Something Wicked Tutorial

Something Wicked Tutorial using CS5

Thanks for coming by and checking out my lastest tutorial, thought you would enjoy a creepy freaky Halloween one....let me know what you think!

STEP ONE: Open image you want to work with, duplicate image.

STEP TWO: Click on your Background copy layer in the layers panel to make it your active layer. Press Ctrl-L to bring up the Levels dialog. Move the Shadow Input adjustment slider (the black one on the left side) toward the right to darken the shadows then click and drag the Midtone Input (the gray slider in the center) a little to the right to darken the midtones. Move the Highlight Output adjustment slider (the white one on the bottom right) toward the left to slightly darken the highlight areas. Click OK.

STEP THREE: Desaturate the image by pressing Ctrl-shift U, then press Ctrl U to bring up the Hue / Saturation dialog. Turn on the Colorize checkbox, enter Hue (85), Saturation (35), Lightness (-52), and click OK.

Note: The above settings are what I used for my photo, you may have to tweak yours to get just the right shade of color and saturation you prefer. Just play around with the settings until you get what you want.

STEP FOUR: Because the eyes look so washed out I want to give them a little pop at this point. Duplicate your layer, choose your dodge tool, set exposure to 30% and use a soft brush small enough to work your area. Brush over what used to be the white area of the eyes to lighten them up a bit. Also brush the catch lights in pupil of the eye, making them brighter. Make your brush slightly bigger to fit the iris of the eye, this will brighten them slightly. Now choose your burn tool, I want to darken a few areas of the eye just slightly. Keep the soft brush and set your exposure to about 10%. With a smaller size brush ( I used 5 for this picture) outline the dark outline of the iris and outline the lash area (sorta like putting on eye liner). Now for the finishing step, choose your sharpen tool set the strength to about 50%, brush around the iris and pupil once. This will help make the eyes pop a bit more…..

 Note: You can skip step four if you so choose. I only did this step because my picture quality was lacking and I wanted the eyes to stand out a bit more.

STEP FIVE: Duplicate layer, choose the Burn tool. Go to the Options bar, choose Midtones for Range, and enter 30% for Exposure, Using a large, soft-edged brush (I used 75 for the top of eye area and decreased the size to 35 for under the eye area. Just play around with the sizes to see what works for you), darken the areas around the eyes, cheeks and side of nose and any other areas you may wanted to darken. Some areas I went over a second time to darken more. For the last step I changed my mode to Shadow and used brush size to 25 and did a quick sweep around the eye area to give a darker smoky look. Again just play around with it to get it to look the way you want.

STEP SIX: Duplicate layer, choose the Dodge tool. In the Options Bar, choose Midtones for Range, and enter 30% for Exposure. Use a large, soft-edged brush to lighten the cheek nose and lip highlights.

STEP SEVEN: Add new layer, choose a lip color, I choose orange. Use a small, soft-edged brush at about a 26 Opacity to add color to lips. You just want the color to barely show up. Lower the opacity even more on your layers pallet if it still is too strong. On the layer below your new layer, choose the Burn tool, change the range to Shadows, Exposure 13% and use a soft brush size 10. Add just a smidge of a shadow to the area below the upper lip to define the area a bit more.

STEP EIGHT: Open up a peeling paint image, drag it onto your image. Rotate it 90 degrees.

STEP NINE: Ctrl – shift – U to desaturate the peeling paint and change blend mode to Multiply. Now, press Ctrl L to bring up your Levels dialog. Drag the Highlight input Levels slider toward the left until it reads 202, Click OK.

Note: If you want to cover more space on your image, duplicate layer and move to another area you might want to cover. Here is an image of 4 sections, merge these layers together before changing your Levels.

STEP TEN: Click on Add Layer Mask icon (circle in a square) at the bottom of the Layers panel. Choose the brush tool and use a small, soft-edged brush to mask out the hard edges and take out any areas you don’t want the cracks on, especially in the inside of the eye area.

STEP ELEVEN: To intensify the appearance of the cracks, duplicate Layer (peeling paint layer) and lower the opacity until you like what you see…..

Your Done!

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