These are the pro techniques you need
to know to apply a realistic tattoo to any photo in Photoshop.
My name is Jesus Ramírez.
Let's get started.
With your image open, bring in your artwork.
You can do so by going into File and choosing Place Embedded.
From here, select your artwork and click on Place.
This will place your artwork into Photoshop as a Smart Object.
This is a good thing and this is what you want.
If you already have your document inside
of Photoshop but it's not a Smart Object yet, what you need to do is right-click
on the layer and select Convert to Smart Object.
This icon in the bottom right of the layer thumbnail
indicates that this layer is a Smart Object.
To make things easier to see, we're going to get rid of the white background.
It's very easy to do in Photoshop.
If you have artwork
on top of a white paper or white background,
this is going to work great.
In Photoshop, you can make white pixels disappear by simply going
into the Blending Mode drop down and selecting Multiply.
This will get rid of the white pixels
and we only have the darker pixels remaining, which is exactly what we want.
This looks great.
The next step is to transform this layer
and place it where we want it over the arm.
To do so, press Ctrl T on Windows,
Command T to transform.
Move this over.
Rotate by clicking just outside of the corner handles
and just place it into position.
Now, even though this is looking great, there are still a lot of small details we
need to adjust in order to make this a realistic tattoo.
First, we'll distort the tattoo over the arm.
Then we'll apply the skin's highlights, shadows, and textures.
If you zoom in, you'll notice that the tattoo has black lines.
I know there are different styles of tattoos,
different inks, pigments, all that stuff.
But generally speaking, tattoos will have a green tint.
Let's add that to the black areas.
Now, this is where we're going to run into our first problem.
We're creating this effect by blending pixels using the Multiply Blending Mode.
Which means that if we apply a Color Overlay, we are going to apply it over
the entire image and this is not going to work.
We need to only apply the green tint to the black areas of the tattoo.
To do so, we're going to use the Selective Color Adjustment layer.
Then click on the Clipping Mask icon.
A Clipping Mask makes it so
that the current layer only affects the layer below.
In other words, the color adjustment
will only affect the tattoo layer and not the background.
This is what the down pointing arrow represents.
From the Properties Panel, we can select what colors to target.
In this case, we want to target the blacks
because that's the color where we want to apply the tint.
We want to add a little bit of green.
To do so, we need to subtract Magenta.
The opposite of magenta is green.
Now, if you don't know the relationship
between these colors, you can always create a Color Balance
Adjustment Layer and these sliders are better labeled.
You can see here that Magenta is the opposite of Green,
the opposite of Red is Cyan, and the opposite of Blue is Yellow.
I'm going to delete this layer because we don't need it, but that is just a visual
representation you can use to see the relationship of these colors.
Now, all we need to do is reduce the Magenta from the blacks,
and notice now how we start introducing that green tint to the image,
And I think this looks pretty good.
I'm going to push the adjustments a little
further than I normally would just so that they're visible in the tutorial.
But keep in mind that on a real project, I will be a little more subtle.
At this point, the green tint is over the black areas of the tattoo,
and you can use the Black slider to darken those areas if you like.
Also, I probably need to reduce the Opacity just a little bit.
I'll select the tattoo layer and I'll reduce its Opacity to about 85 %
because, again, I think that the effect is too strong.
Even though this artwork is hand drawn,
I'm still going to blur it a little bit because the edges wouldn't be so sharp.
You can go into Filter, Blur, and choose Gaussian Blur.
From here, I wouldn't go higher than a pixel.
You can see that at 1.3,
this is looking really blurry, so keep it at about 0.4 or 0.5
just to blur the edges so that they're not so sharp.
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The next step is to distort
the tattoo over the arm to make it look more realistic.
I'll double click on the hand tool to fit the image to screen,
and I'm going to collapse the Smart Filter to make the adjustments easier to see.
Then you can press Ctrl T on Windows Command T on the Mac to transform.
Photoshop will then tell you
that the blurring effect will not be visible as you transform and that's okay.
Then you can right-click and select Warp.
From here you can drag on these handles to work the tattoo over the arm.
You don't have to be precise,
you can just apply a general warp that fits the contours of the arm.
Then you can click on the check mark to commit the changes.
The next step is to apply distortions that are a bit more detailed.
I will spend more time in this next step.
First, go into Filter, Liquify.
With the Liquify filter, you can push and pull pixels.
Now, before you do any of that,
make sure that you have your Backdrop enabled and select your Background layer.
Then change the mode to behind and set
an opacity where you can see both the tattoo and the arm.
Then with the Forward Warp Tool enabled, the tool on the top left here,
you can push the tattoo in to make it seem like it's wrapping around the arm.
By the way, brush size is really important with this tool.
You can use the left and right Bracket
keys to decrease and increase the brush size.
The Bracket keys are to the right of the letter P in North American keyboards.
Start with a larger brush,
then push pixels around the arm just to get the general shape.
And in areas like the armpit, you can decrease the brush size
and push the tattoo in to make it seem like it's going into the creases.
If you make a mistake, you can enable the Reconstruct tool which
allows you to restore the distortions you made by painting over the area.
Another tool that I highly recommend in the Liquify filter for projects like
these is the Bloat tool, which is this tool right here, Bloat.
What that allows you to do is create the illusion that pixels are bloating out.
They're pushing out.
Again, tap on the right Bracket key to increase the brush size.
I'm just going to go over his shoulder here and I'm going to click and you can
see how it looks like that tattoo is bulging out.
Then I can decrease the brush size and you'll notice that he has a very
noticeable vein protruding out of his bicep.
You can use the Bloat Tool to make it seem like the tattoo is going over that area.
In some cases, some people might want
to use the Displacement Map for something like this.
Although that could work, I think this is much easier, at least in this case.
When you're done, you can just press on the Ok button and you can see the result.
I think I was a little heavy-handed with the Bloat Tool on the shoulder,
but that's the advantage of using a Smart Object.
You can always make changes.
Open up the Smart filters and double click on the Liquify filter.
From here you can readjust anything you like.
The next step is to apply the shadows
and highlights over the tattoo to blend it better up against the arm.
To do so, you can select the Tattoo layer,
then click on the FX icon and go into the Blending Options.
From here we're going to use the Blend If sliders.
They allow you to show and hide pixels based on the brightness of the layer.
Let me show you what that means.
From here we have the Underlying Layer sliders.
If I click on the black point and drag
to the right, notice that the shadows from the layer below pop up.
And if I drag the white point to the left, the highlights
from the arm pop through the tattoo, and that's exactly what I want.
But you'll notice that by simply dragging
the slider, we get a really harsh edge and that doesn't look very good.
So you can hold Alt on Windows, Option on the Mac
and click to split these points in half,
and create a smooth transition.
What you want to do is place this point
here at the start and create a smooth transition.
You want to do the same thing with the white point.
Hold Alt on Windows, Option on the Mac,
click to split them in half and create that smooth transition.
Spend some time fine-tuning the intensity to get something that looks good.
In this case, I think this looks great and I'll press Ok.
Now, even though this looks great,
there's one more tip I want to show you to make it even more realistic.
I'm going to show you how to apply the skin texture over the tattoo.
To do so, make a selection out of the tattoo.
You can hold Ctrl on Windows or Command on the Mac and click on the layer thumbnail.
Notice the selection, then enable the background
and duplicate it by pressing Ctrl J on Windows, that's Command J on the Mac.
Now you want to jump that layer to the top of the layer stack.
To do so, press Ctrl Shift in the right
Bracket key, or you can just drag it up the layer stack.
But once this layer is on top of the layer stack.
What you want to do is go into Filter, Other, and choose High Pass.
From here, select the value between one and three pixels.
In this case, three pixels works great and you can press Ok.
Now we want to apply this as a texture to the tattoo.
To do so, go into the Blending Mode drop-
down and select either Overlay or Soft Light.
I would select Overlay because it's a stronger effect
and I want to make sure that this texture is only applied to the tattoo.
To do so, press Ctrl Alt G on Windows,
Command Option G on the Mac
to create a Clipping Mask.
You can now see how the skin texture is applied over the tattoo.
The effect is subtle, but I think it works great.