Photoshop Tutorial: The Defuser’s Halloween

The Story: This Halloween weekend, heroes and villains clash on an unlikely stage. America’s newest champion, winner of the sci-fi channel’s Who Wants To Be a Superhero, THE DEFUSER, faces off against his self-declared internet rival: the ever evil, the ever vigilant, the ever vile, the LORD VILE. The field of honor? Dueling haunted houses.

If THE DEFUSER’s house triumphs, VILE will donate half of his proceeds to breast cancer research. But if VILE’s house frights the most, then a similar amount of cancer funds will be diverted to marijuna legalization lobbies!

The Image: DT Weekend, the Daily Texan’s arts and entertainment rag, set out to cover this issue. While Lord Vile remained reclusive (and quite possibly without proper attire for a public appearance), Larissa Mueller and I were able to secure a photoshoot with THE DEFUSER at the Elks Lodge, which he was transforming into a Sanatorium of Terror.. orium.

We shanghaied some bodies, seized a poolside spot, and lounged the lizards. Larissa finds the best angle to shoot from is one without pants.

Despite some sneaky interruptions by LORD VILE’s henchmen, the DT Weekend team succeeds in getting the source images for our final concept.

The Process: Here’s the post process I did to produce the final “comic book image.” I’ll do this in tutorial format, but I’m assuming you (dear reader) have at least a passing competency of Adobe Photoshop CS+. No screenshots of “click this click that,” I’m afraid.

First, here are the two source images I used.

On the left is THE DEFUSER, shot close and wide. On the right, the same Austin cityscape you can barely see in the background of the left. Aside from the size difference, the varying perspective will help add that element of “unreal” that makes this more comic than photograph.

Step 1: Use a layer mask to cut out the foreground element.
There’s a million ways to cut out an image. I just bite the bullet and use a black or white brush on a layer mask. Try to find a starting image with good, possibly dramatic, contrast. High resolution is needed for good results–if you have to use some tiny thing off the web, at least enlarge it in photoshop till it’s a few megapixels.

Step 2: Duplicate the layer (masked) twice.
This will give you three different layers, each with the masked off subject. From top layer to bottom, rename them to “light ink,” “dark ink,” and “original.”

Step 3: Light Ink
Select the top layer, “light ink.” This will be the small fine black lines that the comic’s “inker” traces over fine details before they’re colored in. Use the filter “Stamp” (in the Filter Factory for newer versions of photoshop). Adjust the parameters: you’ll want a pretty low smudge factor (sorry, forget the actual parameter name, I’m doing this from memory on a laptop without PS) on the second slider for lots of detail, and a pretty high brightness. You want to see lots of white areas and fine lines.

Step 4: Dark Ink

Repeat the same thing with the dark ink layer, but this time use Stamp settings that emphasize the larger shadows, remove fine details. Don’t worry about making too many black areas, we’ll clean that up later if needed.

Step 5: Putting it together!

Set the top layer “light ink” to Multiply mix mode. Set the middle layer “dark ink” to linear burn. You can play around with others, but that’s a good safe bet. This will allow the colors to come through.

With just the light ink:

With both dark and light inking:

Okay, the above image actually shows the next step..

Step 6: Refine the dark layer
Chances are, your dark layer is too dark. In the last image, the original dark layer actually made his chest and lower face almost solid black. That’s okay. Take the image layer mask on the “dark ink” layer and mask out the parts where you don’t want the heavy shadows. Use a semi-hard edged brush at 100% opacity–ink should be there or not there, not some weird transparent thing. On the above image, I’ve removed the dark ink over the brighter side fo his face, his shoulders and right arm, and pushed it back a little over the torso. I also removed it over the blue clips and pink breast cancer kitsch so as to bring the details out graphically.

Step 7: Lighten the original for “watercolor
Real life is a lot more colorful than an illustrator’s watercolors, so we’re going to fix that too. Add a Curves or Levels adjustment layer between the “original” and “dark ink” layers. Lighten at least the midtones pretty severely. If you want to be fancy, group the layer mask with the “original” layer so it won’t affect the background. (Alt-click the line between the two layers in the layer palette).

Step 7: Almost there!
One last thing. Comic books have a nice black line separating the subjects from background. Select your layer mask (ctrl-click the layer mask on “original”), make a new layer, and put down a black stroke (Edit->Stroke). Or just draw it in yourself. This layer should be on top of all the others.

Doesn’t that look suave? (really, I screwed up on this step–should have used varying thicknesses of outline to really look good.)

Step 8: Last touches and Presents
I’m not going into the background right here, mainly because it was a lot more interpretive. But basically repeat the same process for the background, play around and follow your instincts. I believe in you!

But here’s some extra oomph to get you started.

Download a small version of my PSD with layers intact: here.
Download a photoshop action that approximates steps 1-6: here.

The photoshop action you can import and use on some pictures to get a feel for it. It has some default values for the light and dark inks that probably won’t work very well (but you can adjust them) and it wont make a the final outline for you. Remember, it’s meant for use on high resolution images.

Have fun!