Advanced' Photo Effects Tutorials

Before we start, I'd like to issue the standard disclaimer that this tutorial is just going to show you the steps that I took to make this image. You might not agree with my decisions, but they worked for me. The great thing about photoshop is that you can reach the same end result a number of different ways.

The tools and techniques we're going to cover are all very basic. With that in mind, I'm trying to write this for the beginner PSer. There will be lots of images showing the step-by-step progression, and I'll include particularly helpful keyboard shortcuts in parentheses where I can.

Please read the other tutorials. They are all excellent. For masking help, see arsi's "Merging" and Ironkite's "Dig" tutorials, and for coloring tips, refer to steveo's "Colorization" tutorial.

Here's what we are going to make:

We're going to rebuild it from scratch, and then compare our end result to the original to see how well they match up. I'm writing this thinking that you can recreate this image step by step, just as I am doing to write this tutorial, so feel free to play along. I used PS6 on a PC, so all commands will be PC. If you have a Mac, just substitute the command key where I say "ctrl". Let's get to work.

We're going to use three source images:










I got the first two through google adv. image searches (very large, jpg, full color). The Scooby-Doo image is from www.movieweb.com, which is a great site for finding hi-res images from movies. At this time their search tool isn't working and dumps you to an ad page, but you can scroll through their alphabetical index to find the title you need. You might want to bookmark it to use in future contests.

Originally, this was one of the last steps I did. We're going to do it here because it's quick and easy, and we'll have it out of the way.

First, use the cropping tool (key c) and draw a box around the part of the title we want to use, then hit return. Try to get in pretty close.



By chopping away all those unwanted pixels, we now have the title sitting in a field of fairly uniform black. At this point we could create a layer mask revealing only the letters, or we could use the lasso tool and try to select around each layer. But there's an easier way.

Select the wand tool (key w), and set your tolerance to about 32. Click in the black area outside the letters. Shift-click on any black areas that you want to add, making sure to click inside the letters where there is black, like the loops in the "P" and "D".

I zoomed in to 300% while doing this. You might have to shift-click with the wand to clean up around the letters. If you're zoomed in, the easiest way to maneuver is to hold down spacebar. The hand cursor will appear, and you can move around easily. This works no matter what tool you're using, except for the text tool. When you release the spacebar, you will revert back to whatever tool is active.

When you are happy with your selection, hit delete to erase all the black. Now hit ctrl-shift-i to invert your selection. The letters are now selected, and should look like this:



Now we're ready to drag it into the spider-man image.

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Use the move tool (key v) and drag the title onto the spider-man pic. Once it is in place, create a horizontal guide because we're going to be moving some letters around. Do this by going to View>New Guide. This menu will appear:

Select horizontal, and the guide appears at the top of the image. Use the move tool to drag it to the bottom of the letters.

Next move is to get rid of "MAN". Draw a marquee around it and hit delete.

Just so you know, at this point my work space looks like this:



With "MAN" deleted, now draw a marquee around the "D". Use the move tool to slide the "D" to where the "M" used to be, holding the alt and option keys as you go. Holding alt and option makes a copy but keeps it on the same layer. Using the same technique, drag two more copies of the "D" over, so that it now says "SPIDER-DDD"

We'll use the eraser to round off the last two "D"s, and that's done.



If you think this layer is going to be a distraction, you can turn it off by clicking the eyeball to the left of it in the layers window.

Now, let's bring in Scooby.

This source image is huge. I've already cropped it down so that only Scooby is shown, but since we're only using his head, let's again use the crop tool to draw a box around his head.



Select all by hitting ctrl-a. Now use the move tool and drag and drop Scooby onto the Spider-man image. Because the Scooby source is higher-res than the Spider-man source, Scooby's head is way too big. Hit ctrl-t to activate the free transform tool. Grab a corner and hold down shift to constrain proportions as you bring the corner in. Don't worry about making it *exactly* the same size as Spider-man's head at this point.



Take a second to look at the two heads side by side.



