Tenacious Creations

 In this tutorial we are going to create an image where flesh appears to be melting off a hand revealing the bone beneath. Since this site has a diverse audience I have not made this image gory, or extreme in any manner so it will continue to appeal to all.

 This looks harder than it actually is to do so do not be scared off by that. Basically we are going to use layers, layer masks, and explore brush presets a little. Brushes in photo shop are very powerful tools however they are seldom used to their full potential. We will just scratch the surface of brushes with this tutorial.

• First we need to locate the images that we want to use. Basically we need a skeleton hand and a real hand. I found the skeleton hand image here. As for the flesh hand I used a picture of my hand after a day of work so it would have a dirty look to it. I would recommend you use a picture of your own hand as you can pose it to a similar shape as the skeleton hand.
• Then using your favorite method extract both the skeleton hand and the flesh hand from there backgrounds. Unless of course you want to use the background in the picture of your flesh hand. (I have thought about writing a tutorial on removing items from their backgrounds, but as there are many out there already I don’t see a need. However if you my readers feel you’d like me to write one let me know and I will)
   
• Now we are going to select the bones that make up the individual fingers on the skeleton hand. I used the Polygon Lasso tool to draw a rough selection around the little finger. (I added a layer of white in my image to show the selection lines better) Don’t worry about being to precise because there should be nothing in the background that will interfere.
     
• After you have your selection hit Crtl+C and this will copy it to your clip board. Then click on your flesh hand image and hit Ctrl+V and it will paste the selection to its own layer. Now click on the layer name in the layers pallet and rename it to little finger. Then using the Move tool , move the little finger bones over the flesh little finger. You may have to resize and rotate the bones to fit. If you need to resize howver your mouse over the corner box till the cursor changes to two arrows. Then hold down the shift key and drag away to make bigger or in to make smaller. To rotate however your mouse just outside the little box until it turns to rounded arrows then click your mouse and rotate. You can use the flesh finger joints and the bone finger joints as a guide to resize and rotate.


• You repeat this procedure for all the fingers and thumb. I cheated for the index finger as in my picture the thumb bones kind of cover it. Instead I just made another copy of the middle finger bones and resized it accordingly. Your image should look close to mine above. Now you should notice that the bones do not cover the whole hand. I just want the skin to be melting off the finger tips so I don’t require a lot of bones in my example. You may want to have the skin melting off more than just the finger tips in which case you’ll need more bones.
• Next Right Click on your flesh hand layer and select Duplicate. Drag this layer above all the layers of your individual finger bone layers. Turn off your first flesh hand layer by clicking on eye next to it.
• Double Click on your new hand layer to bring up the Layer Style menu. In the layer style menu select drop shadow. This will add a little bit of depth for our next step.

• Now select the Eraser tool . Now click on the brush drop down menu. Then click on the little arrow pointing to the right. This will bring up all the brush sets that come preloaded with Photo Shop. If you have never done this before I am sure you’ll be surprised at how many there are. From this menu select Natural Brushes. When Photo Shop asks you if you want to replace the current brushes select Okay. Don’t worry you won’t lose the brushes you previously had. Select the brush that is 59 pixels.
    


• Using this brush erase the tips of the fingers to reveal as much bones you like. By using this brush you achieve a rough edge that almost looks as though it is dripping already.

• Now Right Click on this layer and Duplicate it. Turn off the layer original. I do this so when (notice I said when not if) I make a big mistake while doing the drips I don’t have to start over again.
• First we need to reset our brushes. So again click the brush drop down and then the right arrow to bring up a list of brushes. Then just select Reset Brushes, this sets your brushes as before. Select the Smudge Tool . Then if you do not have your brush pallet displayed, click on the Brush Pallet Toggle . From here select Shape Dynamics and make sure it has a check mark next to it. Change Control to Fade. Now you’ll want to keep this dialog open as you’ll want to change the Minimum Diameter and the Fade Amount as you go. I started with 25 as a fade amount and the minimum diameter set to 26%.


• Now all you do is with the smudge tool start on a piece of flesh of the hand and slowly drag down. If you want the melting flesh drips to be straight after you click hold down the Shift key. It’ll take some experimenting to get your drips right, change the Fade settings until you get the result you want.

• Take your time with getting the drips as you want. Now drips normally have that little bubble on the end of them. In order to get this we need to paint it in. So using the Eyedropper tool select one of the drips. This sets your color to the same as the drips. Now select a brush and set the Hardness to about 90%. Make sure you have the size to about the size of the drips. Go the bottom of the drip and paint in the bubble.
• Now create a New Layer and name it highlights. Press D on your key board to reset your colors and then press X to make white your foreground color. Make sure to turn the Hardness of your brush down. Then paint in the highlights. If you are unsure of where they should go just imagine where the light would be hitting. Now light is never really straight when it hits something, so select the Eraser tool and with a large soft brush erase a long the edges of your highlights. I then turn down the Opacity of my high lights layer to about 50%.



• Now you can take your hand with the melted flesh and place it in what ever back ground you want. Perhaps dipping in a barrel of toxic waste or something. I just placed it on a black background to make it stand out a bit.

  Now you could add some blood drops, or maybe a pool of melted flesh beneath the hand to improve the over all effect. But I did not want to make this image too extreme. I would like to see any images created with this technique. I hope you enjoyed this tutorial. For more tutorials on this site Click Here.

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