you could try selecting all the polygons on the scalp and detaching them as a new object, then use that as the hair distribution object.
for the eye brows I think that a texture would probably look more realistic than actual hairs but you could try using a grey scale map to distribute the hair density rather than relying on a polygon selection as the distribution area. it looks like you've already painted a texture for the face so creating a black and white map using those uvs should be pretty quick.

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Tyson, thanks for your very prompt response.

I attempted to detach the polygons on the scalp area but unfortunately this seems to interfere with the unwrap UVW mod and completely removes the map and so repeats the face texture on every single polygon! The hair is already attached to a separate 'helmet' above the head itself, but presumably what you're suggesting is to have a scalp which is separate to, but perfectly in line with, the rest of the head and not just hovering above it? The separate object I'm currently using doesn't have a turbosmooth mod applied to it since that seems to mess the hair up, hence it doesn't line up with the rest of the head perfectly.

Initially I did just include the eyebrows in the face texture, but for some reason the quality of the image is quite poor on the 3D model and it really shows with eyebrows in it. I've selected 'match bitmap size as closely as possible' within display drivers (both background and download boxes ticked), and this increased the quality a little but not to the standard of the photo. Any ideas why this might happen? I'll be able to easily use this previous map to now create a black and white map but I'm afraid I don't know how to use a grey scale map. If possible, could you provide some details on this?

Thanks very much,

Caya

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when you detach the polygons it shouldnt mess up your uvs. In editable poly select the polygons of the scalp>hit the detach button in the edit geometry rollout> then check the detach as clone option. that should create a seperate object and your head mesh should be unchanged, just be sure to get out of the subobject selection on you head mesh. The only reason why this might mess up your uvs is if you still have the unwrap uvw mod in the stack and you change the mesh underneath it. as in if you detached the polygons as an element which would add new polygons to the object and break the uvs stored in the unwrap modifier above.

Adding a turbosmooth shouldnt break the hair modifier either but you might try collapsing the turbosmooth first and then adding hair.

Using maps to distribute the hair is just a matter of clicking into the grey box next to a particular parameter in the general parameters of the hair and fur modifier, such as density or scale. you can also map the root and tip colours this way to use painted texture maps to colour the hairs.

As for the eye brow texture, normally you should get a pretty good result in your render with default bitmap settings but sometimes you do need to adjust how max handles the bitmap. with a bitmap loaded, under bitmap parameters in the material editor you can change the bitmap filtering from pyramidal to summed area for a more precise memory consuming effect (this is max's antialiasing of the imported bitmap) or just turn off filtering to use the raw image unfiltered. Additionally you can also supersample the material (which is also an antialiasing pass) which can be usefull for very fine details or if you are rendering at a huge resolution. for exmaple if you had a texture that had very fine lines running side by side without supersampling the texture could buzz and strobe in an animation. turn on supersampling in the supersampling rollout of the material by unchecking "use global settings" then check 'enable local supersampler" hope that helps.

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