About the Author: Killian Kuipers

I’m from Holland and study art and technology. I always loved to work with Photoshop. I’m also getting better in using other Adobe products, such as After Effects and Flash. I like!

Hi. KillianDB here, with my very first tutorial. In this tutorial I will learn you how to make a beautiful design from just a photo. The images in this tutorials are ALL thumbnails, so to see the images in high quality, please click them. This tutorial is not for just started beginners in Photoshop. It is recommended that you know the basics first. This is the outcome:

Step 1 – Setup

First you find a photo of some hot chick. It’s preferred that the top of her body is perfect and fits the image size well. I found a very nice photo at a site for pictures of models called Skins.be. Open it in Photoshop, change the image size if you like. For the final result i used a 16:9 (wide screen) comparison. Why? Because I like it! This is the original file:

Step 2 – Gradient(s)

Now lets start off with the gradients. You’re about to insert 3 gradient maps. Click on the adjustments and insert a first gradient map, the standard green to red (REVERSED) one. Set the blending mode to Color Dodge and the opacity back to 30%. The second one is a blue to orange one with the same settings. Now insert a black to white gradient, but set this layer’s blending mode to Screen and the opacity just to 30%.

NOTE: You can do very much you want here, just experiment with it for surprising combination.

Now let’s fix her hair and a bit of her body. Insert 3 gradients:
1: Black (0%) – Yellow (50%) –  White (100%)
2: Black (0%) – Magenta (50%) – White (100%)
3: Black (0%) – White (100%)
First press Ctrl+i on the masks of the gradients. This should make the mask empty and the gradients invincible. Now you can start brushing her hair and her body. I prefer to keep the body with little colors and more black/white.

Step 3 – First filling

Create a new empty layer and go ahead to fill the background parts with a dark color (for example dark gray) Make it look nice, screwing around with the blending modes and opacity. Now create another new empty layer. Get you brushes and brush a bit around the edges of her body (also hair). Make the bushed parts look a bit abstract and dynamic by for example erasing a bit at the sides of them. Apply the layer styles that are below this text to it. It should look good and do this again in another new layer, but now use yellowish colors instead of magenta.

Now add some lines. Use the line tool with a maximal width of 2px and preferable with a white color. Also add some big SOFT brushed dots with magenta and yellow colors to the image. It’s time to fill the image up even more. Get your brushes and use them like you’ve never used them ever before. I recommend you use splatter brushes in combination with normal (soft) brushes and other nice brushes. I used the brush pack made by AxeRaider70, available here (NOT FOR COMMERCIAL GOALS!!!).

Step 4 – Changing colors

When you’re done with adding brushes insert a gradient map. The colors are green to red (REVERSED) and set it to overlay and 100%. Delete everything again from the mask and now brush only the darker parts. Create a new layer and get a grey-blue-green-ish colored brush and start brushing the background. Now create another layer and brush some magenta and yellow stuff to fill the image up again. Now go to the channel mixer and change it to:
Output Channel: Red
Red: + 25%
Green: + 0%
Blue: + 112%

Step 5 – Clipping Masks

First of all create a new layer. Press Alt, go to Image -> Apply Image. Now you have 1 layer including your complete image. Create a new layer and place a good visible big dot using your Marquee Tool and Bucket Tool, or just the Brush Tool. Take a soft eraser brush and make it look like the the dot fades away at just 1 side of it. Now change the order of the 2 layers. The dot is supposed to lay underneath the applied image. Right-Click the image layer and click Create Clipping Mask. No difference yet? That’s right. Just move the image layer around a bit. Now you should see clearly difference. You now can brush more dots on the dots layer and see more difference.

Step 6 – The Face

Create 2 layers. One for the eyes and 1 for the mouth. First the eyes: Get a small hard brush and change the color to yellow. Now brush around the eyes and just change the blending mode to Darken. Now for the lips in the other layer fill the parts you want to change with magenta and set the blending mode here to Overlay. Play a little with the Opacity to make it look more realistic.

Step 7 – Finishing touches

Almost done here. First you probably wanna fill the image up again. Do it. If you think it still isn’t good enough, make it better. For this is used the same technique explaint in step 5, with the clipping masks for the thick lines you see. To make the contrast better a good way is to get you Burn Tool and burn the dark shadow-ish parts you’d like to make even darker. Now add a little Photo Filter to it. I used the following settings.
Filter: Warming Filter (81)
Density: 91%
As finishing touch i inserted Level-adjustment, set the black *arrow* underneath the histogram to 19 and kept the rest as it was.

Finally

Damn, a whole lot of work, wasn’t it? But it was worth it I think. I’m pleased if you liked this tutorial!