Tenacious Creations » Photoshop

My Favorite 5 sites for Photoshop Actions and Filters

TractorJack — Mon, 04 Feb 2008 00:41:57 +0000

Well it is time for the weekly photoshop post on Tenacious Creations. Filters and Actions are tools a photoshop artist can use to speed up their production. Although all the things that actions and filters can do can be done manually with photoshop (and most times a better result is achieved). Filters and Actions can greatly reduce the amount of time required to do these things.

There are some things that I find just so much easier to use filters or actions for and some cases where I would prefer to do it by hand. I have a mix of bought filters and actions as well as free ones. Here is a list of sites of actions and filters that I find useful.

PhotoShop Action and Filter List

Action Central – this is the main site I use for many free actions.
The Plug in Site – another good resource with several free and commercial plug ins and filters
Alien Skin – These are all plug ins you have to buy but they are well worth it. They have 30 demos of most of their plug ins available for download from their site. I have all of their Eye Candy plug ins and they are probably the plug ins I use the most.
The Light is Right Studio – this site has numerous tools that make my life easier. From scripts, and plug ins to brush presets. This is definitely a resource you should check out.
Panos Fx – While making sure these links work for this post I noticed there are a bunch of new filters and effects listing here that I really want to try out. This is yet another excellent resource for photoshop artists.

These are the five sites that I have drawn over 90% of the filters, actions and plug ins that I use for photoshop. I am always keen to check out other resources so if you have some please share.

16 Great Photoshop Tutorial Sites

TractorJack — Mon, 28 Jan 2008 00:08:27 +0000

I frequently get asked what web sites I use as resources when I use Adobe photo shop and if I can pass them along. Well the truth is I have over two hundred different sites book marked in my photoshop resources folder. Now some contain multiple different tutorials and some are just photoshopped images that I use as reference. So to pass these one would be quite useless.

Instead I thought I would present a list of sites I submit my tutorials too after I write them. Now this is only a partial list, but these sites have many tutorials listed. In some cases the tutorials may be repeated from site to site. That is because other photo shop tutorial publishers like myself tend to submit their tutorials to all these sites. Any ways lets get on with the list.

Here they are in no particular order:

With in that list I am sure you’ll find hours and hours of photoshop fun and inspiration. I would like to say that is the complete list that I submit too. However I have a list of over 60 different sites that I submit too, but these tend to send me the best traffic and have the most tutorials. If you have other resources please include them in the comments.

Turn your digital images into a stack of Polaroids with PhotoShop

TractorJack — Sun, 20 Jan 2008 23:29:40 +0000

Recently I made a similar graphic to the one above for a friend to use on her website. She was very grateful and sent me an e-mail full of praise for spending my time to do that for her. I had to tell her that it is really simple and I cannot take all the credit because I did use a photo shop action. So I figured I would write a tutorial to show just how easy it is to create this nice effect.

First thing you need to do is to go to addictedtodesign.com and download the free Polaroid 600 action. If you have never installed an action in photo shop before I recommend you read addictedtodesign.com’s guide.
Now that you have the action installed select the Polaroid 600 action and press the
Play button

All you have to do now as follow the steps as the action runs. It will ask you to select the photo you want to use. Then it will ask you to adjust the handles to crop the photo so it is the right size for the Polaroid.

all the photos used here are from http://www.sxc.hu/

Run this action on all the photos you want to use in the spread of Polaroids. Make sure you do not close the images as you make them.
After you have the images you want to use converted to Polaroid like pictures, create a new image by going File > New Image. I made mine 6000 px wide by 2500 px tall with a transparent background. How big you make it is dependent on how big your Polaroid images are. Mine worked out to be about 1051 px wide each. Do not worry if yours are not all the same size as you be able to resize them when you drag them to your new image.

Now select the Move tool . Move one of your Polaroid images onto your new image. Adjust it so it looks like it was randomly thrown there. Once you have it positioned hit the enter key.
After you have pressed the enter key double click on the layer (click on the icon of the image) to bring up the layer properties. Then select drop shadow and check the box next to it. Now play with the settings until the shadow looks right.

