If last week’s Deke’s Techniques episodes on various ways to carve a pumpkin in Adobe Photoshop weren’t enough spooky spirit for you, then you’ll be pleased to discover that this week’s episode shows you how to create a headless stranger who haunts this eerie forest:
Deke begins with this unsuspecting gentleman whose head is still decidedly intact:
Using the Calculations command (twice), he isolates his hapless subject in an alpha channel. Then, some devious hand painting and a cruel inversion of the channel result in this mask:
Deke then lops of his model’s head with a clever selection applied to the mask, and methodically reconstructs the stump by cloning the victim’s collar and scarf on a new layer:
Next, he places his now headless stranger into the misty woods, tormenting his subject further by stretching him vertically with the Transform command:
Deke then drains his victim of all color with an adjustment layer and dissolves away the legs with a gradient mask:
In his final act of imaginary Photoshop treachery, Deke uses the Save for Web command with the quality set to Low to degrade the picture (since you wouldn’t have a tack-sharp shot if your hand was trembling as you were ran running from a headless man stalking you in the woods!).
Don’t worry. The good-natured, benevolent Photoshop master Deke will be back with a less spooky technique next week. Happy Halloween!
Interested in more?
• The entire Deke’s Techniques weekly series on lynda.com
• Courses by Deke McClelland on lynda.com
• All Photoshop courses on lynda.com
Suggested courses to watch next:
• Photoshop CS6 One-on-One: Fundamentals
• Photoshop CS6 One-on-One: Intermediate
• Photoshop CS6 One-on-One: Advanced
Tags: Adobe Photoshop
