Blog Post 3 - Stage 1 - Adobe Photoshop - Layers, Masks & Effects

Moving on from the last blog post, I thought that I would continue with the Photoshop tools theme for a few more posts prior to moving back to the assignment topic that I have chosen. In this case, I will introduce and describe the use of layers and masks in Photoshop, and how they can be used to create some excellent effects and changes to an otherwise boring image. 

The transformation of Jack Nickolson

In the above collage of images you will see seven different stages of work that slowly progress to the final image of a zombie-esque Jack Nickolson behind a broken window, and below are the different stages listed out with relevant explanations.

1. Texture

One of the first stages behind this small insight into layers and masks was to get hold of an image that would be suitable for a texture to ensure that a "realistic" zombie-esque Jack was able to be made. With this in mind, the texture had to be of a resolution that was large enough to cover the base image of Jack.

2. Jack Nickolson

The other primary stage for this small project was the base image of Jack. There were not any real specification points that were needed for this, just that the image was of a high enough resolution to successfully edited with in Photoshop.

3. Layer Mask

This next stage was to create the layer mask. By doing this, the layer mask allows us to select only the area of the image that I wished to "add" our effect to. In this case, I only wanted to add the zombie-esque style to the skin, which means excluding the eyes, hair and clothes. To do this, once the layer mask was created then by utilising the quick selection tool I could select the majority of the skin that I wanted to select. As was expected, a few areas went over where I wanted them and therefore I had to use the deselect tool, zoom into the image and decrease the selection tool size. Once this was completed, I used the  paint brush tool with the colour black selected so that I could "paint" out the remaining areas of the imagine that I did not wish to include - this mainly consisted of the eyes.

4. Texture Overlaid

In this stage, I returned to the other file for the texture and as this was locked to background, firstly I set this to a new layer with the name "texture". Now that this new layer was then able to be edited due to being unlocked, this meant that I could now duplicate this layer in another file - this would be the Jack Nicolson file. Once this was duplicated into the Jack file, for this stage and picture to show this I lowered the opacity to 50% so that you can see they have been overlaid.

5. Opacity and Effect added

The final outcome of a zombie-esque Jack Nickolson

One of the final stages for this project was to set the opacity of the previously duplicated texture layer so that not only was it correctly visible, but that of a realistic effect. In this scenario I decided to set the opacity to a level of 60%. To further improve the effect, I decide to employ an effect called "Linear Burn" which gave an effective darkened improvement to the imagine which I personally felt was much better than that of before. Reflecting back on this now, I might say that I had some inspiration from the 2005 film "Fantastic Four" based on the Marvel Comic series, of the character "Thing" with a similarly textured skin.

6. Window Layer and Mask

I decided to go over and above the initial task set to create a zombie-esque impression of Jack Nickolson, and thought to try to place this zombie behind a broken window in true scray-movieesque style. In this case, once again a suitable image was sourced and duplicated into the Jack Nickolson file, and then the use of a new layer mask was created so that only the areas of the broken glass were able to be utilising so that Jack was visible. The use of the lasso selection tools and also quick selection tools were put into action to ensure that a realistic end effect was created.