In this tutorial, I’m going to show you how to create realistic tattoos.
Welcome to the Photoshop Training Channel.
My name is Jesus Ramirez and you can find me on Instagram @JRfromPTC.
In this tutorial, we’re going to work with two layers.
This background layer and this foreground layer which is the design that we’re going
to use as a tattoo.
The first step is to take the design layer and convert it into a Smart Object so that
we can work non-destructively.
So I’m going to right click on it, and select Convert to Smart Object.
Then, I’m going to double click on the Smart Object thumbnail to open it up in a new tab
and from here we can extract the background from the foreground.
Since we’re only working with a black and white image, this is quite easy.
All we need to do is go into the channels panel, we can control click on anyone of the
channels.
Click on the blue one, you’ll see selection.
I can then go into the layers panel, go into a new adjustment layer icon and select Solid
Colour.
We’re going to select black for now and press OK.
Then, I’m going to disable the design layer and that gives us an inverted version of what
we wanted.
So we can click on the Layer Mask thumbnail.
In the properties panel, we can click on Invert and that will invert the selection and we
no longer have a background.
Now we can select the right colour for this.
Before we do that, I’m going to open up my Created Colour Library, and when you’re
doing compositing jobs, it’s always a good idea to look at reference photo.
So I downloaded this reference photo of a tattoo and that’s sort of what I’m going
to go for, this same colour here.
So I’m just going to select that colour and I’m going to close this image.
And I’m going to double click on the Colour Fill Layer and select that colour from the
foreground colour and it selects that right there.
That’s a little more blue than what I wanted so I’m just going to click and drag this
down to make it just a little bit more green, and then press OK.
Then I’m going to close this tab, click on Yes to save the smart object and the smart
object would be updated in our working composition.
We can now work on transforming the image so it is fits the area that we’re going
to place it in.
So you can press Ctrl T/Command T to transform.
And then click and drag on the corner handles by holding Shift, keep it constrained and
move the design into the position that you like.
So in this case, I would like my design to be somewhere around here, and I’m going
to hit Enter, that’s Return on the Mac.
Then we can work on distorting the image so that it matches the contours of the body.
There’s a lot of ways of doing that, I’m going to show you different techniques, just
so that you have options when you’re working on your image.
So one of the things that you can do is go into Filter + Liquify, and you can use the
Forward Warp tool to move pixels around so that they match the contours of the body.
You could also use the Bloat Tool, which is this one here, to bloat things out like so.
Or you can hold Alt/Option on the Mac to hinge things in, like so.
And then press OK when you’re done.
You also can go into Edit + Puppet Warp and you get this mesh and you can place pins on
the mesh and manipulate those pins accordingly.
I have a tutorial on just how to use this tool, so if you’re not familiar with it,
you can watch it, there’ll be a link to it right below this video.
And there’s also another method, you can use under Filter + Distort + Displace and
this uses the luminous values of an image.
We’re not going to go into that but, again, I do have a tutorial on that that goes deep
into this tool.
There’s also a link to it right below this video.
But I just wanted to show you all those different options that you have so that you can work
with the image and they’re all non-destructive, as you can see.
So once you have your design placed and matched to the contours of the body, now it’s time
to work on actually blending the design into the body so that it looks like it belongs
there.
So, we’re going to keep working them.
The first thing that I’m going to do is zoom in and, in my opinion, these edges are
too sharp.
If you look at images of tattoos, the edges of the tattoos are never really that sharp.
So what I’m going to do is, I’m going to apply a slight Blur.
I’m going to go into Filter+ Blur + Gaussian Blur, and just give it a very slight blur,
maybe half a pixel, so 0.5, and press OK.
Now it’s time to actually get some of that skin texture on to this design and there’s
a lot of ways of doing it.
One way that you may not be familiar with is by taking the original image.
In this case, the Background, and pressing Ctrl J/Command J on the Mac.
That duplicates the Background layer and you can put it above the design.
Then you can go into Image + Adjustments + Desaturate and that makes a black and white
version of the image.
And then you can go into Filter + Other + High Pass, 8 pixels is fine for this image.
In your image, you just want to make sure you get the detail of the skin.
So in this case, you see a lot of detail here and that’s what I want.
So I’m going to press OK.
Then, I can press Ctrl Alt G/Command Option G on the Mac to make this into a clipping
mesh.
Notice it’s down pointing arrow, this is telling Photoshop that whatever on this layer
is only going to affect the layer directly below it, that’s the design layer.
And you can see that we now have the texture on the design but we lost the colour.
So we want to bring the colour back and we’re going to use a blending mode for that.
I’m going to click on the dropdown menu and select Linear Light.
So that brings back the colour and you can see this skin texture on the design.
At this point, you can bring down the opacity, if you need to.
In this case, I think maybe 90% will work and I want to bring in more of those highlights,
those bright highlights on the skin.
To do so, I’m going to double click on the design layer to the side of it, to bring up
the layer style window.
In the Blending Options tab we have the Blend If sliders.
This allows us to blend pixels using luminosity.
We’re going to work with the Underlying Layer.
This will look at the layer below the layer that we’re currently on and it’s going
to allow us to hide or show pixels based under luminosity.
So we want to bring in some of the brighter pixels in this case, so I’m going to click
on the brighter pixels slider, on the white slider and drag that to the left.
Essentially, what this is saying is any pixel that is white up to this level of gray will
shine through and hide the pixels of the layer that were on.
So we keep going further, you’ll see that it’ll hide more pixels.
So in this case, we just want that highlight to show through.
Now the transitions are very harsh.
We can hold Alt/Option on the Mac and click on that point to split it in half and I’m
going to drag the first point to the right and the point on the left, I’m going to
click drag it to the left.
So this creates a much smoother transition and makes things look more realistic.
So essentially, what this is saying is that anything that is a value of 255, which is
white, up to a value of 167, which is this bright gray here, will have a transition from
invisible to visible.
Then I’m going to press OK and I’m going to double tap on the hand tool to fit the
image to screen and that’s what our tattoo’s looking like so far.
I’m going to click on this arrow to collapse the smart filters just so we can have a little
more room to work with.
I’m going to click on the Background copy and now, I’m going to show you how you can
adjust that tattoo design in case it doesn’t really match your image.
There’s really two things that I would recommend doing, I’m going to create a Hue and Saturation
adjustment layer.
I’m going to click on this icon here to clip it to the layer mask, so you don’t
have to use a shortcut in this case and you can adjust the saturation.
Maybe the colour that you show is too saturated, so you can bring that down or you can bump
it up, it really depends on the colour that you’re going for.
In this case, I may actually need a little more saturation because I want it to be a
little more green.
You could also create a Levels adjustment layer.
Again, clip it to the layer below it and use the black point slider to adjust luminosity
of that tattoo.
Again, these adjustments really depend on what image you’re using and what the skin
or background looks like.
But at this point we have a very convincing tattoo.
And this effects are all, of course, a non-destructive.
So you can adjust any of the effects that we applied and including the distortion.
So you can disable the Liquify, the Puppet Warp, and the Gaussian Blur.
The great thing about using this technique is that we use this Background copy which
is technically the skin texture, so I’ll rename it Skin texture.
And you can select the design and you can move that anywhere and you’ll still get
that skin texture.
And that’s it for this tutorial.
Let me know what you think about it in the comments below.
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Thank you so much for watching and I’ll talk to you again soon.