From the course: Deke's Techniques (2018-2021)

791 The White Walker begins

From the course: Deke's Techniques (2018-2021)

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791 The White Walker begins

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just so you have a chance to see it inside the context of Photoshop, I'm going to switch over to the starter image here, which comes to us from the Dreamstime Image Library, about which you can learn more and get some great deals at Dreamstime.com/deke.php. Alright, I'm going to press the backspace key, delete key on a Mac, to get rid of that URL. and so I'm going to convert the background to an independent layer by double clicking on it, and I'll just go ahead and name this layer after it's ID number inside the Dreamstime library, and I'll click OK. Alright, now, I want to convert this guy to an indestructible smart object, and so armed with the rectangular marquee tool, up here near the top of the tool box, I'll right click anywhere inside the image window and choose convert to smart object. Now, this image is awfully high key, which makes the kid look pretty harmless, and so I'm going to increase the contrast dramatically by going up to the filter menu and choosing camera raw filter. Now notice, you can see here that this is a black and white image, which is why the profile is set to monochrome, which means that we don't have any white balance control, because there is no color, once again, and vibrance and saturation are also dim. So I'm going to start things off by cranking up the contrast value, and I'm going to take it up to plus 50, like so, and then I'll take the highlights value down to negative 30, and I'll take the shadows value down to negative 30 as well. And these are just values I came up with through trial and error, but you can see that the image has a little more heft. Now I'll increase the contrast around the edges by cranking up the clarity value to it's absolute maximum of plus 100, and you can see that that gives us some gritty detail. And then I'll sink the shadows using the dehaze value right here. I'm going to go ahead and take it up to plus 50. This image doesn't really have any haze of course, but dehaze has other purposes as we're seeing right here. It really deepens the shadow detail, and it does so in a different way than the shadows value. Alright, now, I want to make sure that my white background is absolutely white, that'll make him easier to mask later on down the line, and so just so I can see what I'm doing, I'll press and hold the alt key, or the option key on a Mac, and I'll crank up the whites value, and you can see at about 36, I lose the background. It turns absolutely white, but I want to make it super white, so I'll go ahead and take it up to plus 50, and that way as I say, it'll be really easy to mask. And then, I'll go ahead and press the alt key, or the option key on a Mac, and drag this black slider triangle to the left, which may surprise you, because I'm already clipping a ton of blacks here. But I want to clip even more, I want this image to look highly graphical indeed, so I'm going to take it down to negative 30. So notice if I release the alt key, or the option key on a Mac, I see the actual image, if I press and hold the key, then I see where the blacks are clipping. Alright, that's all I'm going to do inside this filter, and so I'll just go ahead and click OK to apply my changes, and as you can see, we now have a camera raw smart filter listed here inside the layers panel. Now we're going to end up with an awful lot of layers inside this image, I do not need this filter mask, it's just cluttering things up, so I'll right click on it, and choose delete filter mask to get rid of it. Alright, now, I want to liquefy this guy, and the reason is, ultimately he's got two much chin. And I want to make him a little bit more gaunt looking, and also if you take a look at pictures of the Night King, who's the leader of the White Walkers, he's got a much different looking nose. And so what I want to do is change the shape of this kid's face, by going to the filter menu and choosing liquefy, but do not do that. I hope you didn't follow along with that instruction just now, because what's going to happen is this. Basically you're going to get an error message that tells you that the liquefy filter works much better in the RGB mode than it does in the grayscale mode. then you can get in there and modify various facial details, for example, I want to tilt the eye, and so I'm going to look out for that little message right there, and then I'm going to drag this eye downward, and I'll go over to this guy and drag it downward as well. And notice that the eyes options automatically pop open, and you can see these tilt values. And I came up with a left eye tilt value of negative 50, and a right eye tilt value of negative 20, so you can modify the two eyes independently of each other. Now, I want to take his nose and make it as wide as possible. So I'll go ahead and drag this guy until I see a nose width value of 100, which is as big