We just missed Halloween, but its always a time for scares on TutorialsBeware. We are going to take a look at some techniques that created this haunting imagery inspired by the cover of the American horror film The Last House on the Left

Above is a stock photo of a house at night that seemed to fit the mood. To the left is the video cover that inspired this piece.

It was difficult to find a photo of a girl walking away with the appropriate body language so I used a combination of these 3: A great shot of a lake with the figure in the middle, one of wet, disheveled hair from a back view, and another of a swimmer with arms to the side. (click the image for the source images or alternatively click here.)

The first thing I did was marquee select a portion of the house image and paste it over the lake picture. Ctrl+T was used to scale the image and center it. This effectively covered most of the figure that was unused anyway.

The shoulders and arms were cut out with the Polygonal Lasso Tool and the Clone Stamp Tool was used to sample skin areas and cover the pink straps from the source image. To clone, hold ALT to take the sample, then brush into the area.

Here’s what it looks like with the new torso pasted into the scene and scaled appropriately.

A new layer was created above all the others and filled with blue. I used color #2D466B. In the Layers window the blue layer’s blending mode was changed to “Color”. This turned the entire piece monochromatic and began to invoke the mood.

At this point I turned off the visibility of the house layer so that I could trace around the waist of the figure with the Lasso Tool. The house layer was made visible and active by clicking it in the Layers window. With the waist selection still animating, I pressed Delete to cut out, which revealed the full figure shape.

Image>Adjustments>Brightnesss/Contrast on the house layer with the above settings.

The house layer was right-clicked and duplicated. Then Edit>Transform>Flip Vertical was a function used to turn the duplicated image upside down. This layer’s blending mode was set to “Overlay” to create some translucency, which then resulted in a mirrored reflection into the lake.

The ghosted image also went over the girl. This was rectified simply by tracing along the figure and deleting on the reflection layer.

At this point I went into the wet hair image file. Ctrl+Shift+U was pressed to desaturate the image. Then Ctrl+L brought up the Levels. The above settings increased the contrast so that only the hair shapes remained.

The magic wand tool was clicked into the white space with the Contiguous option checkboxed OFF. This selected even the white areas in between hair strands. I then held ALT then marquee selected the lower half to, in effect, deselect the area. Delete discarded the white in the top half.

This layer was right-clicked and duplicated so that there were 2 identical layers. One layer was set with the blending mode on “Multiply”. This laid the wet hair flat on the girl’s back. The problem is that the head above her shoulders was now partially transparent. That’s why we made a duplicate. With no blending mode set on this one, (default Normal) the wet hair area with all the white still there was erased with the Eraser Brush.

One more trick for the hair. I duplicated the head layer again for a technique I devised to create some specular lighting on the hair since it is wet and the main light source is the moon in front of her. Ctrl+I was used to Invert the values. This created a bright white, negative version of the hair.

Some of the middle was erased out.

With the Lasso Tool I began to draw in some cuts and proceeded to delete sections out.

With some fine tuning and more brush erasing, the above was the result. Note that I repeated this technique on the arms as well.

The next detail was ensuring that the girl’s reflection matched, so I took the upper torso layer and flipped it the same way I did the house and matched it up accordingly. The Opacity on the layer is only 5-10%.

At this point the entire mage was flattened with Layer>Flatten Image. Above is the result of duplicating the flattened art and setting the new layer to Multiply. I feel that the vibrancy of the image was increased as well as the overall contrast.

Here are some large sections I erased on the Multiply layer to reveal the reflection a bit more and to give the house a haloed effect.

The final image with some typography.

Today we’re going to create a scene of a giant sea creature attack.

Above is a great ad with an octopus we can cut up like a collage. And here is the unknowing sea vessel that’s soon to be wrapped in slimy tentacles.

First, use the Lasso Tools to cut out the first tentacle. Trace the front bow of the ship and delete the tentacle portion.

Here you can Polygonal Tool select the area and press Ctrl+C then Ctrl+V to paste. A new layer will be placed down. In the Layers Panel, click and drag this new cutout on top of the tentacle layer.

At this point, you can just eraser brush away at the bow until it just looks like fog around the points that the images meet.

Here the octopus is a bit obscure so you can clip out the visible areas. You can use the skin from his other tentacles to perform octo-plastic surgery and give him a little tuck.

He can also get a brain transplant by using the head of this other octopus.

I cut out this little guy’s head and dropped it in behind the main octoface.

Here are the color corrections to help match the two heads.

You can paint in a little shadow to help blend the subject in.

Here is a stock photo of a water splash.

Choose the magic wand tool and click the white area with the Contiguous option checked OFF and the Tolerance to 2. Delete the white.

If you press Ctrl+T to transform and scale, then hold down Ctrl, click and drag the corners to skew perspective.

Here’s a fun way to create some water ripples. Right click the main image with the water and duplicate the layer. In this new layer, Use the Elliptical Marquee Selection Tool to create an oval-shaped selection over the water. Go to the top menu and perform Filter>Distort>Polar Coordinates and this will be the result.

Transform and skew to taste and then you can do some finishing touches with the eraser.

This is the original screencap of Eli Roth and Brad Pitt. Already looking pretty hardcore.

This is how the image looks after cutting out the background. It was cut out using the various Lasso Tools.

Image>Adjustments>Desaturate to take the figures to grayscale. And Image>Adjustmnets>Brightness/Contrast at theses settings.

This layer was right-clicked in the Layers window and duplicated. Filter>Texture>Grain. I used the Contrasty grain and pulled the opacity of this layer down a bit to reveal the original beneath.

There are some wicked splatter brushes by VexingArt. Once you have them downloaded click on the Brush Tool, then brush shape and look for the load button and select “Load Brushes…” Some splotches and splatters were painted to taste.

The blood layer was then duplicated and set to Linear Light in the blending mode drop down menu in the Layers panel.

Here’s a pic of the logo that was worked into the wallpaper composition.

Ctrl+L was pressed to get the Levels window up and the settings were slid to the left like so.

Ctrl+I inversed the image values and then the whole thing was desaturated.

Ctrl+T to transform and rotate/scale. The blending mode was set to Screen to make the black transparent and the typography visible.

At this point some typography was placed behind the subjects. The infamous quote “The Germans will be sickened by us” was typed and rotated. On a new layer above it some more splatters were painted on. The type layer was made active and then the magic wand was used to select the space outside of the letters. The new splatter layer was then made active and the current selection was deleted.

The new splatter layer was double-clicked in the layers panel and the color overlay option was chosen for color to match the front. And on a newlayer behind this is a radial gradient from white to gray. This layer’s blending mode was set to Linear Light.

The text and new blood layer was combined and then transformed. If you press Ctrl+T to transform and then hold down Ctrl you can click and drag the corners to skew perspective. I pinched the top corners to make it look like it continued the angle looking up at Eli and Brad.

This is a cool concrete texture I found that was used to give the image some WW2 grit. I placed it behind the gradient layer. It shows through since the gradient had been set to Linear Light.

You probably heard we ain’t in the prisoner-takin’ business; we in the killin’ Nazi business.
And cousin, Business is a-boomin’.

Click for the wallpaper in HD

We start with the original, yet still quite righteous, kick to the face. Did you know that Chuck Norris once roundhouse kicked someone so hard that his foot broke the speed of light, went back in time, and killed Amelia Earhart while she was flying over the Pacific Ocean?

Trace and delete with some Lasso tools.

This is a some high-speed photography of an egg being shot by a bullet. This ends up serving well as brain matter and skull fragments.

What you do here is select the portion you want with the Poly Lasso Tool. Cut and Paste.

Ctrl+Shift+U to Desaturate. Ctrl+I to Invert.

Set this layer to Multiply on the blending modes on the layer panel. The default is usually set ay “Normal”. Ctrl+T to Transform/Rotate and then click and drag to position. With the Move Tool, of course.