Repeat steps 6 and 7 until you have placed all the images you want to use. Remember to adjust them so they look like they were randomly dropped.

After all you images are placed use the crop tool to cut out any extra blank space from your image and you are done. Now if this is going on a web site you can fill the first layer with whatever color the background of the site is to ensure it looks good. But I would recommend saving it with a transparent background. That way it the site changes background color it will still look like it belongs. Below is the finished project

Morphing Animals with PhotoShop

TractorJack — Sun, 13 Jan 2008 11:46:24 +0000

With this PhotoShop tutorial I hope to equip you with the necessary tools to create your own hybrid morphed animals. This can be a lot of fun and you can create some really unique looking creatures. As with anything in photoshop the more time you spend on the details the better your end result.

Now I bet you were thinking we were going to combine an elephant with a camel. Well you would be wrong. Instead we are going to make an Eleguanna. That is an elephant combined with an Iguana. Why? Well I just like combining large mammals with lizards. Besides this gives me the opportunity to share a few more neat tricks. The hardest part of this tutorial is find the pictures you are going to use. I scoured over www.sxu.hu to find these two images. You want to make sure that the parts you are going to attempt to morph are following roughly the same angles. If you click on the thumbnails below you with get the two original images I started with.

Once you have these two images opened in Photoshop it is time to crop out the elephants head. Now you’ll notice the elephant is facing the wrong way in relation to our iguana. No worries, just go to Image > Rotate Canvas > Flip Horizontal. Now use what ever tool you are comfortable with to crop out the elephants head. I used the pen tool and then made it into a selection.
Once you have the elephants head selected, go to Edit > Copy. Then go to the image of the iguana and go Edit > Paste.

Now we have to position the elephants head over that of the iguanas. To make this easier reduce the opacity of the elephant head layer. Now you may have to rotate it a bit and resize as you go. If you are resizing make sure you hold down the shift key. This will keep the proportions relative. With PhotoShop CS 3 as soon as you paste the elephant head it goes to Free Transform mode. By moving the handles on the box around the elephants head you are able to resize and rotate.

Make sure you have the elephant head layer selected and click on the mask icon in the layer palette. Then make sure you foreground color is black, and choose a good sized soft brush. With this mask out all areas of the elephant head that you do not want visible. make sure to go along the edges where the elephants skin meets the iguanas. This will help blend it together.

Now you will notice there is still some of the iguanas head peeking through from behind. To remove this we are going to use the Clone Stamp Tool . First make sure you select the iguana layer. Then holding down the Alt Key select an area above the part you want to clone out. Then click over the areas you want to clone out. Do not worry about cloning out the elephant head as the clone tool will only clone the layer you have selected.

Looking pretty good so far. But now we want to match the color. First make sure your elephant head layer is selected. This part takes some time and experimentation. Holding down the Alt Key click on this icon . Then select Color Balance, when the dialog appears make sure you have a check mark to use the previous layer as a clipping mask. You’ll have to adjust the shadows, highlights, and mid tones. Try and get it as close as possible.

You see that some areas have the color changed and we don’t really want them to be green. Places like the eye, and the straw in the truck. To fix this select your color balance layer and then click the mask button on the bottom of the layers palette. With black selected as your foreground color, just paint the areas you want the original color back.

Now click on your top most layer, then add a new layer. Double click on your foreground color to bring up your color picker tool. Select a nice soft blue color. I find blue tends to bring out details. In the picture below I have my color picker set to Web Safe colors but you don’t have to.

Using the Paint Bucket tool fill this layer with the soft blue. Then change the Layer Mode to Overlay . Now adjust the Opacity till you the details pop and the layers blend nicely.

Now click on your top most layer, then add a new layer. Double click on your foreground color to bring up your color picker tool. Select a dark pale yellow color.
Using the Paint Bucket tool fill this layer with the soft blue. Then change the Layer Mode to Overlay . Now adjust the Opacity till the layers blend a bit more.

Viola, you should have an image looking like mine or even better. Now there are several different ways to do the same thing in PhotoShop, so if your methods differed a bit don’t worry.

