Facepainting

[crabtrem]

I was playing around with another photoshop tutorial and came up with this method for facepainting. This the is best one I could come up with, but there are probably better methods.

I have include screen shots that show the progress before rasterizing a layer, and then after. I was actually waiting to rasterize but the Affinity assistant did it for me.  The third file has a text showing the flow of actions done.

I will try and paraphrase here.

First select an area you want painted, in this case the face. Save the selection into a new layer with mask. You can either use the B&W adjustment layer, or an HSL adjustment layer and take the saturation all the way down to produce a black and white section.

Bring in the file you want as facepaint into a new layer. Change the layer blend to color burn, or multiply. These are the one's I thought brought the best results.

Copy the mask from the previous layer and paste it into the paint layer. Add a displace filter to the paint layer. You can use either Filter, distort, displace or there is layers, live filter, displace. 

Use the brush tool and tighten up the masks. You will have to paint both masks to have the color of the original file show through.

Rasterize the paint layer. You can now select that and go into the Liquify persona and fine tune additional displacement looking adjustments. Rasterize also brightens and evens out the colors of the layer, which you can see appears much darker before rasterization.

I think that's it. I hope some of you find this helpful.

 

[crabtrem]

I discovered a process improvement that might help. When you first bring over the graphic you want to use as the facepaint. Use the mesh warp tool first, and form the graphic to almost match the outline of the face. This really helps make the graphic look more like it wraps around the face.

[ronnyb]

Might try adding a subtle Displacement filter to the paint mask layer to interact with the skin's texture....

[crabtrem]

Thanks. I have tried with varying levels of success. It sure doesn't hurt to do it, but as you say it is subtle and all up to your tastes. Being a novice I am still experimenting with this and all other methods. I appreciate the feedback and hope to refine all I do.