Head & Shoulders x Allen Cooley
For the Head & Shoulders Royal Oils campaign, the focus was on a high-detail, close-up shot of braided hair. In beauty retouching of this scale, the goal is to show the intricate patterns of the braids and the health of the scalp without making the image look "plastic" or over-worked. Because the product is designed for scalp care, the skin at the roots had to look perfectly hydrated and clean, which required a high level of precision at a pixel level.
The biggest technical challenge was managing flyaways and frizz along the braids. With natural textures, you can't just use a heavy-handed healing brush, or you lose the essential character of the hair. I manually cleaned up individual stray hairs to define the silhouette of each braid, ensuring the pattern remained sharp and graphic. I used a combination of frequency separation and advanced dodge and burn to even out the skin tones on the scalp, removing any dryness or redness while keeping the natural skin pores intact.
I also refined the parting lines between the braids to make sure they were clean and symmetrical, which is vital for a "hero" beauty asset. The final image maintained all the grit and texture of the hair but with a polished, commercial finish that worked for both high-res print and digital displays.
