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Writing on the Wall: Photo to Aged Graffiti

by Al Ward
Action Fx Photoshop Resources
http://actionfx.com

I’m often asked how I come up with ideas for the tutorials I write online or find material
for the books. I’m sure Colin, Matt, Pete, Scott Kelby and the rest of the authors in this
vein receive the same questions on a regular basis. Frankly it does get difficult to
generate something new on a regular basis, but it is also a joy to do so.

Why? Because it requires time spent in Photoshop experimenting. Sometimes we are

able to come up with something from scratch on the fly; at other times taking ideas
from other techniques can spawn something new and (hopefully) interesting. More
importantly, we all try to offer something to our readers that is not only ‘cool’ but
useful.

This tutorial was spawned from such an experiment. This takes the idea set forth in one
of my recent tutorials on generating a comic-style image from a photo, but then takes a
decidedly different turn. This week I’m going to show one way (I’m certain there are
others) to turn your photo into a street artist’s doodle. We are even going to apply
some age to make it appear to have been around for awhile.

To begin, I’m using an image from Photospin.com as the subject for my art.

The first thing I am going to do to this shot is remove the white background. This can
be done a lot of ways (extract and so forth): in this instance I’m going to use the
Background Eraser tool and wipe away the white. My settings for this tool are seen in
the following two captures: since the Options bar is so long and may not be easily
displayed in this space, I’ve chopped it in half.
Since the background and her clothes are white, I can effectively wipe away all but the
face, which is what I’m most concerned with. Using the other eraser tools I can take
away the remains of her clothing and body, leaving just the head and neck

To tell the truth I’m really not interested in her neck either, so I’ll just select it with the
Polygonal Lasso tool and delete that portion, leaving only the face.

There… that should do for now. Occasionally when converting images to art of some
type, certain features that you may wish were enhanced are sacrificed for the effect.
I’m concerned the eyes in this instance may not be as prominent as I’d like when this is
complete, so I’m going to increase the size with Liquify>Bloat tool to see if it helps in
the end.
Sweet… I think that will do. Ok, not we can run it through the process of converting this
to a really bad artist rendering. Yes, there is hope for those of us who draw poorly to
make a splash in the artistic world… so long as you have Photoshop. Ok, let’s run the
Artistic>Cutout filter. Here are my settings:
At this point you can retain the color if you so choose, but for this technique I’m going
to wipe it away. I’m looking for a stark Black/White, and Image>Adjustments>Threshold
will do nicely.

The last thing I’m going to do with this photo is select the Black. Select>Color Range
will work for this. Then simply copy the selecting.

Time to change gears: we need somewhere to put the paint. Again, I’ve selected an
image of a wall that has already seen some artist’s attention for my canvas:
Now I’ll paste the copied area from the first photo into the new image. It was a bit
large, so I’ve downscaled it with the Transform tools so the new face will fit on the
bricks above the other painting.

Using either Transform>Distort or Transform>Perspective, I can make the face appear

to match the perspective of the wall.

So how do we blend this stark black paint to the bricks? You guessed it: Blending mode
change. Set the Blending mode for this layer to Soft Light.
That does a pretty fair job of staining the bricks with the face, but we can do better
than that. With Blend If we can wipe the paint away from some of the bricks and the
cracks, giving the appearance that the painting has suffered some weathering. This is
one of those added touches that can really make an effect, and it is fairly simple to do.

Open the Layer Styles for the face layer and go to Blending Options. We are concerned
with the Blend If portion at the bottom center area of the dialog box. As we know that
the bricks beneath have varying degrees of red, we can selectively wipe away some of
the paint by selecting Blend If: Red in the drop down menu and then moving the Right
slider beneath the Underlying Layer bar to the left. Take a look at my settings below.
As you move the slider watch the image and see the paint erode… too cool.
You’ll note that the paint is still in the cracks covering the mortar also. Again,
manipulating Blend If can wipe this paint away so that the paint remains only on the
surface of the bricks. By selecting Blend If: Gray and moving the left slider beneath
Underlying Layer to the center, the paint in the cracks will also disappear.

There you go. I hope you enjoyed this little exercise. As always, come visit me at Action
Fx for some cool downloads (http://actionfx.com), or stop by the forum at the
Photoshop Café (http://www.photoshopcafe.com) and say hello. See you next time!

Click here for more tutorials by Al

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