Photoshop

Apply Discoloration with Apply Image
by Al Ward Action Fx Photoshop Resources http://actionfx.com Author, Photoshop for Right Brainers: The Art of Photo Manipulation Author, ‘Al Ward's PhotoshopProductivity Toolkit’ Some days I almost feel like the ‘Anti-Photoshop Guy’. Not because I have anything against the software, Adobe, or image correction as a big bundled whole, but because I often spendmore time experimenting with the software to mess images up realistically, instead of correcting them. Superman had Bizarro World, and I have… well, my office. The key in the above statement isrealism. Anyone can mess up a photo: splash some paint over a layer or run a face through the Liquify mill and you have a messed up image. What I enjoy doing is making the subject appear messed up in theirworld, without appearing manipulated. Does that make sense? This tutorial will help explain what I mean. Let’s start with this meticulously restored military uniform: I’m guessing from the Civil Warera.

Obviously someone has gone to great lengths to clean and press this uniform, restoring it to its original glory as best they could. Nice work… now how can I mess this up? Well, the number ofways to stain this suit (which is what I’m going to attempt). We could create a layer, switch the Blending mode to Color, and paint over it with any color we chose… that would certainly adddiscoloration (or at least change the hue of the fabric). I’m not going to do that. Rather, let’s again explore Apply Image and see if that can be used to mess things up realistically. First, we need a textureor pattern of some sort, in the form of a photograph. What would work? Let’s try this:

I’m not sure if that is the skin of a melon, a salamander or what! Anyway, it should work here. Remember, withApply Image the pixel dimensions need to be the same for both images. Ensure when you are doing this to change one of the images’ pixel dimensions to match the other. In this case I don’t want to...