6 Great Tips to Scanning Photos with Photoshop

TractorJack — Sat, 05 Jan 2008 11:38:13 +0000

Believe it or not there was a time before digital cameras. In the age of film cameras after you had used up your roll of film you had to process it or get it processed. This resulted in photographs printed to actual paper and not just saved as in an electronic format. How do you get those printed masterpieces to digital format so you can share them with the world? Well I hope to answer that for you with the following tutorial.

The advantage of scanning a picture directly to Photoshop is that you can then carry out fixing and touching up the picture directly. Plus PhotoShop gives you many more options when it comes to resizing the picture and formats to save it in.

Open up Adobe PhotoShop and go to File > Import from there you should be able to see your scanner as an option. Select your scanner.
Now all scanner software is a bit a different so I will just go over the settings you should use. It is up to you to figure out how to set them in your scanner software. The basic procedure is to do a preview of what is in your scanning area. Then you select the picture you want to scan. Now here comes the tricky part. The resolution you scan the photo at depends on what you plan to do with it.
If you are just going to e-mail it then 72 pixel resolution is what you want to choose.
If you are planning to send the photo directly to your printer than you want to scan it at 300 pixel resolution.
If you want to do some retouching then you’ll want to scan it at 600 pixel resolution. This will allow you to a large image to work with. It will also give you the detail needed if you are require to really zoom in on parts of it.
After you have selected your resolution scan the photo. Be aware that if you are scanning at 600 pixel resolution this can take some time.

These six simple tricks can greatly increase the quality of your scanned images.

Highlighting with Color In Photoshop

TractorJack — Sat, 29 Dec 2007 19:58:22 +0000

As with anything in Photoshop there are multiple ways to achieve the same effect. What we are going to do here is turn a color photo to black and white, then restore color in the area we want to draw attention to. There are several different ways you can high light with color. I will show you a very simple way and my preferred method in this tutorial.

Below is the original image that I am going to use to demonstrated highlighting with color. Open up the image you want to do this to in Photoshop and follow along.

First thing to do is to make a copy of the original layer. Select the layer in the Layers Palette and type Ctrl + J.
Then make sure your new layer is selected and type Shift+Ctrl+U to desaturate the image.

Now we want to restore the color in the part of the photo we want to draw attention to. In my case I am going to use the focal point of the picture – the little boy. But this is a great technique to use to draw your viewers attention away from the center of the photo. To restore the color select the Eraser Tool . Set the brush size to a little smaller than the area you want to highlight.

Now you need to decide if you want the color separation from the black and white to hard and crisp or soft and flowing. For my example I will go with hard and crisp, to do this I make sure the hardness of my eraser brush is 100%. If I wanted it soft I would lower the hardness of my eraser brush. Now you simple erase away the black and white to reveal the color in the areas you want.

Like I said in the beginning this is a very easy effect to achieve. If you don’t feel comfortable using the eraser you can also make a quick mask and then delete that area. Below is the finished picture.

Turn a Portrait into a Hot Sexy Glamour Photo

TractorJack — Sat, 08 Dec 2007 22:46:32 +0000

We are going to take this nice photo here on the right and through the magic of photo shop turn it into a hot sexy glamorous picture like you find in magazines. If you want to follow along click on the picture to get the full size original that I started with.

As there are many different things we need to do to achieve our final image. I have broken this down into smaller tutorials to make it easier for you to follow along. In some cases you may not want to or need to use all the steps outlined here.

The Eyes- I find that if you can make the eyes draw the attention of the viewer the over all effect of the portrait is that much better. So it is a good place to start.Click Here to go to the Eyebrow Shaping and Eye Enhancing Tutorial

The Teeth and Smile – With time, drinking coffee or smoking our teeth tend to yellow. There is a whole market of dental care products out there just to whiten your teeth. Well I’ll save you the expense and show you how to do it in photo shop. Click Here to go to the Whitening Teeth Tutorial.

The Hair – We need to add some shine and body to our models hair. This is a subtle effect but it really does add to the over all image. Click here to go to the tutorial on adding body and shine to hair.
The Skin – Now we start on the human body’s largest organ, the skin. Ever notice in magazine ads how flawless and smooth the models complexion and skin are? We thats not just good genetics, the photo has been airbrushed to look that way. Well in the old days it would be airbrushed, but can achieve the same effect in photo shop. Click Here to go to the tutorial on glamour skin softening.

I hope you enjoyed this series of tutorials on making a glamour photo, hopefully you learned some tips and tricks you can apply else where.

Adding Body and Shine to Hair – for a Sexy Glamour Photo

TractorJack — Sat, 08 Dec 2007 21:07:34 +0000

In this tutorial we will add body and shine to our models hair to aid us in achieving our over all glamour photo effect.

As in the other tutorials in this glamour series we will continue to use the same photo on the right. I found this photo on http://www.sxc.hu/. If you click on the image to the right it will take you to the original that I started with if you want to follow along.

Alright so let us get started….

First open the image in photo shop and make a copy of the background layer. Then turn off the background layer by clicking on the eye next to it. This is a good practice to get into just in case something goes really really bad. Things only seem to go really really bad for me when I skip this step .
Go to Filter < Liquify and select the Freeze Mask Tool and paint over the face and any skin close to the hair. By doing this we are protecting the face and skin from any distortions we make to the hair.

Now select the Bloat Tool and set your brush size just large enough to cover the width of the hair. Now go over the hair and click. This will slightly expand the hair giving it more body. If you hold done the mouse it will expand rapidly so I prefer to just click until I have achieved the look I want. If you expand it too much you can use the Reconstruct Tool to reduce the bloating.

Once you feel you have added enough body click Ok to apply the changes and exit the liquify filter. We have now successfully added body. Although the changes may seem subtle that is the name of the game. All these subtle changes combine to give the over all glamour effect.
Now our next step is to give the hair a little bit of healthy shine. Select the Dodge Tool . Now pick a brush a tad smaller than the expanded hair. Set the brush exposure around 20%, and the range to Highlights

Now change the exposure to 10% and change the range to midtones and brush over the hair again.

Select the Burn Tool . Set the Exposure to 10% and the range to shadows. Now brush over the hair to darken the shadows which will make the hair look thick and shiny.

This effect may look subtle and in all reality it is. But when used with the other effects in this glamour series it plays a large part in the over all look.

Follow the entire glamour photo series by clicking on the links below:

Back to the Glamour Photo Tutorial

Whitening Teeth for a Sexy Glamour Photo

TractorJack — Sat, 08 Dec 2007 04:36:41 +0000

In this tutorial we are going to whiten this models teeth in continuing with making a sexy glamour photo. If you are following the whole series I will be using this same photograph on the right through out the series. Clicking on this image will take you to the full size picture that I got from www.sxc.hu.

First open your image in photo shop and use Ctrl+J to duplicate the layer so you have something to fall back on if you mess up horribly. The turn off your background layer by clicking on the eye next to it.

Use the Zoom Tool to zoom into the models teeth. Now select the Magnetic Lasso Tool . Using the Magnetic Lasso select the teeth and only the teeth.

Now go to Image < Adjustments < Hue/Saturation or press Ctrl +U to bring up the Hue / Saturation dialog.

Select Yellows in the edit box and move the Saturation slider to the left to remove the yellow tinge to the teeth.

Then select Master in the edit box and move the Lightness slider to the right to brighten the whites of the teeth.

After

Now we have successfully managed to remove the yellowing stains of time from our models teeth and given her a sexy white smile. All this with out the use of white strips messy gels or costly painful trips to the dentist.

Follow the entire glamour photo series by clicking on the links below:

Back to the Glamour Photo Tutorial

Softening Skin for the Glamour Look

TractorJack — Sat, 08 Dec 2007 02:37:05 +0000

If you have ever looked a pictures in a magazine you will have no doubt noticed how smooth the models skin looks. Well this is by some sort of genetic accident, it has undoubtedly been photo manipulated to look that way. In this tutorial I will show you one way to achieve that effect.

If you are following the whole series I will be using this same photograph on the right through out the series. Clicking on this image will take you to the full size picture that I got from www.sxc.hu.

