Night of the Pixelated Dead: Zombies Made Easy in Photoshop

Did you know that you can make the dead come back from the grave in your own home? Sure, it’s easy. You don’t need any fancy necromantic magic, radioactive waste, or goat’s blood. All you need is Photoshop, a portrait (by Faestock) and a texture of something rotting (in this case earth by Elisa Fox.)

Digging Up Deathly Pallor

Our model is the picture of health and that’s just unacceptable. After opening the first image, we’re e going to Layer/Duplicate Layer. On top we will have a layer named “Background copy”. We click on the eye to the left of the top layer so we can see what we are doing beneath. We’re going to the original Background layer and go to Layer/New Adjustment Layer/Hue-Saturation. In order to get the greenish decaying vibe we need the Hue slider will be set at +35. Saturation will go to -70 and Lightness will drop slightly to -5.

She’s already looking like she ate some undercooked burgers, so we’re going in the right direction. We return to “Background copy”,make it visible, and go to Layer/Layer Mask/Reveal All. Next, we set the foreground color to black, go to work within the mask with our brush tool, and dial in the opacity to 15% with airbrush enabled. We bring the greenish cast out gently in the skin, taking care to leave the eyes and hair alone.

We are not concerned about getting the tone uniform, as nature is rather chaotic and rotting is no exception. Next, we return to the Background layer on the bottom and go to Image/Adjustments/Brightness-Contrast. Since we have gone over the skin within the Background copy mask, we don’t need to render the top layer invisible to see the results. We accentuate the pallor by taking the Brightness slider down to “-80” and ramping up the Contrast slider to +50.  Once we have our model looking more gaunt than goth, we are ready to push our subject over the edge into the land of the walking dead!

From “Ick” to “OMFG the Dead Have Risen From the Grave!”

We are going to highlight the Background layer at the bottom of the Layer Palette, and use our move tool to drag the rotting earth texture onto our workspace so it becomes Layer 1 sandwiched between Background and Background copy.  We set the style in the Layer Palette dropdown menu to Difference and we stretch the texture over subject’s entire body by going to Edit/Free Transform.

Now, just as we did with the Background copy layer, we create a new layer mask set to Reveal All, set our brush to 100% opacity, and touch up the edges of Layer 1 so none of the texture goes past the skin, making sure the eyes, lips, and hair are untouched. Still in the palette, we return to Background copy and set the layer style to overlay.  Now she’s starting to look like something that burst out of a cemetery plot.

“But wait,” you say. “What about all that purple? Looks kinda out of place.” We fix that by highlighting Layer 1 and going to Image/Adjustments/Hue-Saturation and we slide the Hue down to -30, leave Saturation where it is and drop the Lightness slider down to -60.

Now that the rot has a more moldy feel, we may want to return to the Layer 1 mask and, with our black airbrush opacity set to 15% once again, we go around the eyes and lips to make sure any of the texture doesn’t obscure any facial features that are overlaid, taking care to also hit around the jaw and hairline.

Now that the festering looks more embedded than overlaid, we return to the original Background layer and go to Image/Adjustments/Brightness-Contrast, then set the brightness slider to “-15” and ramp up the contrast to +60.  This accentuates the shadows, getting our subject ever closer to punching through that coffin lid. Next we return to our Background copy layer  mask with our black airbrush set to 15% and go over lips, as well as the skin and the hair.

Finally, to siphon out the last bits of vitality, we will make a new layer above Background copy. Guess what it’s called? That’s right! Layer 2!  Our black airbrush should still be set at 15% and we’ll add shading around the eyes.

Zooming in as we shaded around the eyes, we saw areas on the picture where our texture may still look too purple from Layer 1 or there’s not enough gray showing through underneath the Background copy layer. Before moving forward we’ll take a moment to touch up these areas.
“Okay, man,” you say, wiping sweat from your brow. “How dead is dead? Are we done yet?” Before we can pronounce the subject legally zombified, we need to do something with the eyes. We’re going to eliminate the sparkle. Nothing says “hide in the basement, they’re coming straight for the house”  like a milky film over dead eyes.
First, we set the black airbrush to 100%, next, we create a new layer. In layer 3, we carefully eliminate the reflection in the eyes, because of the white film we are adding. Now the eyes look even colder and more cadaverous.

We now make Layer 4 to finish off our subject’s undead corneas. In the Layer Palette, we set the Opacity to 30% and the layer style to Linear Dodge. We add the film with a gray paintbrush set to 100% opacity.

Next, so the eyes don’t lose their defined shape any further, we create a new layer set to Normal/100% we take a black paintbrush set to 15% opacity and delicately go around the edges of both eyeballs.

Now the last thing we have to do before we board up all the windows and make sure we have plenty of ammo is go to Layer/Flatten Image and then move to Image/Adjustments/Photo Filter. Select the Filter radio button and leave Preserve Luminosity unchecked. In the filter dropdown menu choose Cyan, and set the Density to 40%.

Now, with the emphasis on the cool greens and blues, we have that just-punched-through-the-coffin-lid feel, and we are done!

We learned that thinking outside the box with layer effects, shading and the power of cool or warm hues enables us to use images we would never think of to push the pixels the way we want to, in this case turning a normal girl into the walking dead. Most importantly, we learned that layer styles sometimes don’t behave the way we would like them to. Revising and touching up our work isn’t just reserved for the end of each task, or even the end of all the hard work. It is an ongoing process the graphic artist must go through from start to finish. Now if you’ll excuse me, I think I’ll kick back and enjoy another viewing of “Night of the Living Dead.”

Tagged as: Photoshop Tutorials