Advanced' Photo Effects Tutorials

This is what I will be showing you how to make. It is not a difficult process, so for people just learner to use photoshop this may be a nice place to begin.

You will see how to make this image;

Lets start by finding two images;
1 - Bananas, and
2 - Slug.

It shouldn't be too difficult to find these images, you could always collect your own. If not, I found mine at SXC.HU, an excellent place for free source images ;)

Now you are going to want to isolate the head and part of the body of the slug using the pen tool. Make the selection and duplicate it onto another layer. This way the original image remain unaffected.

In the image below I have reduced the opacity of the bottom layer, so don't worry if yours doesn't look like it.

You can also see how much of the slug I have selected.

You will now want to bring the duplicated head over to the banana image and locate the part of the banana that will host the head.

Next you will want to create a layer mask and blend the slug's head into the banana. Use a soft brush at about 50-70% opacity. Do this until you are happy with your result.

We need to try and match the light source of the slug with the banana. This is usually a dead give away in blending when two images have clearly different light sources.

Lets pick out the light sources for the banana image;

i used the burn tool to adjust the light source. I took away the unnecessary lighting and tried to match it to the banana's lighting.

Now you can mess around with shadows and highlights under image adjustments.

These are the settings I used;

Shadows:
AMOUNT 25%
TONAL WIDTH 64%
RADIUS 100px

Highlights:
AMOUNT 40%
TONAL WIDTH 60%
RADIUS 100px

Adjustments:
COLOUR CORRECTION -50
MIDTONE CONTRAST +30

My result>>

To finish off the image I played around with hue/saturation and colour variations. I tried to take colour elements from the banana to match the slug; the greens and yellows.

Also to make it feel as though it is a real part of the banana, I used the smudge tool to adjust the shadow.

Also play around with the contrast and levels to get the image the way you want.

And presto - You have your veyr own 'banana slug'!
Hope you enjoyed my first tutorial.