AI Head Swap Tutorial — Transfer Head, Hair, and Jaw (Not Just the Face)

Most "face swap" tools only replace the face region. The hair, the jawline, and the head shape from the target image stay where they were. Result: if your source face has long curly hair and the target has a buzz cut, the swap reads as "wrong head, weirdly grafted face" — uncanny.

Head swap solves this by transferring the entire head — face, hair, jawline, ears, neckline. The target image keeps its body, clothing, background, and pose; everything from the neck up changes.

The technical reason is that traditional face-swap pipelines (= GFPGAN, InsightFace, fal-ai/face-swap) operate on a face mask. They detect the face landmarks, align them, and blend pixel-level. The hair never enters the equation because the mask doesn't cover it.

To swap hair too, you need a model that understands the whole image — a multi-image edit model that takes BOTH images as input and produces a new composite. The current generation that can do this:

• Google Nano Banana edit — multi-image edit endpoint, accepts an array of images + an instruction prompt
• ByteDance SeeDream v4 edit — similar shape, different model family

EGAKU's /head-swap routes through both with auto-fallback to face-swap if both refuse. You always get a result.

The whole flow is two uploads + one click.

1. Open /head-swap. (Sign-in required — head swap uses 6 credits per request and the result goes to your library.)
2. Source image: the photo with the head you WANT to transfer. Full face visible, clear lighting, head facing roughly the same direction as the target.
3. Target image: the photo with the body / scene you want to KEEP. Same general angle as the source helps the blend.
4. Click Swap Head. The system tries Nano Banana → SeeDream → face-swap in order. 10-30 seconds total.
5. Result appears with a tier badge so you know which upstream served it.

Head swap quality drops when source and target diverge too much. Common fixes:

• Head angle mismatch: source is 3/4 view, target is straight-on → AI has to invent the missing geometry. Pick photos with similar head orientation.
• Lighting mismatch: source is golden hour outdoor, target is fluorescent office → the blended face looks off-temperature. Pick photos with similar lighting direction + warmth.
• Resolution mismatch: source 4K, target 800px → the high-res source detail won't survive the downscale. Use roughly comparable resolutions.
• Heavy filters / heavy editing: vintage filters, anime filters, heavy retouching → the AI sees the filter as "part of the face" and propagates it incorrectly. Use clean source photos when possible.

Good use cases:

• Putting your character (= AI-generated or custom) onto a stock photo body for editorial mock-ups
• Trying outfits / settings on a consistent character across many compositions
• Anonymizing people in a photo by swapping in an AI-generated head
• Mid-production placeholder before a real photoshoot

What it isn't:

• A deepfake generator. EGAKU detects face-fidelity + sexual/harmful prompt combinations and silently substitutes a harmless replacement.
• A way to put someone's face into content they didn't consent to. That's prohibited regardless of platform capability.

Try it free at egaku-ai.com/head-swap. Head swap is 6 credits per request; the free plan starts with 50 credits.