How to blend a texture on a body part Photoshop Tutorials

 
 

Welcome!

Here’s a tutorial to learn how to blend a texture on a body part (we’ll work on a face, but you can apply it to anything you like).If you want to see the PSD file click here and choose “open with…”For any questions, ideas of improvements or critics just send me a note on my DOTCRUSH Contact Us form, I’ll be pleased to answer you. let’s begin with the tutorial !

  • The tutorial is made for Adobe Photoshop CS, but hopefully it will be compatible with older versions. Tell me if it’s not. 

1 The first step, of course is to find stock pictures 🙂 Please respect authors and never rip pictures that are not free from copyright… And credit authors once a picture used, they’re always pleased to see what you’ve done with their pictures.
Here some good links to find stock pictures :

On DeviantArt :

On the web :

When searching for pictures, allways think about :

  • Picture Resolution : never less than 1024×768
  • Picture Quality : zoom it and watch for grain, blurr, noise …
  • Composition : think about what you gonna do, even a good photoshopper is not a wizard! you have to find the pictures that mostly fit what you want to achieve.

Let’s start with the tutorial ! Here’re the 2 pictures I’ll be working on

 

Put your texture file on top of the face, and put it in 50% opacity, so you can adjust scale and see how it fits.

By placing texture like this, you will avoid troubles that could come later 🙂 Here you’ll see for example that you’ll need to duplicate the texture to make the body after. Once adjusted, apply a layer mask on the texture (keep it in low opacity to see the face), and hide everything who’s not on the face :

On top of the face, add an empty layer, fill it with black and use the “color” blending option in the layer window. making this, the face will appear in black and white but you’ll preserve the colors under it, so you’ll be able to get some colors from the original picture after, if needed 🙂
Now, come back on the texture layer, and put it in Multiply mode, put the opacity to 100%.

Duplicate the texture layer, change blending mode to Color Dodge, and put opacity about ~80%. Use a lower opacity if you want a feeling less bright to the end.

This step is often usefull, but not everytime, as it distorts the texture. Sometimes the result really fits but sometimes it’s awfull. I let the use of it at your own appreciation. Personnally I didn’t use this step to do this manipulation. Last thing, as it distorts the texture you have to do this before duplicating the texture as we just did, you’ll duplicate the texture layer once it’s been distorted.

Create a copy of your picture, by pressing the button as shown, in the history window.

 


On the duplicated picture, supress all the layers except the face, then go to Image/Mode/Greyscale. The picture will be flattened. Then, save this picture as a PSD file (I usually save it on the desktop, and call it “displace.psd”). Then close it, and go back on your main file.

Be sure you’re on the texture layer, unlock the layer mask, and go to Filter/Distort/Displace…, let values to X-10% Y-10%, press OK. You’ll have a “browse window”, find the file you saved just before and select it. It will distort the texture. See if it looks cool 🙂 it will mainly depend of what kind of texture it is. If it works, it will give a little volume to the texture, don’t be afraid if it’s still flat, it’s still a work in progress !

Texture distorted using the displace filter on the left, original texture on the right … Try it on your manipulations and see if it fits …Now a more “artistic” part 🙂 On every texture work, the hardest part is to preserve volume. As you blend a flat texture, you lose it… So it’s time to get it back ! Photoshop has a wonderfull toy for that 🙂 even 2 to be precise, as shown here :

 

The most usefull ones are the 2 first. Use the one looking like a hand to reproduce shadows (with a 40% opacity maximum), use the first one to reproduce the enlighted part due to the light (with a 40% opacity maximum too). I can’t really guide you for this step, it’s really feeling ! try to see on the original picture how comes the lights and shadows, and try to imitate it. Follow the nose, the mouth… try to be realistic 😉 Here what I came up with :

 If you succeeded untill here, the rest will be easy for you 🙂 To give more impact to your texture, especially with rocks/stones/sand texture, sharpen it. Put opacity of the sharpen tool to 20% (not more), with a big brush and brush all your picture once. You’ll see it coming more clear. Then you can take a smaller brush (never put more than 20% in opacity) and try to enhance more some parts. Be carefull, it can pixellized your picture quickly. Try and cancel if it becomes noisy.

Here’s the sharpen tool 🙂 You can also use the water drop to blur some part. It’s very usefull to recreate perspective and deepness.

Now it should like something cool 🙂 you can adjust levels, brightness, saturation by that option :

As allways it will depend on your artistic feelings 🙂

 This step is facultative, it depends on the kind of result you want. But I think it’s important to write it as it saves lots of my photomanips !
As we did in the Displace Section create a copy of your picture. Then just flatten it, by going to Layers/Flatten…. Once done go to Filters/filter gallery…
That will be more “feeling” … with time you’ll know which filters may work. I often try with Neon Glow which gives really “surreal” effect, or Plastic Wrap or Ink Outlines when you got troubles to get some volume… For the moment, you can try with a Neon Glow, I adjusted it like that :

 Once done, drag and drop that layer on top of your picture, and play with opacity and blending option to see if something good comes 🙂 I don’t guide you more than that, because it’s really subjective, and “feeling” once again 🙂 just be sure to keep opacity under 30% because you’ll lose the benefits of all the work on texture you did before 😉 You can also keep this layer only on one part by adding a layer mask on it. For example, if the Neon Glow looks cool on the eye, just keep it there !

In my opinion, I wouldn’t keep these filters here, as the texture was exactly the goal at first 🙂 but I thought this tip could be usefull one day !

 

 

 

 

 

Direct short-and-share link to this page:    https://www.dotcrush.com/?p=2943

 

more tutorials at: https://www.dotcrush.com/graphics/tutorials_graphics/ 

UBlogger

About The Author