Friday, April 3, 2009

Tutorial: Turn Your Brother Into a Devil

It's been awhile since I posted any tutorials, so I thought I'd show you how I made Steve a devil in the picture I posted yesterday.

1) Obtain picture:


2) The picture is a bit underexposed, so we're going to fix the exposure with the "levels" window. In the menu bar go to Image > Adjustments > Levels and slide the bar to where the "mountains" begin on the right hand side.




3) With the exposure fixed, we'll color steve red. To do so, create a new layer and then select the brush tool. Click on the foreground color (the top of the two colors on your toolbar) and select a deep red color.


Then simply paint in this red in the layer that you've created over the picture. It should look something like this:


4) Now in your layers box (I'm not sure if that's the technical name) select the layer with the red on it and change the blending mode (little box above that says "normal") to "Color Burn" and the opacity to 40%.


He'll look like this:


5) Now we want to use the burn tool to add a bit more drama to his face. The burn tool looks like a little hand pinching somebody.


If you don't see it, you may need to click on the tool in it's place and hold. Then other tools will pop up and you can select the burn tool.
Up top, you can set the exposure (or intensity) of the burn. I like around 15% because it allows for very subtle increments.
Brush along the natural creases in the face and arms, just to darken them a little, and you'll come away with something like this:


6) This picture was taken during Christmas, which explains the antlers... almost. At any rate, we need to remove them, because they are definitely not devilish. I took care of this with the clone stamp tool and the healing brush tool which were explained here.
You've gotta be patient when covering up something as obtrusive as festive antlers, so take your time.
The finished product will hopefully look something like this:


7) The last step is to give him some devil horns! I googled devil horns for the image and then used the clone stamp to put them on his head, carefully erasing the excess and then using a 10% opacity eraser to blend where the horns meet the head.

Viola! We've got a little devil!

-Barry

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