Introduction: BRRRRAAAAIIINSSSSSS!!! Make Yourself Into a Zombie Using Photoshop CS5

This instructable was made for the halloween photo editing contest. This is my first attempt at an instructable so I hope I made it easy enough to follow. After lots of trial and error, I finally was able to produce a zombiefied image of myself. Leave comments, or if you finish your own zombie, maybe a picture, and questions below. I'll try to respond to the best of my ability. Thanks.

Step 1: UPLOAD THE PICTURE

Upload a ridiculous picture (share it with the internet) of your self into photoshop. For best results take the picture in the morning with you hair messed up and yawn or bite at the camera. Try to take the picture making the face well lit, having both light and dark areas.

Step 2: THE DEAD STARE

Take note that each step in this slide correlates with each picture.(i.e. step one is the first picture). This is the same for any page in this instructable with more than one picture.

STEP:

1.Erase the iris and pupil of each eyeball. I used the polygonal lasso tool to trace around the iris. When the line connects, press the delete button on your keypad to erase your selection. 

2. Using the elliptical marque tool, make a small circle around the white of the eye. Copy and paste the selection. This will create knew layer.

3. On the new layer, use the move tool to re-size the circle to fit as close as you can to the deleted iris. If needed, turn the opacity down on the layer and erase any overlapping white that has overlapped the eyelids. Make sure to turn the opacity back to 100%.

4. Merge the both layers of the newly formed eye with the original photo.Using the polygonal lasso tool, make a selection around the entire white of the eye. When selection is complete, right click on your mouse and click feather. Turn the feather radius up to 10 and press OK. Next, with the area still feathered and selected, go to the top of the screen where it says filter and click. Scroll down to blur->gaussian blur and click. Set the radius to 10-25. 

5. You should now have brand new hazy white eyeballs.

Step 3: THE BURN

STEP:

1. There is only one step for this next transformation and for that we need to use the burn tool. Select the burn tool and make sure the size of it is larger than that of your previous pupil, but smaller than your iris. Use a soft brush as well, with the hardness at zero. Use the brush to go around the eye and any wrinkles you may have. The more you go over it, the more dark the shade will become. Make sure not to over do it by making it totally black.  You just want to darken, not black out. Using the same tool, make the brush bigger, about the size of your eye, and go over the hair line, the outer parts of the neck, and any shadowy areas left on your picture. 

Step 4: CUT OUT THE CORPSE

STEP:

1. Use either the polygonal lasso tool or the pen tool to outline the subject in the picture. I recommend the pen tool because you can make mistake and easily fix them by using the undo button (ctrl Z).
     -If you use the pen tool, click around the whole subject, meeting the first and the last to complete the line. Right click near the line the pen made. When the menu come up, click make selection. Lines should now move around the subject signifying you made the selection.

2. Next, go to the lasso tool (either polygonal or regular is fine). Move tool near selection Right click and go to feather. Again feather to 10% and press OK.

3. Right click again and click select inverse. Your subject should be outlined as well as the border of the picture.

4. On your keyboard, press delete.

Step 5:

STEP:

1. On the top of photoshop, click on filter-> liquify. In the tools box, click on the freeze mask tool and go over the eyes, mouth, nose, neck, ear, and anything else in the area of the subjects cheeks.

2. Select the pucker tool and slowly bring in your cheeks around the cheek bone on both sides of your face. Go up and down the cheek with with the tool in individual clicks and drag toward your face. Press OK.

3. Make sure the subjects face is how you want it to look before proceeding. If not undo and try again. If done correctly, the subject should look twenty pounds lighter and like they haven't seen a human a few weeks subsequently making them fairly upset.

Step 6: THE TEETH

STEP:

1. Create a new layer. Use the lasso tool to draw a sharp tooth like shape over the subjects real tooth. 

2. Use the paint bucket tool and fill the shape you just drew.

3. Repeat steps 1 and 2 for the rest of the subjects teeth.

4. Go to the top of photoshop and click windows. Click styles. This will bring up the different style for the color to change to. You may need to load a new set of styles called web styles. You can do this by clicking the the down arrow with four lines beside it in the top right corner of the styles box. With all teeth selected with the move tool, click white gel.

5. Make sure your teeth are how you want them, sharp crooked and ugly is preferred, and merge the face layer and the new teeth layer and the teeth are done.

Step 7: LAYER THE SKULL AND BRAIN

STEP:

1. Import or Upload a picture of a skull. Depending on the angle of your subjects head, try to find a skull picture that bests matches the angle of your subject. It does not need to be perfect but try your best, it makes for a better edit.

2. At the top of photoshop, Click edit->transform->warp. Warp the skull to the best of your estimation of where your actual skull might be. It helps to turn the opacity of your skull layer down a little so you can see the subjects head through the skull. 

3. Import or Upload a picture of a brain.

4.Using the move tool, re-size the brain to fit inside the skull. Hold the shift key to keep the proportions of the brain the same.

5. Move the skull behind the face and the brain behind the skull.

Step 8: BREAKING THE SKULL

STEP:

1. Using the polygonal lasso tool on the face layer, make a sharp jagged circle like shape on the top of the head. Once selected, press delete on the key board.

2. I made two different cuts out of the skull in order to expose more bone.

3. On the layer of the skull, use the same technique used to expose the skull to expose the brain.

4. With an eraser( choose one that has many scrapes or dots) go around the skin and hair and with little individual erases and lightly erase the sharp edges left by the polygonal tool. (If that was hard to understand, look at picture three and then at picture four. Hopefully that may clear up any confusion.)

Step 9: DROP SHADOW THE SKULL

STEP:

1. Add a drop shadow to your skull layer. To do this, double click the image in your layers box. It should bring up a menu that looks like this. Click drop shadow and depending on the angle you took your photo make it look like the cut in the skull is dark around its border.

2. If your skull does not look exactly like mine, that is okay. I used a different technique that is a lot more time consuming a more poor result. 

Step 10:

This step uses the same techniques as shown in steps BREAKING THE SKULL. If needed, refer to that step to answer any questions you may have.

Step:


1. Use the lasso tool to trace around the nose.

2. Once traced, on your keyboard, press delete.

3. Like we did with the skin and hair in the BREAKING THE SKULL step, erase around the border of the skin around the nose.

4. Add a drop shadow like before but this time to the face layer. Press OK.

5. The skin around the nose should have a shadow and should look like picture five.

Step 11: BLEEDING OF THE SKULL

This step uses the same techniques as shown in steps THE TEETH . If needed, refer to that step to answer any questions you may have.

STEP:


1. Use the lasso tool and this time go over the skin near the scalp. Use the same technique as before in THE TEETH step.

2. Select the whole layer and instead of clicking the white gel click the red gel.

3. In the layers box double click color overlay in the same layer. Make the red a deep red.

4. The new color should look similar to picture 4.

5. Move the new blood layer under the face layer. 

Step 12: BLOOD AROUND FACE

STEP:

1. Create a new layer and with a non-solid brush, one with dots or scrapes, color around the mouth in red. The coloring should not be one continuous motion but broken up with streaks and dots, some areas should be darker than others. Turn the opacity down on the layer so you can see the subjects face through the red. Don't turn the opacity back up.

Step 13: CLEAN IT UP

STEP:

1. Clean up areas around the head using a soft eraser, any access blood, hair, pieces of skull that was not covered by the face. This makes it look a lot more clean around the edges. If you are satisfied with the image, merge the layers face, blood, skull, brain, etc.

Step 14: MAKE IT a GRAPHIC

STEP:

1. At the top of photoshop click on filter->artistic->poster edges. This will give it a much more cartoon like appearance. If you want to put more details on Press OK, and than undo. If you want to change a certain layer, undo as many times as needed to un-merge the layers.

2. For my final I added more details using the techniques used in the previous steps. I added more hair and added blood to the back of the skull to make it look more like a you could see the inside of the skull. Snot and saliva were also added in the end.

Step 15: PUT YOUR ZOMBIE IN ITS SETTING

That's it. Put your character in a setting, I choose New York, add some text maybe a hatchet and you have yourself a fine zombie being  attacked by a human.

Halloween Photo Editing Contest with Pixlr

Finalist in the
Halloween Photo Editing Contest with Pixlr