Here is another high-speed photo but one of some cola frozen in time.

To turn the coke red, make a layer above it and fill it with color. Set it’s blend mode to Soft Light.

Layer>Flatten Image to keep this delicious red splatter and copy and paste it into the Chuck image. Set it to Multiply to get rid of the white.

I picked this symbol because it’s totally badass.

This is what the picture looks like with all the elements combined. Speaking of elements, Chuck Norris destroyed the periodic table once, because he only recognizes the element of surprise.

On the layer behind everything is just plain white. Now there is a radial gradient from white to gray.

You might have noticed a shadow underneath the figures. I simply traced the shapes on the original and filled with black.

Its Fill percentage is set around 15%.

Right-click and Duplicate this layer. Set the opacity to 70% and applay a Filter>Blur>Gaussian Blur.

I also Magic Wanded the area and painted a little more shadows under the feet and such.

Now we’re gonna use the popular “starburst effect” but put a spin on it.

Place it above the gradient layer and set its blending mode to Color Burn. it’s positioned here directly behind Chuck for dramatic effect.

Here is a nice grungy texture. It’s going to completely change the personality of the tired starburst. This texture is sitting on top of the entire piece and set to Overlay and 75% Fill.

Everytime Chuck Norris smiles, the life of a dying man is saved. Ironically, Chuck Norris smiles only after killing a man.

Click for the slaughterfest wallpaper in HD

The following is the unaltered photo of a lady snoozin.

Then I found this great illustration of the goat demon Lamia. I’m skeered already.

Goto Image>Adjustments>Desaturate. Then hit Ctrl+L to open the Levels and use these settings to pull out the blacks.

There might be a few more grays left, but if you pull the areas too black then you start creating some dark artifacts in the white area. So I’d suggest you just paint in the black manually with the pencil or lasso fills.

You can use the Polygon Lasso Tool to select the demon figure and copy/paste him into the picture of the sleeping lady.

Edit>Transform>Flip Horizontal flips the figure to face the other side. You can select the arm with the Lasso Tool and hit Ctrl+T to grow it larger to loom over the woman. Hold down Ctrl while pulling on the corners to skew the points into different directions.

Set the Layer Blending Mode to “Multiply”. And set the opacity to 50%. Use the Eraser Tool on a large setting and lightly brush away the bottom. It should really start looking like a shadow demon now.

Right click the shadow layer Duplicate Layer. Use the Magic Wand Tool and click the demon and fill in with a dark brown. The brown color will help match the shadows in the scene. Erase away the bottom of this shape as well to blend.

Set this layer to Multiply as well and pull the opacity down to 30%.

Goto Filter>Texture>Grain with these settings to achieve a film grain.

You can pull the saturation down to also help give it a film quality.

At this point the Levels (Ctrl+L) were blown out to give the colors a more uneasy feeling with the evil looming presence.

I added a logo and some more bed sheets to help balance the composition a bit more.

Click to Enlarge.

We’ve got a multi-parter today. The obscure comic character Jonah Hex is in film production starring John Malkovich, Josh Brolin and Megan Fox. Inspired by the art in the following pic, I decided to put together some live-action elements to see how this imagery might look.

I first started with this photo as a base. It has some nice values and smoke.

Then I found this photo of a house burning and placed on top of the background.

The blending mode on this layer was set to “Screen” and Crtl+T allowed for scaling and positioning.

The Eraser Tool was selected and set on a light setting and brushed with a large point size across the edges to allow a nicer blend.

I decided to use the original artwork and Polygon Lasso the cowboys and delete the areas behind them.

I used a Color Overlay layer style on the layer window and chose a brown from scene. Here are the settings used for the grain.

I right-clicked this layer and duplicated it and pulled it beneath the grainy silhouette. On this layer I removed the layer style, and clicked the Magic Wand on any area outside the figures with the “Contiguous” setting checked “Off”. This selected everything but the cowboys. I then went to Select>Feather and typed 5 into the field.