We lucked out. They are turned at very similar angles, which is going to make this a lot easier to pull off. There will be some minor angle tweeking and resizing later to make it more convincing. But first...

We need to get rid of all those pixels around Scooby's head. We could use the eraser here, but instead we're going to create a layer mask. Why a mask?

Because it looks better. The eraser can be imprecise and if you remove a few pixels you later want to get back, you can't, at least not without undoing all the work you've done. The layer mask is going to produce better results, so if you haven't tried using layer masks yet, you should start. Don't worry, it's easy.

First, let's add a new layer and place it behind the scooby layer. Hitting shift-delete will allow us to fill this new layer with a color. I chose 50% gray. This whole step is optional, but it might make things easier for you to mask over a single color field than a busy background. We'll trash this layer later.




With your Scooby layer active in the layers window, click the "add layer mask" button at the bottom left, second one in:



Select your paintbrush tool (key b). Limit your colors to black and white, which they should be set to by default since you are in layer mask mode. Paint with black, and you can see the layer below. Paint with white over a masked area, and you bring back the pixels you had masked out. It's that easy. You could mess with using shades of gray, but let's keep it simple. So paint with black around the outside of Scooby's face. Make sure in the layers window that the mask layer is active, and that your brush mode is set to normal and at 100% opacity. Use (key x) to toggle between black and white.

Once the mask is done, throw away the gray layer, or move it to the bottom of the layers window. Click the scooby layer (not the mask layer) and switch your brush mode to color. Use the eyedropper (key i) to select one of the darker shades of red from Spider-man's uniform. I used a color with the following RGB values:

R 202
G 4
B 5

Paint over Scooby's face, avoiding the eyes, nose and mouth. Since you have a layer mask, you don't even have to worry about painting outside the lines. The end result is not going to be a perfect match color-wise, but that's okay. We're just roughing things out at this point.




Now we're getting somewhere. Use the move tool to place Scooby's face over Spider-man's face. If we reduce the opacity of the scooby layer to 50%, we can see just how the two faces match up.



Notice that the curve at the top of Scooby's head matches quite nicely with the curve of Spider-man's head. Also the outline of the inside of Scooby's left (our right) eye is along the same angle as the one line of the webbing on Spider-man's face. These are going to be the two points where we will focus when we determine the final placement of the scooby layer.

First, we need to get the size and angle right. Use the transform tool (ctrl-t) to shrink Scooby's head a little more if necessary. With the transform tool still active, rotate Scooby's head a little bit counter-clockwise, paying close attention to the alignment of the eye and the top of the head.

Now it's time to get some of that web pattern from Spider-man onto Scooby's face. In the layers window, click on the mask on the scooby layer. Select the paintbrush and make sure it is in normal mode and at 100% opacity. If you paint with black, you will reveal the Spider-man layer below, and the webbing appears to be on Scooby's face now. Play with the layer opacity settings in the layers window as you do this, bringing it up to 100% to see the full effect, and working at a lower opacity to paint the mask. I found an opacity setting of 70% about right for the painting part.

Don't paint all the way up to the mouth and nose, but go ahead and get right up to the eyes. At this point, you might realize that Scooby's right (our left) eye also comes close to matching up with a line of the webbing. So let's mask that part out as well. Right now, the face should look something like this:

Now switch the brush opacity to 35% and mask out the rest of the area beneath the nose and around the mouth. The webbing is very white here, but by retaining some of the red in the scooby layer, we manage to tone it down.



Now take a moment to appreciate how lucky we are. Scooby's right eye and his nose cover Spidey's one big white eye almost completely. Unfortunately, that other, even larger, big white eye needs to be taken care of. Let's take care of it then.

This is going to be a bit of a chore, but stick with me. We're almost done.

Turn up the opacity on the scooby layer to 100% and then click the eyeball icon to the left in the layers window to make it disappear. Activate the spider-man layer by clicking on it.

Use the polygonal lasso tool (key l, shift-l to scroll through the different lassos) to select portions from other parts of Spider-man's face that can be used to cover the eye. This isn't going to work for the entire eye, but for now we can cover part of it this way. When you have selected an area, use the move tool and alt-option drag the selection where you want it. Use the transform tool to rotate it into place.

