Photo manipulation: Create a rocky eye

In this tutorial we are going to have a little fun with photo manipulation. It’s probably my favorite thing to do with photoshop, so lets get started! Here is what we are going for:

First things first, we need some good picture to play with. I used http://www.sxc.hu. I can’t give you the source files, but I will link the page on sxc where you can get them, you just need to sign up for their free membership.

The base for our manipulation is going to be the picture of the eye below, your going to want the large version, download the entire picture here: http://www.sxc.hu/photo/648089

Next we need some stone texture, you can use your own, or download the one for stockexchange that I used: http://www.sxc.hu/photo/660743

Past your texture in a new layer and change the layer mode to “Vivid Light.”

Change your image color to grayscale by choose Image > Mode > Grayscale Don’t Flatten. Once you have done this change your image mode back to RGB. One your stone-texture layer, use your eraser tool to erase the area around the eye to reveal the picture below, as shown below.

Create a new layer, and change the layer mode to “color.” Use your ellipse tool to select the center the eye, and then use the polygon tool, while holding alt, to erase any portion of the selection that stretched beyond the iris. Change your foreground color to light orange and your background color to a darker orange. While on your color layer, perform a radial gradient.

Zoom in and select the pupil, we are going to darken it up a bit. While on your color layer, press delete once you have the pupil selected to get rid of any extra color, we want this part black. Now move down to your original layer and, while you still have it selected, choose Image > Adjustments > Brightness Contrast. Darken it a bit.

Ctrl Click your color layer to grab your iris selection again. Create a new layer above your color layer, we are going to give our eye a little reflection. You can use your own image, or you can use the one I used: http://www.sxc.hu/photo/671723

Pas your image into your selection by choose Edit > Paste Into.

Change your layer mode to “overlay.”

Now that we have a nice stone face, lets give our rocks some foliage. You can download the picture I used here:

http://www.sxc.hu/photo/594160

Create a new layer, and resize your image similar to mine. The key to a good photo manip is finding places where images can “fit” nicely together. Here I see vines creeping around a center window, I think that window would be a nice place to inlay our eye.

Change the layer mode of your vine layer to “Hard Light.” Take out your eraser tool, with a large brush, and get rid of the biggest areas we don’t want. I took our most of the top-right section.

Next take a little brush and zoom in towards the center and work on erasing the background of your vine picture around the eye, while leaving some of the lone strands as shown below.

The next step is to make the vine look more a “part” of the stone wall. First I took down the saturation a bit, we don’t want to override the bright color of our eye with these green leaves. Choose Image > Adjust > Hue Saturation and bring it down a bit. Next take out your burn tool, and choose “highlights” from the dropdown menu. Your goal is to darken portions of the vine in a way that will give the viewer a sense of depth. I darkened them in the bottom corners, and towards the left of the eye. This helps make the vines directly below the eye pop out a bit.

Next we are going to add a little something to compliment the color of the eye, how about a butterfly! You can find the butterfly picture I used below:

http://www.sxc.hu/photo/543945

Use your selection tools to pic our the butterfly as best you can, and paste it on your canvas. Rescale your butterfly so its about the size of mine:

Now we can’t just add figures to one picture from another because the direction of light in each picture is going to be different. In our butterfly the light is coming direction from above, but we want ours to have a little more depth. Similar to what we did with the vines, take out your burn tool and darken the butterfly where natural shadows would occur. I darkened the body, the bottom of the right with and the left of the left wing. Then take your dodge tool and lighten the opposite areas that your darkened. Ctrl click your butterfly area to give you a selection, make a new layer below it and fill it will black. Deselect and blur the back fill by choosing Filter > Blur > Gaussian Blur. Move this dropshadow down a bit, here is how mine looks:

Next we are going to make our cracking rock forehead more interesting. The goal here is to take the cracks and turn them into detaching rocks. Look at your image and find a nice crack-culprit, something that would make a good falling stone. Here is an example:

Copy your rock and past it on a new layer, below it make a new layer and a selection of the rock with black. Duplicate this layer. You should now have two black filled rock layers, and your copied/pasted rock layer above your original layer. Click on your detached rock layer and link it with the black-rock fill layer below it. Move the rock downward and rotate it a little (Edit > Transform > Rotate) as seen below. Unlink the two layers, click on your black fill and blur it a little with Filter > Blur > Gaussian blur.

That may have been slightly confusing to read, but hopefully you get the idea. There are two black layers, one server as a dropshadow and the other as the black void where your rock is falling from.

Lighten the top of your rock with the dodge tool and darken the bottom with burn tool, you should have something similar to mine.

I used this method on a few more rocks.

Well that’s about it! I merged all my layers and upped the contrast slightly, here is how mine turned out: