Decaying Flesh
This tutorial requested by xpurplemoon
For this particular piece, I started with a regular picture of myself:
The first thing I did was the eyes. I used the Magic Wand tool to select the iris of my left eye, then put the selection on its own layer by pressing Ctrl + J. Once I thought I had all of the iris selected, I clicked on the top layer and pressed Ctrl + E to merge all of the iris selection layers together. I created a new layer directly beneath this layer and filled it with white. I used this layer to see if I had all of the iris selected, then I hid the white layer by clicking on the eye icon in the layers palette and started working on the right eye, repeating the entire process. Once I knew I was done selecting all of the iris layer, I deleted the white layer by dragging it to the trashcan icon in the bottom of the layers palette.
To colorize the eyes, I pressed Ctrl + U to bring up the Hue/Saturation dialog box. I checked the Colorize option, raised the saturation level to 100%, and moved the Hue slider until I found a color I liked. Then I adjusted the saturation level to something reasonably tamer. Eyes are done!
I clicked once on the original image layer in the layers palette, then made two duplicate layers of it by pressing Ctrl + J twice. I used the Lasso tool to select all of the t-shirt in the first copy and put it on its own layer (Ctrl + J), then deleted the rest of the layer. I removed the color from my t-shirt by pressing Ctrl + Shift + U, which desaturates/removes color from the layer. On the second copy, I selected all of my face and arms with the Lasso tool and repeated the process of putting it on its own layer, then dragging the rest to the trash. this layer was named "Flesh". I desaturated it, and then made a duplicate of it altogether. This is a very important step, something that sir_albatross reminded me to do that made a world of difference. I selected all of the Flesh layer by pressing Ctrl + A, then copied it by presing Ctrl + C. I opened a new document (Ctrl + N), and pasted (Ctrl + V) the Flesh layer into it. I deleted the baclground layer so that only the Flesh layer was left. I saved this under the name "displace1.psd" and closed it. Now on to the decay effects.
I created a new blank layer above the Flesh layer in the layers palette. Using brushes I downloaded from Pretty Brush, I selected the Brush tool and chose the brush with the cracks in it first, and set the foreground color to black. (press the letter D to set it to black, X to set it to white - and you can toggle them back and forth using these keys alone) With the blank layer selected, I held the Ctrl key down and clicked once on the Flesh layer to put a selection around it - then clicked once on the actual image to put in the cracks. The reason being is that I only wanted the cracks visible on the flesh part. Ctrl + D deselects the active selection. Now for that important thing I was talking about earlier. I went to the Filter menu, and chose Distort/Displace. I checked the options for Stretch To Fit and Wrap Around. At the prompt, I opened the displace1.psd document. What this basically did was wrapped the brush layer of cracks around the flesh layer, giving it all of the contours necessary. To clean it up a bit, I chose the Eraser tool set to a round, soft edge pixel brush and erased the cracks from my eyes and any unecessary areas.
I made another new blank layer over the cracks layer and added the wounds and the stitches with the Brush tool. Same process to make the contours using the Displace filter, with one exception. The stitches on my mouth were made on a seperate layer. I pressed Ctrl + T to bring up the Free Transform option, and right clicked inside the bounding box to select Skew (and later Perspective) to kind of warp the stitches around my lips.
Finally, I was able to adjust the entire image's overall tone. I first clicked on the top layer in the layers palette and pressed Ctrl + E a few times to merge the layers together. I pressed Ctrl + L to bring up Levels, and dragged the Input slider's far left point to the right until I got the effect I wanted. I dragged the Output slider's far-right point to the left until I thought I had a good blend going on, and that was pretty much it!
Here I am, all Night Of The Living Dead and everything:
For this particular piece, I started with a regular picture of myself:
The first thing I did was the eyes. I used the Magic Wand tool to select the iris of my left eye, then put the selection on its own layer by pressing Ctrl + J. Once I thought I had all of the iris selected, I clicked on the top layer and pressed Ctrl + E to merge all of the iris selection layers together. I created a new layer directly beneath this layer and filled it with white. I used this layer to see if I had all of the iris selected, then I hid the white layer by clicking on the eye icon in the layers palette and started working on the right eye, repeating the entire process. Once I knew I was done selecting all of the iris layer, I deleted the white layer by dragging it to the trashcan icon in the bottom of the layers palette.
To colorize the eyes, I pressed Ctrl + U to bring up the Hue/Saturation dialog box. I checked the Colorize option, raised the saturation level to 100%, and moved the Hue slider until I found a color I liked. Then I adjusted the saturation level to something reasonably tamer. Eyes are done!
I clicked once on the original image layer in the layers palette, then made two duplicate layers of it by pressing Ctrl + J twice. I used the Lasso tool to select all of the t-shirt in the first copy and put it on its own layer (Ctrl + J), then deleted the rest of the layer. I removed the color from my t-shirt by pressing Ctrl + Shift + U, which desaturates/removes color from the layer. On the second copy, I selected all of my face and arms with the Lasso tool and repeated the process of putting it on its own layer, then dragging the rest to the trash. this layer was named "Flesh". I desaturated it, and then made a duplicate of it altogether. This is a very important step, something that sir_albatross reminded me to do that made a world of difference. I selected all of the Flesh layer by pressing Ctrl + A, then copied it by presing Ctrl + C. I opened a new document (Ctrl + N), and pasted (Ctrl + V) the Flesh layer into it. I deleted the baclground layer so that only the Flesh layer was left. I saved this under the name "displace1.psd" and closed it. Now on to the decay effects.
I created a new blank layer above the Flesh layer in the layers palette. Using brushes I downloaded from Pretty Brush, I selected the Brush tool and chose the brush with the cracks in it first, and set the foreground color to black. (press the letter D to set it to black, X to set it to white - and you can toggle them back and forth using these keys alone) With the blank layer selected, I held the Ctrl key down and clicked once on the Flesh layer to put a selection around it - then clicked once on the actual image to put in the cracks. The reason being is that I only wanted the cracks visible on the flesh part. Ctrl + D deselects the active selection. Now for that important thing I was talking about earlier. I went to the Filter menu, and chose Distort/Displace. I checked the options for Stretch To Fit and Wrap Around. At the prompt, I opened the displace1.psd document. What this basically did was wrapped the brush layer of cracks around the flesh layer, giving it all of the contours necessary. To clean it up a bit, I chose the Eraser tool set to a round, soft edge pixel brush and erased the cracks from my eyes and any unecessary areas.
I made another new blank layer over the cracks layer and added the wounds and the stitches with the Brush tool. Same process to make the contours using the Displace filter, with one exception. The stitches on my mouth were made on a seperate layer. I pressed Ctrl + T to bring up the Free Transform option, and right clicked inside the bounding box to select Skew (and later Perspective) to kind of warp the stitches around my lips.
Finally, I was able to adjust the entire image's overall tone. I first clicked on the top layer in the layers palette and pressed Ctrl + E a few times to merge the layers together. I pressed Ctrl + L to bring up Levels, and dragged the Input slider's far left point to the right until I got the effect I wanted. I dragged the Output slider's far-right point to the left until I thought I had a good blend going on, and that was pretty much it!
Here I am, all Night Of The Living Dead and everything: