This is a really fun prank to pull on your friends, and I will tell you step by step how I accomplished this. These steps are pretty basic and I am sure if you take your time on this you could make this look really realistic. As a graphic designer, I have pulled pranks on my friends like this before, so lets hope they do not get too upset with me this time…
- Pick the picture that you want to edit. Try to find a closeup picture of your friends that is of high resolution. Note: I made sure a friends ear was exposed for the werewolf character.
- Decide what monster you would like your friends to be: I chose the classics 1.Vampire 2. Zombie 3. Witch 4. Werewolf.
- Lets start with the skin color: For the vampire and zombie faces I used the Photoshop adjustment > Hue and Saturation to make the image white with an opacity of 72% and edited the mask to cover only their skin. I also used Hue and Saturation for the witch’s green skin color and lip color (for vampire red). I adjusted it to the color that looked best on her skin (dark green). For the werewolf, I used the curves adjustment to make the skin darker and masked it to only cover her face.
- To create dramatic shadows on their faces, I duplicated the original image then used the Burn Tool over their eyes, under their cheek bones, and to darken their eyebrows. I also used the Burn Tool to create the bruises and scarring on the zombie.
- To emphasise the dramatic shadows on the face, I used the Dodge Tool to highlight other areas of the face on the same layer I used in step 4. I used the Dodge Tool to highlight the nose, chin, forehead, and cheekbones.
- To create the eyes, I found different images on Google that I liked. For example, I looked up “witch eyes” and found a nice clear image that I liked, copied and pasted it onto my Photoshop document, cut out the iris of the eye, transformed it to the size of the iris of the witches eye, and masked it to look like it was her natural eye.
- The fangs and werewolf ears have pretty similar steps: For the werewolf fangs, I found an image similar to alligator teeth, which worked great. I cropped out the tooth from the image, resized it, and placed it on the vampire canine tooth. Then, I blended the tooth so It would fade from the natural teeth to the fang. Copy this layer and place it on the other teeth you want to make fangs. Follow these same steps for the werewolf ear. Find an image on the internet that you like of an ear, copy and paste it to your picture, cut out the ear and place it on the werewolfs ear. Then blend it to make it look more realistic.
- To create the eyes for the zombie, black them out by using a combination of the brush tool and burn tool.
- To create the blood on the vampires face, I used the Lasso Tool to create the shape for the blood, and refined the edge using a blur effect. Then, I used a low flow red brush to create the blood. I used a variety of light and dark reads to make it more realistic.
- To create an overall scary feel to the image, I used a curve to darken up the image. This will also make the shaded sections of the face more dramatic.
Hopefully these steps can help you out! It is really basic graphic design, but the end result looks pretty professional! The more time you spend on each step the better your end product will look! Happy Halloween!! If you are interested in more useful graphic design help please click here for free consultation. Our graphic design team creates beautiful work, from editing pictures on photoshop to designing custom print work and digital work. For more information on our services please click here to visit our graphic design page.
(Thank you to my friends for being great sports about this!)