Hi. This is Marty from Blue Lightning TV.
I'm going to show you how to transform a face of someone onto the gnarly bark of century-old trees.
This is an update of a tutorial I did many years ago on an earlier version of Photoshop.
I provided this image of an old, gnarly tree trunk that you can use to follow along.
Its link is in my video's description below or project files.
Open a face of someone that you'd like to use for this project.
I downloaded this one from Shutterstock.
The first step is to separate it from its background by making a selection around the subject.
Since we won't be refining its edges, I'll use the Pencil Tool to draw around my subject's head.
Feel free to use any tool you like.
If you're using the Pencil tool as well, open the Pencil Picker and pick a hard round brush.
Make its size 2 pixels and its Hardness 100%.
Check your foreground and background colors.
If they aren't black and white, respectively, press "D" on your keyboard.
Black should be your foreground color.
Press "Q" to draw a quick mask.
Draw around your subject's head and make sure there aren't any gaps.
Open your Paint Bucket Tool and click anywhere inside the head to fill it in.
If your entire image filled in, it means there's a tiny gap somewhere on your quick mask outline.
Once the face is filled with a quick mask, press "Q" again to revert it back into a selection
and then invert the selection by pressing Ctrl or Cmd + Shift + I.
Click the Layer mask icon to make a layer mask of the selection next to your subject.
We'll place it onto the tree trunk by pressing "v" to open your Move Tool and dragging it
onto the tab of the tree document.
Without releasing your mouse or pen, drag it down and release.
To resize it, open your Transform Tool by pressing Ctrl or Cmd + T.
If you're using a version earlier than CC 2019, got to a corner and when you see a diagonal, double-arrow,
press and hold Alt or Option + Shift as you drag it in or out.
If you're using CC 2019 or later, just press Alt or Option as you drag it.
If you want to angle it, go to a corner and when you see a curved, double-arrow, rotate
it to an angle you like.
To reposition it, go inside the bounding box and drag it.
Continue to finesse its size, position and angle until you're happy with it on the tree trunk.
Then press Enter or Return.
We'll convert the cutout head into a Smart Object, so we can modify it non-destructively.
To do this, click the icon at the upper, right and click "Convert to Smart Object".
Next, we'll create a displacement map that will warp the tree to the contours of the face.
First, click the Adjustment Layer icon and click "Black and White".
Shift-click the face layer to make it active, as well, open the fly-out list and click "Duplicate Layers".
In the "Document" list, click "New" and type in "Displacement".
Immediately, it created a new document named, "Displacement".
Since displacement maps look best when their slightly blurred, make the face layer active
and go to Filter, Blur and Gaussian Blur.
Blur it 2 or 3 pixels.
Go to File and "Save As".
Save it to your Desktop as a Photoshop PSD document and click "Save".
If you see this message, just click OK.
Since we saved the displacement document onto our Desktop, we can close it.
As you can see, our entire image is black and white because adjustment layers affect
all the layers below them in Layers panel.
Since we want it to affect just the face and not the background, we'll need to restrict
or clip the adjustment layer to the face.
To do this, make the Adjustment layer active and press Alt + Ctrl + G on Windows
or Option + Cmd + G on a Mac.
You can also go to Layer and "Create Clipping Mask".
Hide the face and make the tree layer active.
We're going to displace it using the displacement document that we saved of the blurred face.
Convert the tree layer into a Smart Object, so we can displace it non-destructively.
Go to Filter, Distort and Displace.
Make the Horizontal and Vertical Scales 10 each, "Stretch to Fit" and "Wrap Around".
If you're using CC 2019 or later, check "Embed File Data in Smart Object", which embeds the
displacement map inside the Smart Object.
Find and click the "Displacement" file you saved earlier and click "Open".
Immediately, our tree image was displaced up and to the left by 10 pixels
and warped itself where our subject's head was placed based on the tonal values of the head.
We'll crop away the excess pixels on the bottom and the right of our document.
Open your Rectangular Marquee Tool
and drag it over your document, but don't include the bottom and ride side.
Go to Image and Crop.
Deselect it by pressing Ctrl or Cmd + D.
Make the face visible and active and change its Blend Mode to "Multiply".
Click the Adjustment layer icon again and this time, click "Curves".
Clip it to the face, as well.
If the Properties panel is partially hidden, just open it up by dragging it down.
Go to the top, right corner and drag the Curves diagonal line to the left approximately to
here to brighten the lightest tones of the face.
Place your cursor on the diagonal line approximately here and drag it to approximately here
to darken the midtones.
I'll drag the Properties panel back up, so I can see more of the Layers panel.
Let's zoom into the face.
Press Ctrl or Cmd + 1 to see your document at 100%.
You can drag your image inside the window by pressing and holding the "Space" bar as you drag it.
Double-click an empty area of the face layer to open its Layer Style window.
I'll drag it over, so I can see the face.
Click "Drop Shadow".
The Blend Mode is Linear Burn, the color is black and the opacity is 18%.
Uncheck "Global Light" and make the Angle: 45 degrees.
The Distance is 85 pixels, the Spread is 0 and the Size is 43 degrees.
Click "Inner Shadow".
The Blend Mode is Soft Light, the Color is black and the opacity is 56%.
Global Light is unchecked and the Angle is minus 140 degrees.
The Distance is 29 pixels, the Choke is 0 and the Size is 87 pixels.
Click "Bevel & Emboss".
The Style is "Inner Bevel", the Technique is "Smooth" and the Depth is 240%.
The Direction is Up, the Size is 57 pixels and Soften it 16 pixels.
Global Light is unchecked.
The Angle is 48 degrees and the Altitude is 32 degrees.
The Gloss Contour is "Linear".
The Highlight Mode is Soft Light with an opacity of 60%.
The Shadow Mode is Linear Burn and its opacity is 6%.
This is Marty from Blue Lightning TV.
Thanks for watching!