I have a hair without an elder gray. Normally I'd just make a coloured hair grey, but this hair only comes in black.

Nothing I do to it in Photoshop makes it look less black. Does anyone have any advice for how to make a grey from black?

For making a hair grey (from black) in Photoshop - honestly, it's easier to start with a blonde or red (maybe brown if it's not too dark), desaturating it and maybe changing shadows/highlights with levels + curves. Starting with a black gives rather bad shadows/highlights, since they tend to be quite dark, so there's not too much details to go on. I'll occasionally keep a hint of color if I start with blonde. Keeps the color a bit more natural.

You can try with levels/curves and brightness/contrast, but the result is rarely going to be any good.

Is there just a black variant, or are there any recolors by someone you can use? Have you checked the hair database? Is it possible to recolor the hair with existing textures (remi/pooklet/etc.)?

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If the hair lacks the elder resources or only have one texture:

If the hair has elder resources (hair is just black version), make a recolor, then jump to *

If the hair lacks elder resources (uses a different mesh than adult), In SimPE, change the "age" for the adult hair (08) to 18. and the age+gender for the elder hair to 0. Make a new recolor. This one should get resources for the grey/elder hair.
*While you still have the project going (before importing to the game), recolor the elder hair textures (make it lighter/etc.). The adult and elder hair need to look different to create an extra grey texture (if they're still using the same texture, the file ends up with just one texture.

Levels adjustment with the black point (on the second slider) raised and the midtone (on the first) lowered can do a decent job if the particular texture has enough detail to work with. If it's too dark, detail may be lost / muddied.

Tried, but I think the hair is just too dark. This is the only texture I have.

I can get it to about this point without the details getting lost in pixellation, but it's grainy and wouldn't be particularly good-looking to work with.

Which hair it is? There could be recolors of either the TS2 or TS4 hair available somewhere.

EDIT: You can try using the "Exposure" adjustment layer, too.

My attempt:

Thanks, everybody! I think I've finally got the hair working.

One more question, and this is just an aethestics one. Does the elder hair look okay with the blue highlights or should I just leave them out for elders?