I could only get this to work convincingly along the edges of the eye. We're going to have to take the middle and fill it with some red, and then add the webbing later.

The method is the same, but this time use the lasso to select an entirely red area with no webbing. Use the alt-option move technique to copy the selected area over the white of the eye. If the area you selected is smaller than the white area, then drop and alt-option move the selection a few times to fill the space. You'll probably have to use the transform tool to manipulate your selection to the right size to fit the white space.

If you click the eyeball next to the scooby layer, what you have should look like this:

Same method on recreating the webbing. If you haven't been zooming in yet, at this point you will have to. I went in as far as 900% to finish the webbing. (remember the spacebar tip for maneuvering).

Keep the scooby layer visible but click back to the spider-man layer. Select parts of the webbing that aren't too white and match up well with the surrounding webbing. Use the transform tool to rotate your selection and skew/stretch/etc to fit the area. Don't stretch too much, or it will look blurry. Use the same alt-option move method from before.

Once you have all the web-lines where you want them, there's just one small hurdle to leap and a few finishing touches, and then the finish line!

That one area of his face needs some web. We can't mask it there, because the layer beneath his jowl is a city street.

Time for that polygonal lasso again. But first we need to make a copy of the spider-man layer. In the layers window, drag the spider-man layer to the "create new layer" button. It's the same one we used to make the gray layer earlier.



Rename this layer "cheek" or "jowl", and select a region of his cheek larger than the area where we want to place it. Don't worry about shaping it to fit the jowl, we'll do that later. Just try to find a curve in the webbing that might match up on the other side of his face. Use the lines of his barely discernable whiskers as your target.

Once you have your selection done, invert it by hitting ctrl-shift-i. Hit the delete key and all you have left is this little bit of cheek area. Hit ctrl-d to deselect since the cheek is the only part of the layer now. Move this layer in the layer window to the top, and reduce it to 80%. I flipped it horizontally by going to Edit>Transform>Flip horizontal, but you might not have to do that.

Move this layer over Scooby's jowl, and create a layer mask like we did earlier to remove the unneeded parts. Make sure your paintbrush is at 100% opacity, normal blend setting. Paint with black over the area you want to hide. It might help to toy with the layer opacity setting to get it right. Your layers window should look like this:

Let's put this baby to bed.

If you are a little compulsive like I am, you're going to want to fix some of those web lines. I did it by zooming in way too far and copy-pasting single pixels on the spider-man layer to define the lines a little better and make them less blurry. More than a bit tiresome.

There are easier fixes. That little smidge of Spidey's right eye (our left) has to go. With the spider-man layer active, use the clone stamp (key s) to replace that offensive bit of white that is showing. Select pixels from the street to cover it.

I used a filter to get the highlight on the nose, but this is such an afterthought you might not want to bother. However, it helps in making the ears match up color-wise if you put a little shadow on them. I'll show you how I used it on the cheek layer, and the settings were similar on the rest of the layers, but I only got there through experimentation. Go to Filter>Render>Lighting Effects and the following menu will appear. As you see it, it is set to the settings I used on the cheek layer:

Alright. I also added some more color to the ears. That red wasn't quite right, so if you are playing along, switch your brush opacity to 40% change the setting to overlay, and find a red that matches a little too well, and paint those ears.

Looks like we're done. Let's make the title layer visible by clicking the eyeball icon next to it and ask the question: How did we do?

Original:



And here's the one I just made for the tutorial:



They look awfully close if you ask me. Yeehaw.

That's it. Done. I tried to keep the words to a minimum, but I wanted to explain everything as thoroughly as I could, so excuse me for rambling on a bit.

Huge thanks to Kulstad, Ironkite, and Arsi for offering their help when I couldn't figure out how to put this together. I hope this tutorial was helpful, or at least a decent insight into how I used simple tools to make a complicated image.

Keep chopping away and have fun!