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This tutorial will show you how to take an ordinary photo of someone, and make it look like they have been beat up, or in a car accident or something.
I would like to preface this tutorial, before anyone snaps at me for making it look like this beautiful model has been beat up. I do not and have never condoned violence on anyone, and am strictly doing this for tutorial’s sake. It is not meant to reflect any of my personal views, as they clearly do not apply. I am female, and am simply demonstrating this technique on a female’s face, and read no further into this.
Getting Started
Believe it or not, this is extremely easy to do, you’re only really going to use one tool on her face, and that’s the Burn tool. When you select the burn tool, change the brush to a Charcoal brush, and the Exposure to somewhere between 10% and 18%, and the Range will be Midtones. We don’t want to apply the effect all in one step, so it’s important that it doesn’t leave dark marks on her face until we build up to what we want it to look like.
Think About Placement
Think about the high areas on your face, like the forehead, cheekbone, nose and chin. These areas are more likely to be scratched up sooner than say a crevice under the neck. Also, think about what happens when someone has been involved in some kind of violent act: lips end up getting hurt, and blackened eyes.
We’ll start by darkening the eyes and the lip. Feel free during this to resize the burn tool as you go, to get your desired effect, in particular on the lip.
When you’re ready, start using the burn tool over a few areas on the face. The areas you’re going to want to show the most damage you’re going to show first, like the cheek and chin.
Just Keep Going
With your charcoal brush you’re going to have a little more erratic looking bruising/scraping, which is what you want. It’s not very often that you get scraped in a perfect circle. You can of course use different brushes, but this one really works well for this.
Now that you’ve chosen a few areas to start damaging on the face, you just keep going. Start off with a smaller brush, then go over it with a slightly larger one, and maybe one larger after that. You’re going to develop a kind of transition in the skin tones that will appear more realistic in the end product.
Don’t Overdo It, But Be Thorough
Unless you want her whole face to be scraped off, it’s a little better if you pick and choose areas to apply damage to. Want to add more scrapes and stuff to a different area also? Well, do it. Think about how big those scrapes would be according to the surface they are on. The nose, for instance, will likely have some smaller scrapes on it, where as the cheek may be worn through.
If there are separations in the strands of hair, be sure you continue the trauma beneath the hair as well. Use a smaller brush for this, and be careful to not discolor the hair too much, or it will look like you did actually go in with a brush tool.
Add Finishing Details, and You’re Done!
Your final results:
Topics: Design, Manipulation, Photoshop
