How to Change a Hairstyle Using AI in Photoshop

How to Change a Hairstyle Using AI in Photoshop

Trying out a haircut before you commit to it is a genuinely useful thing to be able to do — and one of the more practical uses for Generative Fill. Take a photograph of yourself, select the hair, describe what you want, and see it.

This tutorial works through four cases: turning short hair into long, removing a hat and generating the hair beneath it, adding facial hair, and changing both the cut and the color. Each one teaches something about how to select and how to prompt.

Change Hairstyle Using AI in Photoshop: Clear the Old Shape First

The first example takes hair in a bun and makes it long. The instinct is to select a long-hair shape and generate straight away, but there is a step before that.

The bun sticks out beyond the head. If you leave it there, it stays in the frame and fights whatever you generate. So remove it first:

— building the layered file first.

Change the Cut and the Color

The last case covers restyling.

Select the hair — in parts, holding Shift to add, if the shape is awkward — and prompt something like fancy haircut. Deliberately vague prompts work well here, because you are exploring rather than specifying.

Keep Separate Regions Consistent

If you treat one section and then want a nearby section to match, use the same prompt on the second selection. Photoshop reads the surrounding image each time, so the already-restyled area informs the new one and the two come out consistent. Different wording on adjacent areas is how you end up with a mismatch.

For color, select the hair and prompt the color directly — blue hair. Same mechanic, and it is the fastest way to find out whether a color you are considering actually suits you.

Group your generative layers as you go. With several versions of the same photograph — a restyle, a color change, a mustache — groups keep them separable, and you can toggle between looks rather than committing to one.

What Makes the Difference

Clear protruding shapes before generating the replacement. Draw the silhouette you want rather than tracing what is there. Include shadows when you remove something. Exclude features you want kept. Leave room at the edges of every selection. Regenerate freely, and edit the prompt rather than the selection when the shape was right but the result was not.

And keep in mind what this is for. Previewing a haircut, a color, or a beard on your own photograph is a genuinely useful thing. Altering someone else’s appearance and presenting it as a real photograph of them is a different act entirely — worth being clear with yourself about which one you are doing.

Quick Reference: Keys, Menus and Settings

• Select the hairL for the Lasso Tool; Shift to add, Alt/Option to subtract
• Remove a bun or hatSelect it and its shadow, Generative Fill, Generate with an empty prompt
• Longer hairLasso the long shape joined to the real hair; prompt long hair
• Facial hairSelect above the lip, lips left out; prompt mustache, then full mustache
• New cutPrompt fancy haircut, then the same prompt on the next section
• New colorPrompt blue hair; Generate in the Properties panel for more options