If you’re interested in adding a full-fledged beard to any person, you can use the technique in this tutorial and even download the free brush pack I created to quickly and effectively create realistic facial hair in Photoshop CC. In this Photoshop tutorial, I’ll cover cutting a beard off of one face and blending it into a new face whether that is a fully grown man’s face or a baby’s face. We’ll create a custom brush, building facial hair from scratch, using Select and Mask to fine tune (sort of) the selection, masking, matching color, and much more!
Download Tutorial Files Here
Extracting the Beard
I like to take a beard from an existing photo when I can. The closer the angles and lighting can be to your photo, the better. I used the Lasso tool and drew and selection from this guy’s forehead around his face and beard and down into his chest below the beard to make it a little easier to extract the hairy end of the beard. Hit Cmd/Ctrl + J to pop this selection up onto its own layer and drag it over into the photo that needs beard help.
Select and Mask + Transforming the Beard
Use the Quick Selection Tool and paint a selection over the mask and then go Select>Select and Mask and use the Refine Edge Brush to paint over the edges and clean up those edges. Output the selection to a “New Layer with Layer Mask”. Check out the video to see exactly how I do all this. With the new masked beard layer selected, go Edit>Free Transform and scale and rotate this beard into place. Right-click within the transform handles and choose “Warp” and tweak, push, and adjust the beard until it has meshed to the face better.
Using a Photoshop Beard Brush for Amazing Results!
In the video, I show you how to create a beard hair brush in Photoshop, but for now, use the download near the top of this post to download a brush pack I made of beard hair brushes. Create a new layer and grab the Clone Stamp tool and use a small 30-40px beard hair brush to sample and paint in randomized hairs along and edge(s) of the beard that needs to be cleaned up and blended into the photo. See the video to see exactly how I use the Brush editing panel to create a highly customized and reactive brush head that makes creating hair so easy!
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