacity based on how hard you press your stylus, mimicking a real pencil or hair strand [02:48].
• Fade (Best for Mice): If you don’t have a tablet, change the control to Fade [04:32]. This makes the brush stroke naturally taper off after a certain distance, though the instructor notes a tablet (like a basic Wacom) is a “game changer” for this type of work [05:41], [06:36].

Method 2: Creating a Multi-Strand Brush from Scratch

• Draw Random Dots: Create a new blank document and draw several black dots of varying sizes and shades of gray [08:11].
• Define Brush: Go to Edit > Define Brush Preset to save these dots as a new brush [09:24].
• Adjust Spacing: In Brush Settings, reduce the Spacing to around 1% so the dots flow together into continuous strands when you paint [11:02]. This allows you to paint multiple hair strands with a single stroke [11:13].

Method 3: Creating a Brush from an Existing Photo

• Selection: Choose a photo with high contrast between the hair and a light background. Crop it to a small section of clear hair strands [12:43].
• Prepare the Image: Convert the crop to Black and White, then use Levels to make the hair strands purely black and the background purely white [13:56].
• Define and Use: Define this as a brush preset [14:53]. You can now “stamp” these realistic hair patterns onto your subject, rotating and scaling them to fit the natural flow of their hair [15:27].

The instructor suggests that while downloading existing brushes is the fastest route for beginners, mastering these custom techniques offers much more creative control for advanced editing [16:03].

Important Links

This video is from our Master Selections in Photoshop course, which has 36 videos and 6 hours of content. You can see the details of the full course by using the link below:

Master Selections in Photoshop course