Tag: Liquify

Surrealism – How to Create a Scary Skull Using Photoshop

This will be the end result of this tutorial:

Here I have a picture of a fake skull that I took during Halloween:

And here I have a picture I took of a bloodshot eye. A bad allergy day for him, but a good shot for me. It’s hard to find a good bloodshot eye like this one so I’ll make it available for download at the end of this tutorial along with the original skull.

Now, what I need to do is to “clone” the eye into the skull. I’ll choose the clone tool from the tools bar:

On the clone options bar at the top of the screen, I’ll make sure my clone brush hardness setting is 40%:

I’ll go to the skull image and create a duplicate layer by hitting CTRL+J on my keyboard:

I’ll rename the “Layer 1” layer to “Right eye” by double clicking on the words “Layer 1”:

Now I’ll go back to the eye image and proceed to clone over the pupil of the eye. I’ll hover the clone tool over the pupil of the eye and hit the ALT key at the same time to capture the clone:

Now I’ll go back to the skull image and clone in the right eye.

Next ‘ll make another duplicate layer and call it “Left eye”. This is what the image looks like so far:

This is what the layer palette looks like at this point:

The next thing I’ll do is go to the burn tool in the tools bar. I’ll darken the bottom teeth just a little:

Now I’ll go to Filter/Liquify:

The Liquify dialog box comes up. This is where I’ll use the smudge tool to create the fangs and to drop down the forehead just a little to make the skull look a little scarier:

This is what the skull looks like at this point:

Now I’ll go to the brush tool in the tools bar and select a “crack brush”, #1547. I’ll include thirteen crack brushes, for you to decide what to use, with the images at the end of this tutorial.

Here is the brushes dialog box with the brush:

Now I’ll go to FX at the bottom of the layers palette to add a layer style. I’ll name it “Cracked Effect”:

This is where I’ll add a “Drop Shadow” and a “Bevel and Emboss”:

Here’s the image at this point:

The last thing I’m going to do, is to take the burn tool from the tools bar and burn most of the left eye out. I’ll make it where you can barely see it, and darken some spots around the right eye to make it look more sunken in. I’ll also darken a few little spots around the skull and by the tip of the right tooth to make it look broken off:

Here’s the end result:

Here’s a ZIP file with the skull image, the bloodshot eye image, and a brush file with the 13 crack brushes.

Have fun!

Surrealism – Bringing Fruit to Life

Above is the result of this tutorial.

Here I have a photo of a red pepper. I think it needs a little life. I’ll take it and drop it into Photoshop:

What I need to do is get a photo of eyes and a photo of a mouth. Here I have a photo of eyes that I’ll start with. Family members are good victims for this:

I’ll try to make this as easy as possible. For this project I’ll use the clone tool. So, the first thing I’ll do is select the clone tool from the tool box:

Before I start to do any cloning, I’ll make a new layer to put the cloned eye onto. Click the new layer icon at the bottom of the layers palette:

I’ll rename the layer to “Left Eye”. To do this I’ll just double click on the word “layer” and type in the words “Left Eye”:

Then I’ll click on the eye photo to make it active. I’ll place the clone brush over the left eye, hold down the ATL key on the keyboard to make the selection. One click should do it. Then I’ll click on the pepper photo and start cloning in the eye:

The next thing I’ll need to do is to add a mask to the “Left Eye” layer. To do this I’ll click on the mask icon at the bottom of the layers palette:

Now I’ll start painting back the pepper around the eye using the paint brush. It’s important to know the when you’re painting using the mask. Black reveals and white conceals:

Here I painted back the red pepper around the eye using low opacity. I used an opacity of 45% and I left the mode to normal:

Now I’ll follow the same steps to do the right eye:

Here I have a photo of a family member’s mouth. I’ll follow the same steps for the mouth as for each of the eyes:

Here is what the layer palette should look like at this point, and here is the happy pepper. I’m not quite finished yet though:

The next thing I’ll do is combine the layers. To do this without flattening the image, hit CTRL-ALT-SHIFT-E at the same time on your keyboard to create a “composite” layer. This will merge the layers together into a copy of the combined layers, leaving the original layers untouched. I’ll name this layer “Merged Layers”:

The next thing I like to do is put the photo into the liquify filter to make the eyes bigger. I’ll make sure that I’m on the “Merged Layers” layer:

Here is the Liquify dialog box:

Once I’m in the Liquify dialog box, I’ll use the bloat tool to puff up the eyes:

I’ll just click on the tool and then hover over the eye. At this point I’ll click on the center of the eye and I’ll be able to see the eye puff up. I just want to puff it up a little, not too much. See the difference between the left eye that I bloated and the untouched right eye. When I’m finished I’ll click OK:

Here is the finished “Happy Pepper” photo:

It’s not over till it’s over. There’s still a lot of things I can do to this image to enhance it. It’s fun to play with filters and other tools to see what more could be done.

So, take photos of apples, pears, bananas or whatever fruit you like and have fun with it. Enjoy!

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