Previously I posted an interesting (well, at least I think it’s intersting) showcase displaying 30 Stunning, Absolutely Magical Photo Manipulations Focusing on Human Eye. A lot of people asked if I could produce a simple tutorial show the steps you can take to do eye makeups. Well, here it is :)

This is a faily basic tutorial and it’s designed for beginner. Tools we will be using included Spot Healing Brush, Dodge/Burn Tool, layer blending, and adjustment layers. Have a try!

Here is a preview of the before and after effect of the eye:

Before

After

Ok let’s get started!

To complete this tutorial, you will need the following stock:

Eye

Step 1

Load the “Eye” stock image into Photoshop, now let ‘s take a look at the original image and here is the analysis I came up with:

1. The image has a lot of black spots, and bits of hair that really disturbs me
2. The skin is OK, but if we can make it smoother would be bettter
3. The eye colour is perferably better in Blue, and those bloodlines in the white part of the eye can go.

After you’ve done the above analysis, duplicate the background layer once and name it as “face skin”let’s grab the Healing Brush tool (J):

Set the brush size to 15px, and hold down the Alt to define a source point as shown below:

Gently work you brush around the spots you wish to heal:

And clean up the lower part of the image as well, until you reach the following effect:

Step 2

Now we have a fairly clean face, let’s tackle the eye. Firstly duplicate the previous “face skin” layer once and name it as “eye”. Firstly we want to get rid of the bloodlines in the eye. To do this, again we use the healing brush tool, define a new source point on this layer as shown below:

Adjust the brush size accordingly to around 10-12px, work your way around the white of the eye until you reach this effect:

Step 3

Now we onto the smoothening of the skin. We have used the healing brush tool before however, for the overall effect, it’s really handy to apply the dodge/burn tool (O):

So duplicate the previous “eye” layer once and name it as “dodge and burn”, use the dodge tool with the following settings:

The secret here to to set exposure level to a very low amount.

Work your dodge tool around the area you want the skin to become smoother and lighter, until you reach the following effect:

Please note, you will have to adjust the brush size for different area, for the best result possible. Practice with it!

Step 4

Ok we can tweak the image a bit by adding some image adjustment layers:

Black and white (Set to blending mode to “Screen”)

Duplicate this Black and White adjustment layer once, and change the blending mode of the duplicated layer to “Hard Light”, you will have the following effect:

Now we’re on the interesting part of changing the eye colour. I simply created a new layer called “eye colour” on top of all other layers, grab a soft, round brush with a light blue colour and paint around the pupil:

Change the layer blending mode to “colour” and you will have to the following effect:

We can now add a shining reflection on the pupil. To do this, create a new layer called “reflection” on top of all other layers, grab a small white brush and paint on the centre of the eye, as shown below:

Step 5

Now we can add some dotty effect around the eye. Firstly let’s make this dynamic brushset:

Shape Dynamics

Scattering

Other Dynamics

and make sure you tick “Airbrush” and “Smoothing”.

Create a new layer, use this brushset to paint around the eye: (Set brush flow to around 40%)

and we can add a curve adjustment layer to bring some depth into the image:

and you will have the following effect:

We can add some final effect onto our eye. How about some colours?

To add some colour around the eye, simply create a new layer on top of all other layers, set its blending mode to “overlay”, and grab some nice markup colour you like and paint around the eye:

That’s it for this tutorial! Hope you enjoy it, drop me a comment if you have any question, I will try my best to help you out.

Cheers and have a nice day!

Along the way, we will be using and revising techniques such as masking, layer blending options, adjustment layers, and a quick way of creating uneven lighting effect. I will also show you how I create a light source in conjunction with the shadow effect on the text. Have a go!

Here is a preview of the final effect for this tutorial: (Click to enlarge)

OK let’s get started!

Step 1

Firstly we need to download the following textures:

Wall Texture

Leaves

Load the wall texture in photoshop, duplicate the background layer once and set it as “soft light”, you can see the background texture darken a bit: (Personally I would like to make the overall light darker a bit and later on it will be easier to create light source and other lighting effects)

Make another duplicate of the background layer and drag it to the top, add a vector mask to the duplicated layer. Hold down the Alt key and left click on the mask thumbnail on the layer palette, use a big soft brush to draw a black line across the centre of the canvas:

You will see the centre portion of the image is now highlighted, whereas the rest of the image being further darkened. We will be placing our text on the highlighted area:

Step 2

Type some texts using this font you just downloaded on the centre of the canvas:

Apply the following blending options:

General Blending

Drop Shadow

Inner Glow

Bevel and Emboss

Contour

Gradient Overlay

And you will have the following effect (the text become transparent and you can see the stone texture appears on the text)

Step 3

Now let’s add some freshness onto the text. Load the “Leaves” texture into photoshop, go back to our document and load the selection of the text layer (ctrl+left-click the thumb of the text layer on the layer palette). Drag the selection onto the leaf texture as shown below:

Copy the selection and paste in back to our document:

Name the newly created layer as “leaf”. Apply the following Gaussian Blur setting to it:

Change the layer blending option as shown below:

Duplicate the leaf layer once and apply the following blending option to the duplicated layer:

And you will have the following effect to the text:

Step 4

Now let’s create some uneven lighting and give some depth to the image. Create a new layer and name it as “lighting overall”, use the Lasso Tool with a 30px feather to draw a selection as shown below:

Go to Filter > Render > Cloud (set foreground colour to #555555 and background colour to black) and render some cloud inside the selection:

Set the blending mode of this layer to “Soft light” and duplicate it a couple of times. You will have the following effect: (The centre portion of the image become highlighted so it’s easier to focus on the text)

Step 5

Now let’s create a light source for this image. Duplicate the “lighting overall” layer one more time and rename it “light source”. Drag this layer to the top and go to Filter > Render > Lens Flare and apply the following settings:

Then use the Free Transform Tool (Ctrl + T), rotate, distort this layer until it look similar to the image shown below (light coming from the top right corner)

Set the blending mode to “overlay” and you will have the following effect:

Step 6

To further adjust the lighting contrast, we can add a few new adjustment layers on top of all previous layers. Firstly we can add a new curves adjustment layer and apply the following settings:

Then add a new Level adjustment layer and apply the following settings:

And you will have the following image as a result:

Ok that’s it for this tutorial! You can have a play with layer blending options and add a few more adjustment layers (hue and saturation, channel mixer) and see what result it gives you!

Here is my final image for this tutorial: (I added some colours and reduce the saturation a bit)

Hope you enjoy this tutorial, drop me a comment if you have any question, I will try my best to help you out.

Cheers and have a nice day!