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Image preview: Zombify Your Photos in Less Than 20 Steps
Zombify Your Photos in Less Than 20 Steps
November 2nd 2008
in

* Designing

by Tom

This tutorial teaches you how to turn an ordinary photo into a terrifying zombie image, all in less
than 20 steps.
Read More... 22 comments
Final Image

This is the final image that we’ll be creating:

zombie19 Zombify Your Photos in Less Than 20 Steps

Step 1

Start by opening up a new document (600X500px). And fill your canvas with black.

zombie1 Zombify Your Photos in Less Than 20 Steps

Step 2

Now paste in a photo of a man looking distraught. Try to fit it into the right half of your image, and
make sure that it is the same height as your canvas.

zombie2 Zombify Your Photos in Less Than 20 Steps

Step 3
Cut out the man from his original background using the lasso tool. Don’t worry if the outline on the
hair isn’t quite perfect.

zombie3 Zombify Your Photos in Less Than 20 Steps

Step 4

Now go to image>adjustments>shadows/highlights and apply the settings shown below:

zombie4 Zombify Your Photos in Less Than 20 Steps

Step 5

Now duplicate your photo layer and set the duplicates opacity to 50%. Then change the layer’s
blending mode to ‘hard light’. This should bring out the details of the image, and make it much
bolder. Then merge this duplicate layer down with your original photo layer.

zombie5 Zombify Your Photos in Less Than 20 Steps

Step 6

Now go to image>adjustments>hue/saturation and apply the settings shown below:

zombie6 Zombify Your Photos in Less Than 20 Steps

Step 7

Now use your lasso tool to cut out the man’s head (just cut directly across his hand). You want to
follow the line of his jaw, and avoid his body completely. With your selection in place copy/paste
this onto a new layer. Then return your you original photo and repeat the same steps with the
man’s hand, taking care to only include the hand in your selection and not his face or body. Then
copy/paste this onto a new top layer. It’s very important that the hand is the top layer out of all
your layers, positioning it above the head cutout layer.

zombie7 Zombify Your Photos in Less Than 20 Steps

Step 8

Now select your original photo layer and apply a layer mask (reveal all). Then select a large black
paintbrush, set to 0% hardness and 20% opacity. Then paint over the side of your man’s body,
blending it subtly into your black background. The reason for using a layer mask for this step is
that if you used an eraser brush it would be destructive to your image, and it would be much
harder to undo what you’d done (whereas you can just remove the layer mask at any time).

zombie8 Zombify Your Photos in Less Than 20 Steps

Step 9

Now repeat the same steps on the ‘head’ and ‘hand layers’. However, because you’re basically
erasing parts of these layers you’ll need to hide your original photo layer so that you can view the
result of this erasing process, otherwise the image will just appear the same as the original photo
will show through underneath your erasing, rather than your black background.

The image below shows the erased head/hand layers. Be careful just to erase the bottom of the
wrist and the finger on the hand that overlaps the background, and not your original photo. This is
because if you erase too much of the hand you’ll get ugly looking lines showing through from the
head layer beneath it.

zombie9 Zombify Your Photos in Less Than 20 Steps

Step 10

Now make your original photo layer visible again. This should hide your erasing that you’ve just
done. However, you want your erasing to be seen, so you’ll need to delete parts of the original
photo that are impacting on these areas. The images below show the area that I selected/erased
using the lasso tool, and then how the image is looking so far.

zombie10a Zombify Your Photos in Less Than 20 Steps

zombie10b Zombify Your Photos in Less Than 20 Steps

Step 11

For these next few steps I’ll be using some cool Halloween brushes. You can find some great
one’s in our Halloween roundup of 40+ of the best Halloween Photoshop Brush Sets. My
personal favorite is this blood brush that I’ll be using.

Now create a new layer above your ‘head’ layer and below your ‘hand layer’, called ’skull brush’.
Download a skull brush set and use it to paint a skull outline over your man’s face. Then change
the layer blend mode to ‘multiply’ and the layer opacity to 60%. Then use your lasso tool to delete
all of the skull apart from the teeth, and a few extra lines to add spooky detail to your man’s face.

zombie11a Zombify Your Photos in Less Than 20 Steps

zombie11b Zombify Your Photos in Less Than 20 Steps

Step 12

Now download a blood splatter brush set, and create a new layer above your ’skull brush’ layer
called ‘blood head’. Apply many brush strokes using a variety of brushes to achieve a random
splattered result. Be sure to use a darkish red, nothing too bright. Then reduce your layer opacity
to 60% and set the layer blend mode to ‘color burn’. The images below show with ‘hand’ layer
hidden, and then visible. The point of isolating the hand, head and body onto different layers is so
that you can realistically apply blood to each part, as clearly there would not be a uniform marking
of blood across hand/head/body, as this would flatten the image.

zombie12a Zombify Your Photos in Less Than 20 Steps

zombie12b Zombify Your Photos in Less Than 20 Steps

Step 13

I decide that my ’skull brush’ layer is looking too intense, so I reduce it’s opacity to around 30%.

