In this tutorial you will learn how to make a realistic wound in Photoshop 7.0. It also covers the basics of texturizing an image. It is required that you know the basics of Photoshop, that is how to make new layer, and how to copy & paste one image into another.

This tutorial might seem a little gross! But it is meant to show how big a realism you can achieve with Photoshop. Thanks to oneactor10 for the beautiful picture of his daughter Desiree, it's almost a shame turning her into such a sad character...
     Before lesson, click to enlarge                After Lesson, click to enlarge

      

Step 1.

First of all you need to download this file. It contains the picture of Desiree and the two textures that we will use to make the realistic wound. Now, lets get started:

Open the picture of Desiree image in Photoshop.

Also open the texture-rust.jpg in Photoshop. Cut the texture-rust.jpg and paste it into the picture of Desiree. Place it on top of her face as shown on figure 1. You can now close the empty window, where the texture-rust.jpg used to be.

 

Help to the novice:

You can cut & paste by doing the following:

1. Activate the window with the picture which needs to be cut.

2. Press Ctrl+A to mark the whole picture.

3. Press Ctrl+X to cut the picture.

4. Select the window with Desiree and press Ctrl+V to insert the cutted image.

 

 

figure 2
 

Step 2.

Activate Layer 1, by clicking once on the layer in the layers panel. Rename the layer to texture rust (or don't, its not a must).

Now, press the button where the red arrow is pointing (figure 2a) to add a layer mask. Click once on the layer mask to activate it.

Choose the brush tool, pick a soft brush of 100px. and start painting with black to erase the area as shown on figure 2.

Help to the novice:

When painting black on the mask, you delete part of the image. Painting white reveals it again. You don't delete the picture itself, which is the smart thing working with masks.

figure 2a

 

figure 3
 

Step 3.

Here comes the trick!

Change the blending mode of the texture rust layer to soft light, see where the red arrow points on figure 3a.

Your picture should now look like figure 3. Point you mouse on figure 3, to see a close up of the result so far.

Now you have yourself a pretty realistic wound, see :-) but we are not finished yet!

figure 3a

 

figure 4

Step 4.

Open texture-beach.jpg. Desaturate the image by pressing Ctrl+U and turn the slider of Saturation down to -100 (figure 4a) press OK.

Now, do the same thing with the beach image as you did with the rust image, from step 1 to step 3: Cut & paste, place on top of her face, add mask, change blending mode to soft light etc.

Rename the layer to texture beach. Turn opacity of texture beach down to 30% in the layer panel.

Help to the novice:

When you desaturate an image you make it black and white.

It is almost always necessary to desaturate images when using them as textures.

figure 4a

figure 5

Step 5.

To make it extra detailed, we will add some touch-up. Create a new layer, name it touch-up. Choose Edit -> fill -> fill with 50% grey. Press OK. Choose overlay from the layers panel, and the grey disappears. Activate the touch-up layer.

Pick the dodge tool (figure 5a) with a brush of 2-3px and exposure around 40-50%. Draw with the dodge tool along the edges of the wound. And use the burn tool in the shadows of the wound.

Play around with different exposures, different brush sizes and different ranges.

Help to the novice:

When you dodge you add light to an area, when you burn you darken the area instead. You can dodge and burn either the highlights the midtones or the shadows, with different exposure.

figure 5a

 

 FINISHED

Vampirize Gwen Stefani

This Adobe Photoshop tutorial shows how can you, in a few steps, make a perfect "vampire look" of anyone's picture, in this case Gwen Stefani's.

Before:

After:

Lets start...

1. Start Photoshop, open your image, duplicate layer, zoom in, select pen tool and make selection on tooth like this:

2. Now press Ctrl+T and transform selection like this:

3. Do the same thing for the other eyetooth:

After deselecting you should have something like this:

4. Now select Sponge Tool, set Mode to Desaturate and Flow to 75%
and start brushing everything except eyes and small area around eyes. You should have something like this:

5. Now select Burn Tool and set Range to shadows and Exposure to 10%
and start brushing eyes (and small area around them), lips (complete mouth) but don't touch cheeks and the rest of skin:

You're done! Enjoy your Photoshop result!

