How I uncovered Renee Robyns real personality in Photoshop

Sometimes it’s good to have your creative friends visit as it can really get the creative juices flowing. So whilst my friend Renee Robyn was in the UK, I thought I may as well take her photo. I know you all think the final photo is true, but I’m sorry to say its a fake, I photoshopped it…..but it wasn’t far off. Anyway here is how I used photoshop to show Renee’s “inner self”.

Here is the image straight out of the camera. I had the final image in mind and it was a composite, so the backdrop is clean and the clothing and rose were placed in Renee’s good faith. Little did I know….

Before we do anything drastic, let’s give the image a little cleanup. Nothing too drastic, just a few blemishes off the face and a couple of spots.

Now the image is a little cleaner, let’s add the demon skin. I took a stock photo of an apple and cut a piece out. I then switched the apple texture on to an overlay blend mode.

I like the Demon skin, but I wanted it to look like it was being seen under her torn (barely) human skin. So I took a stock image of some peeling paint and placed it over the apple texture. I then added a layer mask and painted away everything but the tear. Looking better already.

We have the tear, but now we need to blend it a little better. To do this I created a hue/saturation adjustment layer, switched it to colour and the moved the slider until it looked the same pink as the skin.

Okay getting there. Now I wanted to add some creepy details in. First I wanted Renee’s true eye colour, so I painted over her eye with a black brush, making sure to stay in the eye frame. I then found some free blood textures online, brought them into the layers palette, resized and put them on a multiply blend mode.

Now let’s have a little look at the hands. I know I will be setting them on fire… not in real life, even though it would be fun (and probably well deserved). I need a charred effect. I found some free decay textures online. I pulled them into the image and set them on a multiply blend mode. We don’t have to be too neat with this as fire and smoke will cover it.

So let’s get on with setting Renee on fire, YIPEE! Again using free stock, I found some good fire images and pulled one into my layers. I set it to a screen blend mode and placed it over the hands. I then with a photoshop brush on a low opacity painted in some smoke with a light grey colour, over the hands and fire.

Before we go any further and add in the final textures over the top, it is time for some dodging and burning. As always I do this with curves adjustment layers. Check out some of my previous posts for a better description of how to do this.

Dodge and burn complete, it is now time to add some background texture. I did this by bringing a texture image into my layers above everything else. I set it to soft light blend mode, which blends it in nicely with the grey background. All I had to do then was create a layer mask and paint the texture off of Renee. We don’t need to be super neat as there will be lots of smoke in the final image.

Speaking of smoke. I pulled in another stock image, this time of smoke, set it to a screen blend mode and placed it over the image, making sure you could see Renee’s face.

My idea was to have the image look like an old Victorian portrait, so to do this it needs to be in black and white. A very simple task, just add a black and white adjustment layer and boom! You now have black and white.

Next, we just need to pull the focus in a little to Renee. We can do this by darkening the edges a little. I created a curves adjustment layer, pulled down the highlights a little and then added a layer mask. I then inverted the layer mask and painted the dark in where I needed it.

To complete the image all I needed was to add some age, like a well-worn antique photo. To do this I found some free scratch textures online. I pulled them into my layers panel and resized them to match my image. I then switched them to a screen blend mode, which blended them seamlessly.