I can do a plausible hack-job on a photo – cloning some hair onto a cropped-off bit of head to make a thing that looks vaguely head-shaped ?

(… no, I won’t be posting before or after images on here 😉 ; it’s my daughter)

Depends what version of PS you have?

photoshop cc 2015

or

lightroom cc 2015

If you are in a rush, or need hints and tips for this task, try asking nicely on here and they will guide you or maybe even if you are very nice do this first job for you if you are in a hurry.

https://www.talkphotography.co.uk/forums/

Its free to join, they never mail you about anything unless you request stuff, dont sell your address and are generally a very helpful and kind bunch.

How quick you pick up skills of your own depends on
1) how good you are at learning
2) how good your art skills are. Retouching is ok to a certain level, then you hit a wall due to how good or bad your general artistic skills are. People tend to forget the artistic element is an issue, though practise certainly helps.

You could try this lot for advice too:

http://www.retouchpro.com/forums/

It’s really a “how long is a piece of string” kind of question.

It’s just a tool. If you know about light sources, illustration, perspective, proportion etc, then it’ll take as much time as it takes to learn any other tool.

If you don’t know about any of that stuff, then learn it first. Otherwise you’re on a hiding to nothing.

Remember that people who are photoshop experts never go anywhere near the filters palette. Because it’s tantamount to admitting that you’re devoid of ideas and haven’t got a clue what you’re doing

A couple of hours or less would get you to the point where you will have cloned the hair over.

But …

I would suggest that you get the source of your cloning to be decent and at the same resolution as your target so that when you copy over, the hair size and head size are matching.

Learn about the brush strength and flow, you will get a better result by having a low flow / strength where you have to go over the are multiple times to get the clone picture to appear. This can help as you can fade in the edges of the hair by brushing the area less times than the main body of the hair.

There will be tutorials on cloning hair online and on YouTube , there it’s tuts for just about everything now.

Ah, sorry folks, given the wrong impression here

This for a bus pass rather than hanging in the lounge – was just hoping to sort it tonight rather than wait nearly a whole 24hr before the next chance

Might have a go with the gimp – I’ve used that before and neither of the adobes seems to like me so far

Thanks

It’s just a tool. If you know about light sources, illustration, perspective, proportion etc, then it’ll take as much time as it takes to learn any other tool.

Hmm I think that’s an open ended answer, I don’t think you ever really stop learning and ultimately it depends on what you are trying to do.
It took me about a year to get competent enough to take on some work outside my own photography but I still learn new things. I use it nearly every day and I’m always up for trying new techniques or another way of doing something.
Talking to other retouchers is a good way of picking things up and no matter how advanced they are you can often show them something that makes them say “oh I never knew you could do that!?’

You should be able to splodge some hair on to the top of a head quite easily, getting it to look good might take a bit longer. 😮

splodged – even you’d be impressed MrS !

I find photoshop quite complicated as there are usually three + different ways of doing the same thing. The best thing to do is search instructional videos on youtube. Gimp i’ve used for a long time until i got lightroom and it’s a lot simpler than PS, which is a good thing, BUT the results are often less polished. PS is quite powerful and will do a lot of things that Gimp can’t.

Good luck!