Learn how to Zombify people

Skulls and bones

After I found myself a suitable source pic (1), I first used Hue/Saturation, to decrease the overall saturation and make the colours greener, and did this especially near the lips (2). For the head, I looked for a picture of a skull which was taken from roughly the same angle (3), and used a layer mask to make it seem as if her eye had been taken out (4).

Adding details

In the neck area (1), I used source pictures of a leg with spider veins (2), a mummy and a war victim (3). Source pictures which are usable for such a contest aren’t always pleasant to look at… I experimented a lot with different blend modes, till it looked right. I finally decided the features of her body weren’t clear enough, so I did some masking adjustments to bring them back (4).

Dirty Laundry

The clothes (1) were soiled with a soft brush in red and greenish black colours, while using the overlay layer mode (2).

Finished

Finally it was time for some more detailed work. I took the image from (1) to (2) by, among other things:
- drawing little zits and such
- using hue/saturation very selectively to tone down the saturation and make some skin extremely green
- de saturating the hair completely
- using overlay, soft light and color burn layers and soft red and black brushes to add more shadow and bloody parts

I hope you enjoyed this tutorial !

Create a Horror Face in Photoshop

Its not quite Halloween but I wanted to write a tutorial on turning a photo of a face into a Zombie or Horror face. Lets start by opening a photo that is a somewhat closeup of someones face.  You can use the one I’m using by downloading it here:  [Face] . Here is the dried mud texture I’m using for the face: [Dried mud].
Ok, with the picture loaded up in Photoshop, double click the background layer in the layers palette to activate the alpha channel and name it Background. FYI – If your not sure where the layers palette is, go to Window>Layers and select it to open the layers palette,  you’ll see that the picture you loaded will be the background layer.  Select the pen tool and set it to path in the above tool bar. Zoom in on the face to about 300% and trace around the face with the pen tool.

After you’ve traced the face with the pen tool hit Ctrl +Enter to create a selection of the face.

The next four steps in order:
1. hit Ctrl +c to copy the selection into the clipboard
2. hit Ctrl +Shift +i to invert the selection
3. Apply a layer mask to the background layer to mask out the face  (layer mask icon is at the bottom of the layers palette).
4. Create a new layer above the background layer, name it face and hit Ctrl +V to copy the face into the face layer.
Then you’ll probably have to reposition the face and line it up correctly. If all goes well your picture should look exactly like the original photo except you have an additional layer of just the face.
With the face layer selected hit Shift +Ctrl +U to desaturate.

Now you can bring in the dried mud texture. Open the texture in Photoshop and drag it into your face document (it should be on top of all other layers). If your using the texture I supplied, its pretty big so you have to size it down. Temporarily lower the opacity of the mud texture so you can see what area of the mud you want over the face then hit Ctrl +T to bring up the transform tool, Scale an position the dried mud where you want it.

When you get it where you want, hit enter to apply and raise the opacity of the dried mud back up to 100%.
With the mud layer selected in the layers palette, Ctrl +click the “thumbnail” of the face layer in the layers palette to create a selection.  Apply a layer mask to the mud layer by clicking on the icon an the bottom of the layer palette and set the blend mode to Color Burn.

Select the “layer mask Thumbnail” of the dried mud layer and take the blur tool from the tools palette and soften the edges a little around the face. Then take the Sponge tool and paint/scrub on the neck to bring in a little texture.

Select the Face layer and take the burn tool from the tools palette and darken a little around the Eye and the corner of the mouth.

Then select the background layer and use the burn tool again to darken the hair and neck area ( use a soft brush at about 80px.

Next, Select the “Layer mask Thumbnail” of the dried mud layer. Select the paint brush and make sure your forground is set to black and paint around the pupil and iris to reveal the original eye. You can easily give the eye some color by creating a colored circle around the iris and changing the blend mode to overlay.  I like the darkish gray look so I won’t do that in this tutorial.
In this last step we’ll add just a touch of the levels adjustment to make the face just a little more erie looking.  Select the face layer and go to Image>Adjustments>levels and just move the black and gray values slightly or just play around with the values to get it how you want. Here’s what I used.

In an optional step, add another layer above the rest, set the forground color to red and background to black and fill it with the clouds filter  filter>render>clouds and then mask it to the shape of the face the same way did the Dried Mud layer, set the blend mode to overlay and opacity to about 50%.
Here’s my Final: