Puffy Hair

[Ginger Wick]

Can you please give me some guidance on tools to use to reduce the "puffy hair" in this image?  I want to make sure I preserve the hair texture. 

(700x700 didn't seem to include enough of the area, so I'm attaching 900x900 crop)

[Damien Symonds]

This fix involves liquify, and is the same as this method.

First select the whole hair area and put it on its own layer, then put a blank cloning layer below that.  Clone the bricks in far enough to cover all the hair that will be shrunk:

Return to the top layer and enter Liquify.  Mask his face and the base of his hair, so that it doesn't get moved by the liquifying:

Using a big brush with the Forward Warp Tool, gently nudge the hair in.  Of course it will make the wall all bendy, but that doesn't matter:

When you've finished liquifying press OK to return to Photoshop, where your file will look like this:

Then add a mask to the liquified layer and mask out the bendy wall:

[Ginger Wick]

Fabulous, thank you  - I'm eager to try it!

 

[Ginger Wick]

Worked like a charm - thank you!! On to skin...