Change Someone Into A Zombie! [PhotoShop Design Tips]

 

Everyone talks about how powerful PhotoShop is.

So, lets break down how to make a really creepy zombie from any old image!

We will be using advanced layer techniques which are taught on our Adobe Photoshop courses, to make sure that the original image will be intact.

Set Up The Portrait

First things first, get a portrait of the person – either online or from your library.

Start by just adding gradient overlay to make the picture darker at the bottom and lighter by the top of their head.

The colours I used were a dark green and a dark grey, to match with the zombie theme.

You can experiment with different tones depending on your original picture.

 

Now your image will look like this.

The next step is the eyes now for this you are going want to use the smudge tool.

Smudge over the pupils of the eyes so that it is all white, you can also use the patch tool to get the same result.

Now your image will look like this – creepy!

Adding Textures And Features

Now you have done the eyes we can start to add some textures to our person’s skin.

Just type “rotting flesh texture” into google images and go from there.

To add these textures to your person you need to add it to a new layer.

After that, position it where you want it and then add a blend option.

The best ones to use are overlay, or soft light depending on how dark or light your photo is.

Have a play with those options to get the best look for you.

In some cases, you might need to and a colour overlay so that it looks like their skin.

Once you have done that grab the rubber tool and get rid of the parts you don’t want.

Adding textures like this applies everywhere in Photoshop, you can even blend human and animal faces, and make some really impressive visuals.

Now that her neck has some zombie skin we can add some features to it like blood or cuts.

Again just google for some images containing cuts or exposed flesh.

To add it to the image you pretty much do it in the same way we added the skin.

First off, you want to cut the feature out of the original image so it’s just the cut.

In the image you then want to add it to a new layer on our image and apply a blend option to it.

I used soft light for this one because that part is a bit light then everywhere else.

Once you have done that and positioned it you can use the rubber tool with a 50% opacity to smooth the edges.

Once you are happy with that part, we can move onto the doing the face in Photoshop!

Adding A Color Overlay To The Layer

For my face, I am going to change her mouth to a more zombie looking one.

To do this, I have acquired a zombie mouth from Google images and then added it to a new layer.

The picture of the mouth was fairly light and had bright colours in it.

Because of that, I had to give it a colour overlay to darken it down a bit first.

Then I change the blend mode for the overlay to darken.

Again, use the rubber tool to get rid of bits you don’t need!

Looking much better!

You can also add color overlays to make part of the image black and white, which will draw attention to the person and away from the background.

For now, let’s just add one more texture so that her face looks more like a zombie.

For this, I used the same image as the neck area.

I then added it to a new layer the added a blend option of an overlay to it.

But, when I did that you could still see where the mouth picture ended and the texture skin started.

So I grabbed the rubber tool and lowered the opacity down to about 40%.

I started rubbing the edge of the mouth picture away to create a clear border.

Then I just added a few more cuts and blood, and viola!

So now you know how to make those amazing visuals people create in PhotoShop!

Combining techniques like this with cut text, can make a poster for a movie that will stand out.