as it gets. And then I want to take his nose downward. So I'm going to drag it down like so, and that gives me a minimum nose height value of negative 100. Alright, now I want to take away any hint of a smile at this point, so notice that I've got a little rotate cursor next to the mouth, and I can drag it all the way down, at which point I will see a smile value of negative 100, and I'm going to go ahead and scroll farther down, so that we can see these face shape options in just a moment, and I'm going to move down here to the jawline control, and I'll drag it inward, and notice I can make him more gaunt looking, I don't want to take him quite that far, in fact, I'm looking for a jawline value right there of negative 40. And notice if I hover my cursor here, I can see face width, and so I'll just go ahead and make his face a little narrower, and in the end I came up with a face width value of negative 20, for those of you who want to get the same effect. Now that just gets us part the way there, notice that this guy still has his massive chin, good for him, but it's not going to work for our White Walker, so I'll go ahead and grab that forward warp tool, which I just call the warp tool, because there's no such thing as the backward warp tool. And I'll go ahead and twirl close all these face aware liquefy options, and I want to increase the size of my cursor quite dramatically, I'm going to take it up to 1000, like so, actually I'm going to take it up to 1500 and I'm doing that by pressing the right bracket key, and then I'll just go ahead and drag this guy's features down. And then, I'll go ahead and switch over here to the bloat tool, and I'll make it a little bigger as well by pressing the right bracket key, and then I'll just click a little bit in order to bloat that nose, and I might increase the size of the bridge of the nose as well. Anyway, I spent a fair amount of time on this, as you might imagine, so I went ahead and saved my mesh settings, and you can load them up by twirling open the load mesh options right here, clicking on the load mesh button, and then locating this file Snow zombie.msh, and clicking on the open button, which will go ahead and repeat the exact settings that I applied. And as you might see here, I worked on the nostrils as well, I lifted them up, and again, I was going after a kind of Night King look. Alright, now, I'll go ahead and click OK in order to apply those modifications, and a great thing about applying liquefy as a smart filter is you can go back and adjust your changes any time you like and adjust your changes any time you like by double clicking on the word liquefy by double clicking on the word liquefy here inside the layers panel. here inside the layers panel. Alright, now I want to turn this guy blue, Alright, now I want to turn this guy blue, and I'm going to do that by clicking on the little FX icon and I'm going to do that by clicking on the little FX icon down here at the bottom of the layers panel, down here at the bottom of the layers panel, and choosing color overlay. and choosing color overlay. And as you can see, Photoshop is already showing me And as you can see, Photoshop is already showing me my previous settings, but let me show you my previous settings, but let me show you what those look like, I'll go ahead and click what those look like, I'll go ahead and click on the little color swatch, I came up on the little color swatch, I came up with a hue value of 205 degrees, with a hue value of 205 degrees, which is just a little bit on the green side of blue, which is just a little bit on the green side of blue, we've got a saturation of 30%, so it's a pale blue, we've got a saturation of 30%, so it's a pale blue, and the brightness is cranked up to 100%. and the brightness is cranked up to 100%. Alright, I'll go ahead and click OK, Alright, I'll go ahead and click OK, I changed the blend mode next to color, I changed the blend mode next to color, so that we're colorizing the image, so that we're colorizing the image, and I went ahead and cranked the opacity value and I went ahead and cranked the opacity value up to 100%, after which I'll go ahead and click OK up to 100%, after which I'll go ahead and click OK in order to apply that change. in order to apply that change. Alright, now just so you can see Alright, now just so you can see what we've been able to accomplish here, what we've been able to accomplish here, I'm going to turn off the smart filters I'm going to turn off the smart filters here inside the layers panel, that's the original guy, here inside the layers panel, that's the original guy, albeit a little bit blue, as you can see right here, albeit a little bit blue, as you can see right here, and this is how he looks after a few modifications and this is how he looks after a few modifications using the camera raw filter and liquefy, using the camera raw filter and liquefy, both applied as editable smart filters both applied as editable smart filters here inside Photoshop. here inside Photoshop.

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