You’re a mythical knight who wanders into a creepy looking garden. You’re lost and weary. Suddenly, Medusa emerges. She gazes upon you, instantly turning you into stone. This is how your fate was sealed…
Final Result:
Step 1:
Let’s start of by opening this image.
Image ID: 2658038 © Ljupco Smokovski 123RF.com
Step 2:
We’re only going to need the head, so make a selection around it and duplicate it (Ctrl +J). Remove any bits of the finger obstructing the head by Clone Stamping it with a soft stamp tool (0%~25%).
Step 3:
Remove the iris by stamping it away.
Step 4:
Now carefully mask the head off its white background and desaturate it.
Step 5:
Here’s where the head breaks off from the torso. We’ll need some texture for this one. Create a new layer and roughly draw out the shape of a rock.
Step 6:
Drag this image into your workspace.
Image ID: 3284864 © Tom Grundy 123RF.com
Step 7:
Invert it (Ctrl + I) and adjust the levels a little.
Step 8:
Desaturate it, then rotate and transform as you see fit.
Step 9:
Clip it to the rock layer shape you drew, or simply mask the shape out.
Step 10:
Darken the area slightly by dragging Curves. Merge the rocks with the head (Ctrl+E).
Step 11:
Next up, ready the texture and place it above the head layer. Set its blend mode to ‘Multiply’.
Image ID: 4992473 © natulrich 123RF.com
Step 12:
Clip it to the head layer, or mask it out.
Step 13:
Create a new layer with an ‘Overlay’ blend mode and tick the check box as below.
Step 14:
Just as with the dodge and burn functions, use a white brush to increase highlights on certain areas of the face, and a black brush to increase the shadows. I would suggest using a soft brush (0%~50%) to draw those lines with more relaxed strokes (a tablet really helps here). The image below shows the highlight/shadow layer in normal mode. Merge or group the head layer (the latter being preferable as it allows further changes to the head). We’re done with the head for now.
Step 15:
Import this picture.
Image ID: 5290849 © Alina Pavlova 123RF.com
Step 16:
Mask the background, head and neck away.
Step 17:
Select the area above the knee with a feathered selection of 50 and desaturate it.
Step 18:
Desaturate the hand further. To avoid affecting the grass, select and make changes only to the Reds in the hue/saturation window.
Step 19:
Create the rock texture and shadows/highlights on the neck with similar steps as used in the head layer. Again, group or merge those layers together.
Step 20:
Prepare a background.
Image ID: 846523 © Nancy Tripp 123RF.com
Step 21:
Import the body layer first. Open the Hue/Saturation window for this layer and tweak the color of the grass, then erase more of the bits at the bottom.
Step 22:
Now import the head, transform and place it in front of the body layer, just touching the edges of our new workspace.
Step 23:
Sharpen the head slightly by using Filter > Sharpen > Unsharp Mask (merge the head layers first if you’ve yet to do so).
Step 24:
Next, we’re going to add some moss to our stone figures. Reset your palette (D). Create a new layer and go to Filter > Clouds > Render Clouds.
Step 25:
Then, go to Filter > Clouds > Difference Clouds.
Step 26:
Alter its levels (Ctrl+L), leaving only patches of white.
Step 27:
Add some noise to the clouds. Go to Filter > Noise > Add Noise and add around 10% of noise.
Step 28:
Extend the length of the noise by applying the Wind Filter. Go to Filter > Stylize > Wind. Select ‘Stagger’, and ‘From the Left’ (doesn’t really matter).
Step 29:
Mask or clip it to the head layer.
Step 30:
Rotate the noise so that it runs vertically. Also, transform the noise to make it a little bigger.
Step 31:
Apply the 2 adjustments as below to boost color and brightness.
Step 32:
Change its Blend Mode to ‘Overlay’. Alt+click on the blending slider points to separate them and drag them to the settings displayed below.
Step 33:
Repeat these steps for the moss on the body layer.
Step 34:
Once done, add more noise to the moss on the body to make it look more crisp.
Step 35:
We’re going to have to add some grass to strengthen the impression that the head is resting on the ground. Let’s extract the grass from this image.
Image ID: 200532 © Sergey Anatolievich Pristyazhnyuk 123RF.com
Step 36:
Copy out just a small section.
Step 37:
Focus your attention on the Channels window now. To view it, go to Windows > Channel. Duplicate the green channel and adjust its Levels to achieve the best contrast ratio.
Step 38:
Use a black and a white brush to mask/reveal the areas we’re going to use.
Step 39:
Ctrl+click on a thumbnail of the Green channel to obtain a selection. Mask off the excessive areas of grass with this selection.
Step 40:
Change the Brightness and the Hue/Saturation of the grass to match that of the background.
Step 41:
Transform and lengthen the grass.
Step 42:
At this point, I don’t really like the oversaturated color on both sets of grass.
Step 43:
Let’s fix this with some adjustments.
Step 44:
Cob webs are a useful addition to the scene. Desaturate this image and place it over the body.
Image ID: 4865168 © lindasj2 123RF.com
Step 45:
Set the blend mode as ‘Screen’ and opacity at 60%.
Step 46:
Mask or erase the areas where the effects look overdone.
Step 47:
Add a little fog to the image by rendering clouds, changing its levels, applying Gaussian Blur, and lastly setting its blend mode to ‘Screen’.
Step 48:
Add a butterfly along with its shadow to the forehead of the stone figure.
Image ID: 2320416 © Cathy Keifer 123RF.com
Step 49:
We’re almost done. All we need now is to enhance the overall look and feel.
Step 50:
Select the background layer and tweak its contrast.
Step 51:
We might need to adjust the brightness on certain parts of the background. Add a Curves adjustment layer above the background image. Brighten the areas we want, as shown below.
Step 52:
We will now have this.
Step 53:
Next, we’re adding in light strobes that look like flickering fireflies. Create a new layer and bring it to the top (Ctrl+Shift+]). Then go to Blending Options and add in these settings.
Step 54:
Using a white brush, draw light strobes in whichever manner you like: large or small, scattered or gathered.
Step 55:
We’re done! I further increased the contrast and also changed the butterfly’s color for my final result.
Step 56:
I also attempted a more vivid version of this image. It didn’t turn out too bad as well 🙂
Hope you found this tutorial to be fun and interesting. And next time, try not to trespass into Medusa’s private property!