Basic Dark Photomanipulation in Photoshop

May your frights be fantastic and your treats be tasty ... I've got the Halloween spirit like something unreal. So I figured ... why not celebrate the holiday with a tutorial on doing dark manips?

Okay so first off - what is a dark photomanipulation? It is taking a regular, even good-looking person (in this tutorial we'll use Angelina Jolie) and performing a few basic steps to turn that person into something spooky, dark, creepy, and generally perfect for Halloween.

Is it hard? Not at all - you can perform a basic dark manip in about 3 steps. You'll need Photoshop 7 or higher (this tutorial is written using CS2) and a graphic to start with. The one I'm using is a free wallpaper of Angelina Jolie. Finally, you'll need some imagination - but if you're reading this guide I'm sure you've got that covered!

Dark Photo Manipulations

One: Start out with any photograph of a person you want to transform. The more skin that is showing, the more successful your final effect will be. Portraits are often perfect - but you don't want someone smiling, unless it's a particularly wicked-looking smile, or it won't look right.

Open the photograph in Photoshop and make sure it's in RGB mode (Click "Image", choose "Mode", and tick "RGB").

Two: Any dark photo should have a "dark" look, right? There are a lot of ways to do this, but we're going to go with the one that's easiest. The great thing is that the easy way is also one of the best looking - we're going to use the Burn Tool.

Set your foreground color to black and duplicate the original photograph layer (right click the photograph layer and choose "Duplicate Layer"). By duplicating the layer, we're making sure that any changes we make aren't "permanent" - we can always delete the new layer and start over if we do something awful... and not the kind of awful we're going for.

Once you have the duplicated layer, select your "Burn Tool". This tool has a hand as an icon in the tools palette, and hides behind the Dodge Tool - the one that looks like a push pin. To get the Burn Tool, right-click the Dodge Tool and select the hand icon.

Now, start painting. Experiment with the size and shape of brush you use - some of the soft-edged brushes work beautifully, but there are areas where you might want a very hard edge. Follow the line of natural shadows. We're not trying to create new shadows, just deepen the ones that are already there. Don't forget the eyes and lips. If you leave the eyes shiney bright, they're going to stand out too strongly when you're finished.

Three: This step is technically optional, but it definitely furthers the whole "dark" look. I'm going to give Angelina Jolie a pair of blank, milky-white eyes.

To do this, grab your Smudge Tool. This one hides behind your Blur Tool - right click it in the tools palette and grab the one that looks like a pointing finger. Using straight left-to-right strokes, click in the white portion of the eye and drag it over the colored portion. Use shorter strokes to get the smoothest effect.

Four: Another totally-optional step, in this one we're going to add a crackly texture to Angelina Jolie's skin. Get a photo of scales, crumbled paper, a leaf, or something else that looks weathered. Then, drag it over the face in your photograph. Set the layer's mode to "Overlay" and lower its opacity. Finally, blur the edges and make sure that you erase any areas that cover the mouth or eyes.

Wa-la! A creepy, spooky Angelina Jolie. Who woulda thunk it?