Keetee

I’m back (less four wisdom teeth) with a new tutorial for creating a face with a cool, retro vibe.

Before we start, a little administrative update for my subscribers and anyone else who may be interested: I’m going to be branching out into topics other than Photoshop soon, so I’ll be researching ways to split up my feed so that those interested in only the Photoshop stuff can keep tabs on my tutorials without any clutter. If anyone can suggest a service or method for doing this, feel free to leave a comment. I’ll keep you all posted.

Final Image Preview

Here’s what the tutorial will cover:

Fire up that Photoshop and let’s get started!

Assets

• My face stock 1 by raine-angelstock. Make sure to download the full size version.

The Process

Open up the image of the girl in Photoshop and resize it to 1500px wide. All measurements I give in this tutorial will be relative to that size.

Masking and Colorizing the Face

Desaturate by going to Image » Adjustments » Desaturate.

Increase the contrast by going to Image » Adjustments » Brightness/Contrast and pulling the contrast slider up to 50.

Create a new layer above the others and use the Paint Bucket Tool to fill with black. Add a pixel mask. (Not sure how? Check out my beginner masking tutorial.) Decrease the layer opacity to 50% so that you can see what you’re doing relative to the layers below.

Select the Brush tool. Use a 400px brush, 0% hardness, and black. Carefully brush over the girl’s face.

Increase the layer opacity to 100% again to check your work. It should look similar to the image below. If not, return to your layer mask and adjust it as needed.

To better define her face, use a 30px, 100% hardness, black brush to outline the bottom of her chin. Only her face should be showing. Then take a 45px, 0% hardness, black brush and soften her chin a little.

Select the Move tool. Select all layers (hold down CTRL to select multiple layers) and move them so that her face is more centered on the canvas.

Right-click the layer that has the face on it and go to Blending Options. Check the Gradient Overlay item and set the Blend Mode to Multiply. Replace the two default gradient colors with a magenta (#ff0042) and a yellow (#eaff00). When satisfied, click OK.

I want there to be more contrast without losing detail, so I’m going to use the Burn Tool to emphasize areas of her face. Select the Burn Tool and set the brush to 100px, 0% hardness, 50% exposure and Shadows. Darken her features—hair, eyes, nose, and lips.

Change the size to 300px and 25% exposure and brush over the whole image once. This helps to unify the shadows we created and add additional contrast.

Creating Our Brushes

If you’ve never made a brush, don’t worry—it’s really, really easy!

Create a new layer. For your foreground color, select 50% gray (#808080). Open up the Info window by going to Window » Info. Select the Rectangular Marquee Tool. The Info window will tell you the width and height as you draw the marquee, so create a 50×1200px rectangle and use the Paint Bucket Tool to fill with your gray color.

Select the Polygonal Lasso tool. Click in the top-right corner of your rectange, hold down CTRL, and make another click toward the bottom-left of your first point when you see the line at a 45 degree angle. Click around the remaining gray area so that your polygon will delete the whole top left corner. Then hit Delete. Do the same for the bottom corner:

This will be our brush. Go to Edit » Define Brush Preset and name your brush. Note that because we made it 50% gray, it will be 50% transparent.

Select the Brush Tool. Open up the Brush window by going to Window » Brushes. Select Brush Tip shape and look for your brush. When you find it, delete the brush layer as you no longer need it.

Select your brush. Change the diameter to 800px and spacing to 100%.

Check Shape Dynamics and go to it. Change Size Jitter control to Off and raise the slider to 50%. Bring the Roundness Jitter up to 25%.

Check Scattering and go to it. Change Scatter control to off and raise the slider to 50%.

Set the foreground color to black.

Masking with Our Brush

Now that we have all our settings in order, create a new layer above the rest. Fill it with black and add a pixel mask. Select the pixel mask and brush a line from the top left to the bottom left of your face. The variance caused by the brush settings means that everyone’s result will be unique. Here is mine:

Duplicate this layer with the brush mask and hide the original. On your duplicate layer, with the pixel mask still selected, go to Filter » Blur » Motion Blur. Set the angle to 90 degrees and the distance to 100px.

Hold down the CTRL key and click on the original brushed mask layer. This will give you a selection of the original mask. Hit CTRL + SHIFT + I to invert the selection. Then take a large, black brush and paint over the selected area. The result:

Flatten your image (or if you want to save your layers, just hit CTRL + A and go to Edit » Copy Merged and paste). Go to Image » Adjustments » Hue/Saturation. Increase Saturation to 50 and Hue to 6. This will brighten up our colors!

We’re going to add just a little more depth before we call it quits. Select the Brush Tool and set it to 45px, white, 100% hardness. Create a series of up-and-down lines across the face, then use Motion Blur set at 90 degrees and a distance of 450px to get this effect:

(If that last stepped confused you, try reviewing my burst streak tutorial. It’s the same thing, just a different angle.)

Set the blending mode of this layer to Overlay.

Final Image

I was just goofing around and didn’t set my final product up for a tutorial, but if anyone is curious, the method of creation is similar to the “dusty” sparkle effect explained at the end of this tutorial on swirling light streaks.