After pressing Delete, it created this nice ghosting effect.

After setting the grainy layer’s blend mode to Hard Light and its Fill percentage to 65%, I scaled them down a bit.

All the pics I’ve seen of Jonah Hex looked like Two-Face with a cowboy hat on anyway so I snatched up this pic of Aaron Eckhart in The Dark Knight.

A quick cut and paste job on this magazine cover of Josh Brolin took it to this step.

Here is where I did a little bit of blending work. Image>Adjustment>Desaturate on both layers took it to greyscale. The Eraser cleaned up some of the edges. And the Two-Face layer was duplicated. One blending mode set to Lighten, the other to Color Burn. The color burn layer’s opacity is on 35%.

Image>Rotate Canvas>Flip Canvas Horiszonaral did just that. This art was then flattened and pasted onto a cowboy.

After clipping off some excess, I Magic Wanded the area outside of the face and Ctrl+Shift+I to invert the selection to brush some in some black areas to blend the face in.

Here’s what it looks like after dropping him in and using the Color Dodge blend mode.

The final element I wanted to place in the composition was Megan Fox. There have been some on set pictures of Megan in wardrobe and I selected this one.

Her face was too candid, but luckily there are a million pictures of Megan on the internet and this one had a nice intentional expression and head tilt.

After clipping her out and pasting the new head, she was scaled down proportionately and flipped horizontally. I was lucky to not have to do to many Color Balance adjustments. Image>Adjustments>Color Balance.

I did some experimentation in attempting to incorporate her into the scene. I made multiple copies and applied different grain filters and erased some areas I liked and some I didn’t. One of the copies was set to multiply, and I erased all but the skirt to allow the background to show through. I kept another layer that retained her thighs and face so they weren’t as ghosted.

To unify the color and give the piece a little Wild West, I took this paper texture and used the Color blending mode.

I placed a slight halo behind megan that could be created from the ambient fire light. I altered the default settings to these. Take note of the Soft Light blending mode.

After a few filters, Filter>Texture>Grain, some cropping and composition the final result ended up to be this. Click to Enlarge.

Remember this gal? Well let’s see what sort of upgrade we can give her.

We’re going to start with this image of Olivia. Well she’s got too many clothes on to accommodate the skintight nature of the Tron suit so we’re going to take the polygonal lasso tool and click around the contour of her body while deleting any extra material along the way.

After cutting and doing an Image>Adjustments>Desaturate, here is how her contour ended up like.

Right click the layer and duplicate it so that there are now 2. Double click the one on top and choose Color Overlay as the the Layer Style. If you choose black as the color, should now have a complete silhouette of the figure.

If you chop off the head of that layer it will reveal her face beneath. It should now look like she’s wearing a jet black body stocking. I chopped off the silhouette’s arms too because I liked the natural reflections coming off her gloves.

The next thing to do is to try to mimic the reflections on the gloves onto some other areas of her body. On a separate layer I just drew some selection shapes with the Lasso Tool. Lightly brush a greenish-blue with a large brush size but a low opacity. Apply it very lightly because this is a subtle effect.

Now onto some Tron stuff. On a new layer, you can use the Polygonal Lasso Tool and draw the shape of her crazy robot boots.

Using the of Lasso Tool you can draw some shapes to paint in some darker and lighter areas.

And at now the fun part! I’ve created this layer style so that no matter what shape you draw, it will have the Tron glow. Choose the light blue color #E8FAFE. You’ll be drawing in this color. I used the polylasso for this. Draw the trim along the top of her boot and then double click the layer you’re on. Choose the Inner Glow layer style, click the color box and use #30D2BA for a neon green-blue color, then use the following options:

On the same layer, add another style with an Outer Glow. The color I chose for this is a bright blue #91E3F8. If you notice in the following pic I changed the blend mode in the actual style. In this case, to Linear Light:

Here is what she looks like after creating all of the glow trim shapes.

