Digital Diversity

With Halloween just passing, playing a certain game involving the death of a lot of innocent zombies and after watching dawn of the dead for the millionth time,  I found I had zombies on the brain (was that a pun?). This gave me the idea to create my very own zombie in Photoshop Elements 7. Everything from flaking dead skin, rotting flesh, blood and even a bit of bone is in there.

Hopefully this tutorial will show you how I implement some of the techniques I have shown in my previous Photoshop tutorials.

To create an image such as this you will already need to understand the following Photoshop techniques
• Layers and masks
• Adjustment layers – can be learned in this tute.
• Photo filters
• Selection tools
• Dodging and burning
• Cloning and healing
• Texture blending

If you already know about all those things then you should be set to dive straight in.

Firstly find your victim.

I liked this picture due to the wrinkled skin and bad teeth. These would help add to the effect from the get go.

First task was to cut the victim out from their background. I firstly used the magnetic lasso to get the rough shape done. Then I used the selection brush to tidy it up. Once you have your selection in place I suggest you save it just in case you need to go back to it. Then feather the selection by about 2 pixels. Add a mask to the layer, invert the selection and then fill the selection in black on the mask. If using Elements make sure before you do this you have created a new bottom layer filled in white. The final result is your victim on a white background.

I now needed to get rid of the red necklace and repair his left shoulder that had a hand resting on it. I used the clone tool for this.  Using a soft brush and sampling from skin near the areas needing cloning I carefully went over them. You can use the healing tools after to help blend them in if you are having trouble getting a realistic effect.

Time to make the skin a more zombie like colour. A fairly strong grey tinge tends to be a good look. This gives the impression of dying skin. I did this using a hue/ saturation adjustment layer. altering the hue and lowering the saturation gave the yellowish grey I wanted. Use the mask on the adjustment layer to make sure the eyes and teeth remain unaffected.

Once the skin tones were ready it was time to add some decaying and flaking skin. To do this I found textures of flaking paint and rusted metal seemed to work fairly well. Any texture with a flaky peeling look should work. Don’t worry about the colour as you can change this using hue / saturation adjustment layers.

With the texture in place I added a mask to it and altered the layers blend mode to ’soft light’. Then using the mask I revealed the parts of the texture around the eyes and mouth. I really liked the yellow parts of this texture, they would work great for the decaying flesh.

With the texture masked and blended it was time to change its colour to suit the face. I added a hue / saturation adjustment layer that was linked only to the texture layer (Alt + clicking between the 2 so the adjustment layer indents). Then I reduced the saturation and slightly altered the hue to get the desired look.

For the most convincing look you need to use several textures. If you only use one over the whole face then it can end up looking a bit to obvious. I found a new texture to add rotting pealing skin to the arms and chest areas.

As before I set the blend mode to ’soft light’ and added a mask. Then used the mask so the texture only effected the arms and chest.

To alter the colour I did the same as before with a Hue / Saturation adjustment layer.

Then I used the dodge and burn tools on the new texture to stop it making the shoulder areas looking so flat. I just  carefully went over the areas that were already darker and lighter to help bring the shoulders shape back.

The last texture will be for the rest of the face. First I added the texture.

Then set the blend mode to ’soft light’, added a mask so it only effected the parts of the face I wanted it to and finally altered its colouring with a hue / saturation adjustment layer.

The zombie is now well on its way with lots of dying, rotting skin. Time to get a bit more gruesome and add a bit of facial damage. For this you will need to find a picture of a skull that matches up fairly closely to your victim.

When it was in place I added a mask to the layer. Then I filled the mask in black so it was totally hidden. I then chose a suitable brush to punch a hole in the mask. The idea is to make the mask a nice jaggy chuck that didn’t look to fake.

Time to add some blood to make the wound more convincing. I selected another suitable brush (a splatter shape), chose a nice blood red. Then I created a new layer above the skull and painted on the blood. Then I changed the blend mode to ’soft light’. It may take a little while to get just right but keep going till you get the effect you want.

To add depth to the skin around the wound I used the burn tool to blacken the edges. This gives the skin a healed rotting edge feel to it.

Time to give the victim some zombie vision. I did this with 2 Hue / saturation adjustment layers. I added the first Hue/ saturation adjustment layer and reduced the saturation and increased the lightness till they were a fairly strong white colour. Then I changed the blend mode till the eyes had a foggy clouded over white look. ‘Overlay’ worked quite well here as well as ‘pin light’ set to about 50% opacity. find the one that works best for you. The second Hue / saturation adjustment layer was to turn the eyes yellow. Tick colourize and set the colour to a yellow. Then alter the layers opacity till it looks right. Use the masks on these adjustment layers so the effects only appear on the eyes.

I wanted a little more blood in the picture so I added some to the pealing skin on his left arm. As before I chose a suitable brush and selected a blood red. Then on a new layer painted it on and changed the blend mode to ’soft light’

Next I wanted to place my zombie in a suitable setting. This image with a fairly dramatic sky and wrecked car pile in the background seemed to work rather well. It gives the image a nice apocalyptic feel.

With the background in place you can see that the mask around the zombie needs a little bit of work. There is a slight line around the head making it look a little fake. To fix this I first need to reselect the zombie. A quick way to do this is to Ctrl + click on the zombies mask. Then invert the selection (Ctrl + I) and then expand the selection by about 3 pixles (Select > modify > expand). Then I feathered it by about 2 pixels. Finally I filled the selection black on the mask and the line disappeared.

Now I needed to correct the lighting on the zombie and the background to make them blend more naturally. The zombies head was far to shiny. To fix this I opened the shadows and highlights adjustment and reduced the highlights. I also moved the mid-tones slider to the right.

To increase the contrast of the background I used a levels adjustment layer that I linked to it so it only affects that layer. I brought both the shadows and highlights sliders in a bit. This brings out the yellow sky and makes the image more dramatic.

The head still had some shine to it so I needed to smooth this over a bit. To do this I colour picked a mid range skin tone, then with a large soft brush at 10% opacity and on a new layer went over the shiny parts of skin. This muted them down to match up better with the rest of the face.

The head was still looking a little bit flat. A little bit of burning around the head and darker parts of the face gives it a little more presence.

Looking at the image it was almost complete. The background was a little warm and the zombie was a little cold. To fix this I used two photo filter adjustment layers. One linked to the background that cooled it and one linked to the zombie that added warmth. This balanced up the lighting very well. The last things to do were just the final touches. I increased the mask on the top of the zombies head a touch more as there was still a slight line there that the burning process and brought out. Also I looked closer at the jaw and it wasn’t looking quite right. The top part of the wound was a little to transparent and the top right tooth looked slightly wrong. The jaw line was tilting up making it look out of place. These were both fixed with a little bit of cloning and healing.

The zombie was complete.

Tags: adjustment layers, advanced editing, apocalypse, colour correction, colours, contrast, elements, highlights, hue, lasso, layers, levels, lighting, man, masking, masks, photo editing, photoshop, saturation, selection brush, selection tools, shadows, sky, thoughts, tutorial, tutorials, zombie

This entry was posted on Monday, November 2nd, 2009 at 11:53 and is filed under photoshop. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.