As you can see it is a good looking portrait in its one right, but never one you’d see in a magazine or as a head shot of an actor. I am sure if we could see the before being photo-shopped pictures or models in magazine we wouldn’t take for granted all the work that a graphic artist puts into making these pictures awesome.

So let’s get started….

First thing first, open the image you want to soften the skin on in photoshop. Now double click on the background layer. When the Layer dialog appears name it background and click OK

Now we are going to make the skin perfect by removing all the blemishes. Use the Zoom tool to enlarge the face so it fills your entire work area.

Next select the Spot Healing Brush . Change the mode to lighten(next to the brush size). In some cases lighten just won’t do it so you may have to change the mode back to normal. Set the brush size to be slightly larger than the blemish you are fixing, hover over the blemish and click. In my experience this method fixes about 95% of the blemishes I have run in too. No make sure your clean up the acne, scratches on the skin, and if you want the moles and birth marks.

Now we need to make some duplicates of this layer. Type Ctrl+J 3 time to make three copies. Then turn off the visibility of your layers except the background copy 2 layer by clicking on the eye next to it. Your layers palette will look similar to the one below.

Make your background copy 2 layer active by clicking on it. In the Layers palette switch the Blend mode from Normal to Darken. Then go to Filter < Blur < Gaussian Blur and apply a 40 pixel blur to the picture. Then hide this layer by clicking on the eye to the left of it.

Now click the box to the left of background copy 3 to turn it back on and make this layer active. Change the Blend Mode to Lighten. Now again use the Gaussian Blur filter but this time to a 60 pixel blur.
Turn on the layer Background copy 2 and lower its opacity to 40%. Then turn on your background copy layer. Now at this stage it really doesn’t look like much, but we are almost done.

Make sure you have the layer background copy 3 active. Press Ctrl+E to merge this layer with background copy 2. Now click on the Layer Mask button at the bottom of the layers palette.
Press D on your keyboard and then X to make your foreground color black. Then using the Fill Tool click somewhere on the image. You see the whole image become unblurred. This because by filling with black we essentially masked out all of our blur effects.
Now its time to bring back the blur over the areas of the skin where we want it. Press X to make your foreground color white. Now select the brush tool .Choose a soft brush that covers the area of skin you want to soften and paint in the softness. Be sure to leave detailed areas like the eyes,eye brows, lips, hair, and any other area you don’t want softened. Don’t worry if you see color blur around the edges where her clothing meets her skin. We’ll fix that in the next step.

Now that you have your mask painted in over all the places of skin you want soften lower the Opacity of this layer to somewhere between 60 and 70% depending on your what you feel looks good. You can really see the effect the skin softening has on the image below.

Follow the entire glamour photo series by clicking on the links below:

Back to the Glamour Photo Tutorial

Fixing Eyes and Eyebrows for a Sexy Glamour Photo

TractorJack — Sat, 08 Dec 2007 02:32:53 +0000

If your a woman you already know this, but listen up guys. Women spend a lot of time making themselves attractive and one of the things they do is shape their eyebrows by plucking or waxing. Well in the first part of this tutorial on eyes for a sexy glamour photo I am going to show you how to use Adobe Photo Shop to shape eyebrows.

I will be using the photo on the right for this entire glamour series. I found this image on www.sxc.hu. As you can see as a basic portrait it is a good picture. However through out this glamour tutorial series we will change it in to a sexy glamour portrait.

In this tutorial we will shape her eyebrows and we will enhance and brighten her eyes.So lets begin by shaping the eyebrows, and I promise you it will be painless.

It is always a good idea to make a duplicate of your image in case you mess something up so bad you have to start fresh. Press Ctrl+J to duplicate your background layer. Then turn off your background layer by clicking the eye to the left of it.
Use the Zoom Tool and zoom into to her eyebrows. Then press Q to enter quick mask mode. Press D to reset your foreground and background colors.
Make sure Black is set as your foreground color. Now select the Brush tool . After selecting an appropriate size soft brush paint black over the parts of the eyebrows you want to keep. A graphics tablet comes in real handy for this. If you paint the mask in where you don’t want it simple switch to white and paint over the areas of the mask you do not want there.

Press Alt+Ctrl+D to bring up the feather dialog. Enter a value around 4. Now select the Clone Stamp Too . Now determine if you are going to work on the top edge of the eyebrows or the bottom edge. In my case I have no eyebrow to remove some I am going to work on the bottom.Choose a soft edge brush and holding done the Alt key click on a clean area of skin beneath the eyebrow. Now clone the skin over the portion of eyebrow you don’t want. Don’t worry about going over the masked are as the clone tool will only clone up to it.

Once you are happy with the shape of the eyebrows press Ctrl+D to deselect the area. Now we are going to move on to enhancing the eyes. In this photo you can see our model has a bit of Red Eye. Its a simple matter with photo shop to clear this up. Under the spot healing brush you’ll find the Red Eye Tool . Select this tool, place the cross hairs in the center of the pupil and as if by magic the red eye disappears.
Copy your working layer by pressing Ctrl+J. Now select the Brush Tool and pick a small hard edged brush. Press Q to enter quick mask mode. With your foreground color set to black paint over the eyes, just the eyes. To do this I used a really small hard brush to outline the edge of the eye and then a larger brush to fill in the center.

Now press Shift+Ctrl+I to inverse your selection so you will actually be working with the eyes. Now go to Filter < Sharpen < Unsharp Mask. Use the same settings as I used below.

Now if the eyes still do not appear bright and crisp you can run the UnSharp Mask filter again. But be careful if you run it too many times the eyes really become creepy looking.

There you have it, reshaped eyebrows and enhanced eyes.

Follow the entire glamour photo series by clicking on the links below:

Back to the Glamour Photo Tutorial

Stylize your Photos Edges

TractorJack — Mon, 03 Dec 2007 01:04:45 +0000

A new trend I have been seeing lately is to have irregular edges around photographs that gives it a more artistic look. It is a real easy effect to achieve with Photo Shop, in this tutorial I’ll show you just how easy it is.

The first thing we need to do is open the picture we want to make the stylized edges on in Photoshop.

Now Double Click on your background layer in the Layers pallet. When the layers dialog appears click OK. This unlocks your background layer.
Now create a new layer by clicking on the New layer Icon and drag this layer below your background layer.
Next select your background layer and using the Crop Tool make a selection around your picture. Then drag the handles away from the edges to enlarge your canvas. Once you have dragged the edges out a bit double click in the square and your canvas will be enlarged.

Next select on the New Layer you created and using the Fill tool fill it with white.
Now Double click on your layer with your picture to bring up the Layer Styles dialog. Select Drop Shadow and play with the settings until you achieve a nice shadow behind your image making it look as though it is above the page.

Now you may choose to stop here if you like this effect for your photo. But from here you can do many other things. For example use the Lasso tool and make jagged edges around your photo on the photo layer.

Now go to Select > Inverse and then press the Delete Key. This will give you the result below.

However you may not want the jagged edge look. You can also use the Elliptical Marquee Tool or what ever selection tool you want to achieve numerous effects, such as these below.

Elliptical Marquee Tool

Elliptical marquee Tool and Feather

You can try all kinds of different shapes to create different effects. This is a very easy technique to do so have fun and experiment with it.

Making a Better Virtual Tattoo with Photo Shop

TractorJack — Tue, 13 Nov 2007 00:12:10 +0000

There are numerous tutorials out there showing you how to make a virtual tattoo using Photo Shop. Many of these use overlay in the blending modes to achieve this. The only problem with most of the tutorials out there is that the virtual tattoo looks sort of, well overlaid and not actually following the contour of the body it is place on.

I have however seen one tutorial where the virtual tattoo seem to follow the contours of the body but alas it was in black and white only. Not that black and white tattoos and pictures don’t look good but they don’t suit all purposes.

In this tutorial I will show you a method using the displace filter to make a virtual tattoo look as though it follows the contours of the body. So let’s get started….