Ok, I suppose that this next section could also be classified as the fun part. We’re going to create the window in her suit for her neck and torso. If you’re happy with your work up to now select all of the layers beneath the neon glows and press Ctrl+E to merge those layers. Since the current picture of Olivia obscures too much skin with various materials, it would be easier to find a different source photo and blend it in. Something tells me that you don’t need a tutorial about how to find a picture of a nude woman online.

Desaturate this picture as well and slide it between the neon trim and the flattened art. Use the trim as a frame to select the excess to delete with the polylasso. You can also adjust the Brightness/Contrast to better match the value range of the original photo.

Add another layer above the skin for the material. Select the layer where the skin is and with the Magic Wand Tool click outside the empty area. Ctrl+Shift+I with invert the select so that you’ll have a shape of the skin area. Go into your new layer and fill the area with a dark blue. At this point you can color in the gloves as well. Set the Fill to 50% and the Blending Mode to Overlay and she should be close to finished. As a final touch I went to the skin layer and brushed in some black to blend in areas and add some shadow that would be present.

She wouldn’t be authentic Tron style without some crazy neon lunacy going on in the background. I found some cool backgrounds care of the Tron 2.0 video game and popped that behind her. Every layer above the background I combined. Right-click/duplicate the flattened art because we’re going to apply a glow layer style to both.

Do this to the duplicate:

Last thing is to add 1 final layer to the top and fill it with this neon color: #A4EBE5. Set its blending mode to overlay and opacity to 85%. Here’s a look at the layers window.

Here’s the final result of our old-school girl’s make over.

Woot!

The first thing we’re gonna do is press and hold the Rectangular Marquee Tool and change it to Elliptical Marquee. Drag and select an oval shape around the hock mask. Copy and Paste into a new layer.

Hide the bottom layer so you can see your work. Now that you have the mask isolated in its own layer, press Ctrl+I to invert the image and this will create a negative. Now the holes in the mask will be white and the mask itself will be dark.

Now we’re going to turn these values into pure blacks and whites by going to Image>Adjustments>Threshold Here are the settings I used.

Here’s the magic part. Goto Filter>Blur>Radial Blur and apply these settings: Full Amount, Blur Method - Zoom, Quality - Best. I aligned the Blur Center around the center of the mask. I just eyeballed it. Change the blending mode to Screen in the Layers panel.

Here is the processed effect and one application of the filter.

Right click the layer with the light effects and Duplicate it. Repeat the Radial Blur on this layer and the light beams will shine even further. You can use this light effect on many other different kinds of moods or applications.

In honor of the eminent release of Street Fighter IV, I’ve tried my hand at emulating the art style from their character illustrations. They have a unique look that makes use of vibrant paint strokes and splatters prevalent in current design and juxtaposes it with the anime aesthetic that has been associated with the Capcom fighting games. I’ve drawn one of my favorites, Cammy, and did my best to pay homage to the return of the World Warriors.

In the first step, we’re going to see how to colorize the pencil art. I scanned at 300 dpi to get all the high resolution details of the lead work. Also scanned in color even though it’s just lead on white. I did this because when scanning pencils, there are different variations of pressure on the lead verses the very black nature of ink. To make them a little darker I adjusted the levels like so:

Press ctrl+A to select all and ctrl+C to copy the lineart then open the Layers Panel and go into the Channels tab. Click the icon on the bottom that says “Add New Channel” and paste the image into the channels. This should have created an “Alpha 1″. Press ctrl+I to invert the art so it looks like white lines on a black background.

Now click back on to the Layers tab and make a new layer. Go to the Select menu at the top of Photoshop and scroll down to “Load Selection”. Choose Alpha 1 and the pick a dark color on the color picker. Shift+F5 or Fill this selection and you should have a layer of colored lineart.

Lock the transparency by clicking this icon and now you can color the lines anything you want.

I chose dark versions of the colors I plan on coloring each section.

On a new layer underneath the lineart painted in some flat colors simply using the pencil, lasso and paint bucket tools.

