*ahem* sorry...

One of the key important details of doing hair is remembering how hair flows. Even when dry, hair tends to flow in odd-shaped ribbons or sections. This is a natural state and is essential to rendering believeable hair. Think of it also as fluid like water in a stream. Sure, it might part here or there for a rock (like an ear or whatnot) but all in all, it follows gentle curves and obeys the laws of gravity. Think of the top of the head as the stream bed and the sides as what would happen if there is a waterfall. The hair curves around the side of the head, but does not glue itself to is (in most cases). Just like a waterfall, it glides over the edge and tapers down.

For simplicity's sake, I made the hair in this sketch very abstract so that you might follow its divisions better.

I made general shapes in a brown, filled in the brown with a radial gradient using a light beige to a deep harvest chocolate brown. You don't have to keep every section on a seperate layer, as that will get quite large in file sizes later, but about three layers is good for this. Directly below are how I grouped them:

Those are the groups in the order from topmost layer to bottommost. See? Nothing special, but they do keep some sections 'out of my hair' as it were when I need to color strands close to one another. ;} Don't forget to put each layer on the 'preserve transparency' option at the top of your layers pallet. This makes coloring easier in the future.

Using the smudge tool with a small hard brush set to about 85% pressure, I dragged from the top to the bottom here and there as I saw fit. Using the full strokes, I made subsections of the sections of hair. Then I would start in the middle of a highlight or a shadow to get finer details, because if you always drag from the ends, it'll look odd. The sections are allowed to start from other places than the top roots of the hair, but they must follow the gist of the hair section's direction. No starting from the middle and pulling straight out. Remember, water doesn't usually flow out at right angles. ;}

Hair can look a little ratty because it's pulled from the inside out to little spurs of strands. Get long flowing lines. The individual hair usually will be the length of the rest of the hair.

At the bottom strands and curls as you can see here, I do have some banding of color. Just to get a start of highlights and shading going, I took that darker brown color and set the medium-sized fuzzy brush to 'multiply' at about 43% and lightly stroked where I wanted my darks. For the highlights, the sections of the hair were rather dark to begin with down there, so my original light brown did the trick. I used it set to normal with a large fuzzy brush.

More smudging, more strands and divisions created from smudging alone. Remember to not always start at the base of the hair for every stroke. By starting some smudge pulls inside a highlight or a shadow, sometimes you get more realistic parts.

I took a thicker hard brush and made some more drammatic sections. Be careful how you do this, it can get out of control quickly.

I also adjusted the levels so that the darks were darker, lights were lighter and I made the mediums more dark too. Just to add a bit more contrast quickly. Go to Image>Adjust>Levels or hit 'Ctrl-L' for the shortcut to the Levels Window. Here in particular, tho, I took that lighter brown color and set the brush to 'color dodge' at an opacity of about 23% to quickly tweak in some highlights to work with. Here, too, you may wish to add more 'multiply' brown and 'color burn' brown (careful... keep that at about 8%) to deepen the shadows if the levels didn't quite do everything you wanted.

Note: Also, for some added variety and life to color and highlights, you may wish to try taking different hair shades and set the large brush to a very light 'overlay' setting (about 5-13%). Stroke this over different areas to give hair the depth in color it has in life. I didn't do much of that here, as for me, most of the variety of color comes from the environmental conditions (reflection off of sand, a red umbrella, the moonlight, etc.).

I needed more strands. I took a hard eraser, and in PS6.0 made it fade in size to 0 in like, 53 steps. Then I roughed up the edges a bit to make the end of the hair softer. You should do this even maybe a little more than I did here, as hair naturally will not end harshly unless it is wet. It will look fuzzy except for maybe a strand or so.

Also, more streaks with the smudge tool where I deemed necessary...

It's easiest in 6.0, but these stray strands are taking a hilight for the foreground and a med tone for the background colors, set the small hard brush to fade size in say, 130 steps (for this piece, at this resolution) and fade color from the foreground color to the back. That will break up the sections mass a little more yet look more natural than the little tufts you had originally. Remember, follow the general direction of the hair sections! Gravity works, people! ;}

If you do not have Photoshop 6.0, then just do the size fade as I described and manually color the hair. Don't forget to check the 'preserve transparency' box in the layers pallet before you do any coloring. I would most sincerely suggest you do these strands on a separate top layer off the hair sections you have already done. Lemme tell you, if you make too many strands, you do NOT want to have to erase them or start the whole head of hair over!

I didn't like the color, so after all the tones are set (which is why I didn't bother with this earlier) I adjusted the levels to make the darks a little more bright, brought down the lights, and made the meds a little lighter. Then I went into adjusting the hue and saturation, and make the hue a tiny more red, and the saturation I brought down a bit more so it wouldn't look so acidy. I love PS's adjustments (all under image>adjust) because if you know how they operate, they are a quick fix that brings everything together.

Again, I needed more highlights, so taking a light pale yellow, I set my medium brush (the 45 point, I think) to 'color dodge' at a low 23% opacity and pulled out some of the highlights where I needed them. Remember, healthy hair has a sheen to it. Clean hair has a sheen to it usually. But don't get carried away. You don't want to make the hair look like it's radioactive. ;}

And there you go. All done!

One of the cool things about having all your tones and color ranges in place, is you can then muddle with the hue/saturation and the levels to make just about any hair color:

The thing you have to worry about with using the smudge tool for hair is that if your setting isn't high enough to complete the length of a strand of hair gradually, it will look ratty and clumpy. If you use a smaller brush and a higher pressure setting, it will turn out easier and better. Just remember to make the majority of hair whisps the length like the rest of the hair. And use the smudge tool carefully.

And don't forget hair comes in sections!

I hope this little tutorial was helpful to you for getting a better handle on hair. Depending on the situation, colors and lighting change of course, so keep that in mind. This was just a general introduction, it took me about an hour total to do. Don't worry if it takes you longer. ;} You'll get faster in time the more you learn how the tools work together.

Enjoy!