The first thing you need to do is locate an image of a person that you want to place the tattoo on. I went to www.sxc.hu to find one. Make sure you choose one with lots of exposed skin so you have more areas to place the virtual tattoo.
The next thing you need is the image of the virtual tattoo. Since I am a little lazy sometimes I just looked through my hard drive and found this image of a Fighting Hell Fish (if your a Simpson’s Fan you probably just got a good laugh.).

Now open the picture of the person you want to place the virtual tattoo on in Photo Shop. Duplicate the layer, you can do this by dragging the layer to the New Layer Icon . Now click on the eye next to the original layer to turn off its visibility. I always try and do this so if I do a major screw up I still have the original image in tact.
Make sure you are working on your duplicate layer by clicking on it. Now might be a good time to change its name to person or woman, or something descriptive. This is a good practice to get into so when you are working with numerous layers you know whats what. Now in the Layers Pallet select the channels tab.

Now click on each channel until you find the one that gives you the most contrast. This means that the bright areas are their brightest and the dark areas are there darkest. In my case it was the Reds channel.

Right Click or Ctrl Click on the channel that gives you the best contrast, then select Duplicate Channel. When the Duplicate Channel dialog box appears make sure under Destination, Document is set to New. You can then name it. I went with Tattoo map for a name. This document will become the displacement map for the tattoo.

On you new image which should have open automatically click the Layers tab to go back to the layers. Now press Crtl+L to bring up the levels dialog. Here we will tweak the contrast a little bit. To do this you’ll move the far left and far right arrows under the Input Levels graph. The far left will control the darkness and the far right will make it lighter. Don’t over do it, on some images you may not have to do it at all. Want you want to be able to see is the curves of the body getting gradually darker as they move away from you.

As you can see I really didn’t change it too much. But you can see that the image gets darker as it rolls of the shoulder. This should make for a good displacement map. Now be sure to Save this image. I called mine tattomap.psd . You can close it if you wish as we will no longer be working on it.
Go back to the image of the person you want to place the tattoo on. Now go back to Channels and select RGB to turn the colors back on. Then click back on layers and select your duplicated layer.
If you haven’t already open the image of the tattoo you want to place. Now using the Move tool drag your tattoo image onto the the picture of the person you want to virtual tattoo (I had removed the background from my tattoo image – and if you haven’t you need to do this). Using the Move Tool place the tattoo where you want. You may have to resize and rotate it so it fits. For my image I am placing it on her shoulder.

If you adjusted the size or rated the tattoo you now need to press Enter to accept the changes. Now tattoos seldom have clearly defined edges (most likely because the ink spreads a little on the skin). So go to Filters > Blur > Gaussian Blur and blur it any where from .5 to 2 pixels. Depending on the image you have chosen for your tattoo, in my case I blurred it about 1.5 pixels.
Now we are going to use the Displace filter. Go to Filters > Distort > Displace. Make sure your settings are the same as mine below.

Press Okay and when it asks you for the displacement map file choose the one you created from the channels. Mine was the tattoomap.psd file. Then in the layer blending mode change it to Multiply in the Layers Pallet. Then adjust the opacity to around 75%. This should result in a really realistic looking tattoo.

The Displace filter is a really powerful feature and you can use it to many more things. I hope this tutorial has shown you a better way to use photo shop to make a virtual tattoo. Happy Virtual Tattooing.

For more tutorials from this site Click Here

Tenacious Creations » Photoshop

Top Tenacious Creations Posts of 2008

My Favorite 5 sites for Photoshop Actions and Filters

16 Great Photoshop Tutorial Sites

Turn your digital images into a stack of Polaroids with PhotoShop

Morphing Animals with PhotoShop

6 Great Tips to Scanning Photos with Photoshop

Highlighting with Color In Photoshop

Turn a Portrait into a Hot Sexy Glamour Photo

Adding Body and Shine to Hair – for a Sexy Glamour Photo

Whitening Teeth for a Sexy Glamour Photo

Softening Skin for the Glamour Look

Fixing Eyes and Eyebrows for a Sexy Glamour Photo

Stylize your Photos Edges

Making a Better Virtual Tattoo with Photo Shop