Then I duplicate my ‘blood head’ layer. This should make the blood more intense. However, I only
want the blood to be quite this intese in certain areas, so I use a soft eraser brush to brush away
parts of the duplicate that should be fainter. This not only gives a more random bloodied effect,
but should appear as if some parts of the blood is dried (being darker) whereas some is still wet.

zombie13 Zombify Your Photos in Less Than 20 Steps

Step 14

Now select your ‘hand’ layer. Select your magic wand tool, set to 10% tolerance, and then click
somewhere around your hand. Then go to select>inverse to invert your selection so that just your
hand is selected. Then with this selection in place create a new layer above your ‘hand’ layer
called ‘hand blood’. Repeat the exact same steps as you did you apply blood to your head layer,
including the duplicating of the original blood layer and erasing parts of the duplicate. The
selection will mean that no part of your brush strokes will go outside the hand shape.

zombie14a Zombify Your Photos in Less Than 20 Steps

zombie14b Zombify Your Photos in Less Than 20 Steps

Step 15

Now the next step is to - you guessed it! - apply blood to the man’s body. Repeat the exact same
techniques as before. As I mentioned earlier, the great thing about isolating the body/head/hand
is that now in applying blood to the body, you won’t effect the man’s head, so it will look as if the
head is forwards from the body, making the overall effect more realistic.

The images below show the ‘head’ layer as invisible and then visible, after blood has been
applied to the body.

zombie15a Zombify Your Photos in Less Than 20 Steps

zombie15b Zombify Your Photos in Less Than 20 Steps

Step 16

Now paste in a photo of a concrete wall under all of your photo layers and call the layer
‘background’.

zombie16 Zombify Your Photos in Less Than 20 Steps

Step 17

Then reduce your concrete photo layer’s opacity to 20%, and use a large, soft eraser brush (set
to 25%) to erase away all of the photo apart from a small area, that acts as a distant background,
dimly lit behind your man.

zombie17 Zombify Your Photos in Less Than 20 Steps

Step 18

Now create a new layer above your background layer called ‘hand print’. I downloaded a bloody
hand print brush set, and then applied one of the brushes over the concrete wall area. I created 2
hand prints by duplicating the first and going to edit>transform>flip horizontal. On both layers I
reduced the layer opacity to 30% for a more subtle effect. Then I selected my smudge tool (set to
50% strength, 10 size) and smudged down the bottoms of the hand prints, to give the impression
that someone had been dragged down. Finally, I used my eraser brush to erase the edges of the
hands slightly, and the bottoms of the blood trails in order to fit with the lighting on the concrete
wall. As the blood gets further away from the center of the light source, clearly it must get darker.

zombie18 Zombify Your Photos in Less Than 20 Steps

Step 19

Finally to finish off the image I applied a few small details. I used the lasso tool to clean up some
sloppy edges on the right side of my man. Then I darkened the man’s right eye to fit with the
intense shadows on that side of his body. Finally, I selected my ‘blood head’ layers and applied
some drip marks that are meant to look like they are coming from the blood on his fingers.

zombie19 Zombify Your Photos in Less Than 20 Steps

And We’re Done!

I really hope that you enjoyed this tutorial, and would love to hear your thoughts on it.

zombie19 Zombify Your Photos in Less Than 20 Steps

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About the Author: Tom is the founder of PSDFAN. He loves writing tutorials, learning more about
design and interacting with the community. On a more interesting note he can also play guitar
hero drunk with his teeth.
22 Awesome Comments: Leave Your Comment

1. Twopo 2nd November 2008

Great as usual Thanks Tom

2. User GravatarTom 2nd November 2008

Thanks Twopo, I’m glad you enjoyed it!

3. Yuva 3rd November 2008

looks great nice work.. love this effect.

4. User GravatarTom 3rd November 2008

Cheers Yuva!

5. User GravatarDainis Graveris 3rd November 2008

good techniques..and scary result :D thanks :)

6. User GravatarTutorials Room 9th November 2008

Too scary for my visitors lol

7. User Gravatarrizzy 9th November 2008

nice post

8. User GravatarTom 9th November 2008

Thanks guys :)

Tutorials Room: Honestly? Your visitors must scare very easily.

9. ReKierke 10th November 2008

Thanks :)

10. Michael 11th November 2008

nice effect ;;) i’ll bookmark

11. User GravatarChuck 11th November 2008

 Not bad I like the effect but for it to be a zombie I think more decay or flesh missing would
solidify the effect more and not just make him a axe murder

12. Kabeer 11th November 2008

hi….tom
great tutorials friend..i like it

13. User GravatarPhotoshop Tutorials Blog 11th November 2008

Wow, can’t wait to turn myself into a zombie!

14. User GravatarTom 11th November 2008

Thanks for the kind words everyone.

Chuck: Great point, I’ll definitely try a tutorial using that kind of effect in the future.

Photoshop Tutorials Blog: Feel free to post your result here, I’d love to see it :)

15. User GravatarPhotoshop Tutorials Blog 23rd November 2008

Well I have been extremely busy with work lately so I didn’t get time to try out this
technique, but here is an older version where I had turned myself into a zombie. I tried masking
parts of a skull onto my face and added darker gradient overlays, dark brushes for some nice
effect. You can check out the results here

http://i89.photobucket.com/albums/k201/ukjadoon/me.jpg

16. User GravatarTom 27th November 2008

Awesome result! Thanks for sharing.

17. orked 13th December 2008

this is super duper brilliant… awesome!!!

18. Monina Lao 1st February 2009

oh thanks,i’ll try it to my pic :D

19. CrisTian 8th April 2009

nice, this site going to bookmarks :)

20. User GravatarCgBaran Tuts 11th June 2009

Great effect i was searching for it

21. Jay 1st August 2009

its not really a zombie. its really just blood. but, but still its good.

22. Rich 30th September 2009

 I like how this came out. Nice tutorial

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