I used a softer brush with lower opacities and flows to paint these shades. I pretty much just used the same colors I used for the lines but brushed around the shapes to give them some volume. The progress done on the next few sequential images were all done in their own layer.

I used the Lasso Tool and filled in some darker shadows that might be cast around the figure.

And yet another layer for some highlights.

I found that my painting looked somewhat muted so after selecting al the layers with the figure in it I pressed ctrl+E to merge all the layer art the went to Image>Adjustments>Brightness/Contrast and increased them both. At this time I placed a logo I found of the upcoming title.

Now we’re going to see how this piece was given some Street Fighter IV personality. I added 3 or 4 new layers behind the flattened art. On the very bottom layer I started on some underpainting by choosing the green and painted with a large very soft brush.

On a layer on top of that labeled, Smoke, I decreased the brush size and increased the pressure. After applying a few strokes I took the smudge tool and pulled around to make the smoke feel a bit more swirled and organic.

Next I kept the same green color I’ve been using and filled the next layer with Filter>Layer>Clouds. I set the Blend Mode to Soft Light in the Layers Panel.

Some downloaded Photoshop brushes help to really personalize the piece and, in effect, are really what makes it look like Street Fighter 4. Splatters and Strokes are the order of the day and these brush packs really delivered.

http://www.brusheezy.com/brush/477-WaterColor-1-Brushes-Pack-

http://linzeestyle.com/imprints/index2.html

If you select the paintbrush tool you can click the brush options at the top of Photoshop. Here you can manipulate the size and direction of the custom shape. I squeezed and stretched mine to splatter.

The stroke layers I actually painted with black and changed the blending mode to Overlay.

I hope you enjoyed the piece!

In this tutorial we will make an album cover for the band Slipknot’s greatest hirts.

Step 1:
Start off by creating a document sized 550 wide and 490 tall. Press ‘D’ to reset the foreground and background colors. Now you can hit ‘x’ to make black the background color and finally hit Ctrl + Backspace, this will fill the image the color black.

Step 2:
Next I grabbed a Slipknot logo from google, there’s many to choose from I simply chose the logo that read “Slipknot“. If you want, you can download the font called “Sickness” from Dafont.com (http://www.dafont.com/slipknot.font) and type in Slipknot and that could serve as your logo.

Step 3:
Now to make the logo look really cool, what you can do is duplicate the logo’s layer. Next go to Filter > Blur > Radial Blur and use the following settings:

Amount: 30
Blur Method: Zoom
Quality: Good

and hit OK, after that you can press Ctrl + T to transform the image, and make the blurred out logo a bit bigger than the other logo, your image should now look like this:

Step 4:
Now it is time to add the bottom image of the band. I went to Google and typed “Slipknot” and found a nice wallpaper that had all the members of the band (http://i107.photobucket.com/albums/m303/dumbum182/slipknot.jpg) and that is what I used for the bottom of the cd cover, simply resize the wallpaper to fit the cd cover.

Step 5:
It is time to add the blood to the picture, I figured that blood would fit with this cd cover nicely so I went to deviantART.com and found some nice blood brushes by shad0w-GFX, you can find these brushes here: http://www.deviantart.com/deviation/19982524/

Go ahead and download those brushes and install them into Photoshop. Once you have done that, you can go on to the next step:

Grab one of the brushes, set your foreground color to red (#FF0000) and make some brush marks at 100% Opacity. Your image should now look like this:

Step 6:
Now you can repeat step number 5 but instead of brushing at 100% opacity, do it at lower opacities so it blends in nicer. Below is an example of what mine
came out to look like:

Step 7:
This last step consists of adding the album name which is just “Greatest Hits” so grab a nice grungy font that you like. For this image I used a font called “PP Handwritting” which can be found at http://www.dafont.com/pp-handwriting.font. Download that and type in “Greatest Hits” right under the Slipknot logo, and add the following effects seen below:

and now you are done! Your final result should look similar to this: