Let me show you how to create
realistic skin texture in Photoshop.
I'll keep everything in small, digestible chunks.
My name is Jesus Ramírez.
Let's get started.
This is the portrait we're going to work with.
The first step is to go into the File
menu and choose New to create a new document.
You want to create a document that's 128 by 128.
This is going to be very important
you'll see why in a moment.
And create a document that is RGB with 8 bits.
The 8-bit part is important.
We're going to use a filter that only works with 8 bits.
Then, under background contents,
select Custom,
and make sure that you set your background color to a 50% gray.
Just make sure you enter the HSV values here to get the 50% gray.
Then click on create and this is going to create this tiny
little square and that's all our skin texture is going to be.
Then, go into the Filter menu and choose Filter Gallery.
From here, go into Texture and choose Texturizer.
Under the Texture dropdown, make sure you select Sandstone. And
the reason that we created a document that's 128 by 128
is because Photoshop uses a 128 document
to generate that texture.
Anything bigger is just going to repeat that pattern,
so no need to create a larger pattern.
We're just going to repeat the output
a little later on and you'll see what I'm talking about.
Make sure you leave the scaling at 100, no need to adjust it.
Then the relief is how intense that texture is going to appear.
I wouldn't go higher than 10 or lower than 5.
I would say that about 7 would work great in this case. And
you have to select where your light is coming from.
If you remember, in the portrait we're
working with, the light is coming from the top left.
It may be different in your image,
so make sure that you select the right light source.
In my case, I'll select Top Left and I'll press Ok.
Now, create a pattern based on your texture.
Go into Edit and choose Define Pattern.
Name your pattern with a descriptive name
like Skin Texture - Top Left Light and commit the changes.
Now you can go back into your working document
and in the new Adjustment Layer icon, you can select Pattern.
Click on this dropdown and the pattern
at the very bottom, the last one will be the one you just created.
You can click on that and you can see that the pattern is applied to your image.
This is why we created that small 128 by 128 document.
I knew that I was going to repeat it,
so the pattern didn't need to be any bigger than the original
file that Photoshop uses to create that pattern, which is 128 by 128.
And from here you can scale the pattern if you want.
I'll leave it set to 100 in this case.
I think it will work great.
At this point, we need to blend the pattern with the layer below.
To do so, we're going to use a Blending Mode.
Click on the Blending Mode dropdown and select either Overlay or Soft Light.
The Blending Modes in the Contrast category,
the ones in-between this line
and this line,
will make 50% gray invisible.
Which is why we made the document 50% gray to begin with.
Choose either Overlay or Soft Light.
Overlay is just the more intense version.
In this case, I think I'll go with the more subtle effect, which is Soft Light.
Now, don't stop the tutorial just yet!
We do have a skin texture over the face,
but it's not really contouring to the face or her body.
It's just a flat image.
What I'm going to do now is
show you a couple of tips to make this effect more realistic.
To start, I'm going to rasterize the layer.
In other words, I'm going to make this so that it's no longer a pattern fill. So
If you need to adjust the scale,
do so now, I don't need to do that, I'm going to rasterize.
I'm going to right-click on the layer and select Rasterize.
Notice that this is now just a regular
pixel layer, so I can edit the pattern by double-clicking on the layer thumbnail.
What I'm going to do now is go into Filter and choose Liquify.
The Liquify filter allows us to push and pull pixels to distort them.
Make sure your Backdrop is enabled.
So click on Show Backdrop.
Use All layers.
Mode: Behind,
and adjust the Opacity so that you
can see both your pattern and the portrait you're working with.
Then go into the Forward Warp Tool, which allows you to push and pull pixels.
And use a large brush.
I'm going to use the left and right
Bracket keys on the keyboard to resize my brush.
The left and right Bracket keys are
to the right of the letter P
in North American keyboards.
Now push and pull the pattern to align it better to the contours of her body.
I'm currently working on her neck.
You don't have to be precise.
As long as you break up the flat pattern
and give it more shape, the skin texture effect will look more realistic.
Also, you might want to use the Bloat Tool.
This tool right here, you can select it and increase the brush size.
What this allows you to do is make it seem
as if the texture is pushing out or bloating out.
When you click on it, notice how it looks like it's pushing out.
I'm going to click on this area to make her cheeks pop a bit.
I'll do the same thing on the other side, reduce the brush size and try that on
the tip of her nose and on the edges here as well.
If you go a bit too far,
like I just did there, you can undo by pressing Ctrl Z and try again.
Then, I'll work on the side of her nose
and also apply the bloat to her lips and her chin.
You can also try using the Pucker Tool,
which is right above that, and it does the opposite.
That pushes pixels in
so I can maybe move the texture inward on her eye socket here
just so that the skin follows the contours of her face a bit better.
If you click on the preview check box, you'll see the before and the after,
and that just looks much, much better in my opinion.
The next step is also very important.
We need to hide the effect from areas that it shouldn't be appearing over.
For example, some of the darker shadows on her nose here.
What I'm going to do to fix that is open
up the Blend If options, which are found in the Blending Options here.
You can click on that FX icon,
click on Blending Options to bring up the Layer Style window.
From here, you will notice the Blend If options.
These sliders allow you to show and hide pixels based on their brightness.
We're going to work with the underlying layer sliders.
This means that the brightness
of the layers below will control the skin texture's visibility.
The black point slider will help us hide the effect in darker areas.
I'm going to drag this over to the right.
Notice how the texture is now not affecting these darker pixels.
Obviously, this is too harsh, so we want a smoother transition.
To do so, hold Alt on Windows, Option on the Mac, and click,
you can split this point in half
and spread it apart to create a smooth transition.
Notice now how the texture effect is no longer affecting the darker areas of her
nostrils, which makes this look a lot more realistic.
You can also do the same thing on the other side.
I'm going to click and drag so that we can see the highlight here on her nose.
The white point controls the highlights, drag it to the left.
Notice how the texture is no longer affecting those brighter highlights.
Then you can hold Alt on Windows, Option on the Mac.
Click, split it in half and create a smooth transition as well.
Then you can press Ok.
The next step is also very important to keep the realism in this skin texture.
You'll notice that the background image,
the portrait here has a lot of depth of field.
Her face is not completely on focus.
Her jaw is a bit blurry, her neck is blurry.
And again, this is because of the depth of field of this photo.
We need to match that on the skin texture for it to look realistic.
You can't have sharp skin texture on these blurry areas.
So we need to selectively blur the texture.
To do so, enable the Blur Tool and bring the strength down to about 50%
and then blur the areas of the image that should be blurry, like her jaw,
her neck, and other areas that are not in focus.
This area here on the bottom left is
really out of focus, so I will paint over it a lot more to hide the skin texture.
You just don't want to have anything
that is really sharp over an area that is blurry. And
spend some time in your image making sure all the areas match.
For this tutorial, I think this is good enough, but I'll
quickly zoom in so that you can see the result.
See that? This looks much, much better.
If you need to continue fine-tuning over an area, you can certainly do so.
The next step is to apply the skin texture only over her skin.
Currently, the texture is applied to the entire image, so we're going to use
the layer mask to selectively target this effect.
At the moment, we have a Layer Mask that is completely white.
With a mask, white reveals, black conceals.
We need to make this Layer Mask black to hide the effect over the image.
To do so, you can click on this Invert button or press Ctrl I on Windows.
That's command I on the Mac,
either method works.
With a black mask,
you'll see that the effect is no longer visible over the image.
What you need to do now is go into
the Brush Tool from the Toolbar, then from the Options bar
under the brush settings, bring the Hardness down to zero.
The Hardness controls how sharp the edge of your brush is.
0% means completely soft and a 100%
means a completely sharp edge.
In this case, you want a soft edge so that you can blend the edges much nicer.
You can also use a keyboard shortcut for that, which is what I prefer to use.
Shift and the right Bracket key to make the brush edge sharper.
Notice the preview here on the Options bar.
It changes as I use my keyboard shortcut.
Shift and the left Bracket key to soften the edges.
And that's what I want, a very soft edge.
Also, if you have a tablet, make sure you enable pressure sensitivity.
You can do so by clicking on this icon.
If you don't, bring down the opacity and the flow to about 40%
so that when you paint, you can build the effect over the image.
You don't want to completely paint at 100% with each brush stroke.
At this point, you can simply paint over
the areas where you want to apply the skin texture.
Again, I'm going quickly here, but in your project,
spend a little more time deciding where to paint the skin texture.
If you make a mistake like I did here, I went over the edge.
You can change the foreground color to black and paint to hide the effect over
the areas where you don't want the effect to show.
Make sure that you stay within the edges.
The next step is to make sure that we have the right opacity for this image.
We've been working with a 100% opacity
layer, which might be too intense in most cases.
In fact, I usually like to bring the opacity down to zero
and just increase it accordingly until I get the result that I want,
usually at about 35%, but never really higher than 50%.
I like to keep my effect subtle.
By the way, make sure you check out
the link in the description where you can download eight skin textures.
They're the eight different light sources in the Texturizer filter.
I created all those for you to download for free.
Check out the link.
Thank you so much for watching.