Photoshop Lessons – How To Make A Sparkly Vampire Twilight Poster

Photoshop is a very useful tool.  It can be used for all sorts of things, like designing websites, retouching photos, or turning a homoeratic photo of you and your brother into a dazzling, sparkling Twilight poster that all of your friends will surely marvel over, such as this delightful gem.

For today’s Photoshop lesson, I will be teaching you how to make your very own sparkly vampire Twilight poster.  Don’t worry if you’re a Photoshop novice and don’t know what the hell I’m talking about, or if you don’t use Photoshop at all.  There are plenty of bad jokes I’ll be telling throughout the tutorial, so feel free to read along no matter what your Photoshop skill level may be.  Let’s get this Photoshop party started, shall we?

Step 1:  Pour A Shot Of Whiskey

Let’s face it, Photoshop can be really boring.  Retouching photos is a tedious process, that’s why I like to pour myself a shot of whiskey before I begin no matter if it’s morning, noon or night.  It really helps to get the creative juices flowing.  I also like to design crudely drawn stick figure logos that I send to advertising agencies looking to hire a skilled graphic designer, but that’s another lesson for another time.

My drink of choice is Makers Mark, but any old kind of whiskey will do for achieving great success.  Bottoms up.  You are now ready to roll up the sleeves and begin today’s lesson.

Step 2:  Choose A Photo To Begin With

Choosing the right photo to begin with is paramount if you’re to end up with a stellar finished piece.  For this demonstration, I chose a photo of my brother and I when we paused for a impromptu maternity photo shoot in the middle of the woods for some inexplainable reason.

If you don’t have a maternity photo of your own to work with, no worries.  Choose a photo where you are looking off in the distance all dreamy like and whatnot, just like your all time favoritest actors Kristen Stewart, Robert Pattinson, and Taylor Lautner.  Below is the original, untouched photo that I will be using for this tutorial.

Step 3:  Removing The Background; Magnets Are Pretty Cool

The background of the original photo isn’t awful, but it doesn’t exactly scream werewolves and vampires.  It needs to be replaced with something more enchanting to really create that mysterious, fantasy world effect.  But first, I’m going to remove the original background.

There are multiple tools available in Photoshop for making selections.  No doubt I will be recommending that you use the most unfavorable tool by professional designers, being that I was usually out playing ultimate frisbee rather then attending my graphic design classes in college.  I’ll drink to $60,000 dollars down the tubes and to racking up a massive debt.  Three cheers for frisbee!  Damn you frisbee.  You ruined my life.

Now that you are slightly buzzed, go to the upper left hand corner and select the Lasso Tool.  I usually prefer the Magnetic Lasso Tool from the drop down menu primarily because I think magnets are pretty cool.  I enjoy collecting them and hanging them on my fridge just like my late Nana used to do.  I’ve collected magnets from 32 states and 8 different countries, and also a magnet of Fabio that was given to me as a gag gift.

Once you’ve selected the Magnetic Lasso Tool, you’ll want to trace an outline of the area you want to remove.  Carefully make your selection, then hit the delete button.  Presto!  The original background is removed from the photo and you should end up with an isolated layer that looks like so.

Step 4:  Replace The Original Background With An Image Stolen From The Internet

Now it’s time to replace the original background.  I did a Google search for “Fantasy Forest Backgrounds” and found a lot of great photos to steal.  I downloaded about 10 photos to play around with before settling on this one.  You may have to try a photo that’s lighter, darker, or a different color depending on the lighting of your original photo.  Experiment with different images and choose a background photo that you like best.  You are doing great!  You will be a sparkly vampire in no time.

Step 5:  Human Skin Is The Worst

In the original photo, you notice that our skin looks way too human.  It’s red and orange, and it sure doesn’t look like the kind of skin that can make you run faster than a mountain lion or stop a moving car with your bare hands.  Let’s take another drink and fix that.

Similar to how I made a selection to remove the background, I will now make a selection of the unsightly human skin to add to a new layer.  It might look a little strange for now, but that’s probably because you’ve been drinking way too much, you silly goose!  Quit farting around and put the whiskey down.  Your selection should look something like this.

Oh, hey there.  Didn’t mean to include a photo of Fabio that I lifted from the Official Fabio International Fan Club wearing his leather jacket, with thumb tucked into his mom jeans looking ever so el casuél.

I think maybe I’ve had one too many drinks myself.  Here is the isolated skin selection that I meant to include.  We look like we were dipped in acid.

Step 6:  Make Yourself Sparkle 

I sure miss grandma.  She made the best banana loaf bread.  I wish that she had been born a vampire and didn’t age since 1918 just like Edward, but alas, grandma was born a mortal like Bella Swan and died of chronic liver disease.  I hope this tutorial has been fun and enlightening so far.  Now let’s wrap it up, shall we dimwits?

You are probably feeling pretty good by now, so I won’t go into too many boring details unless you wanna pay me lots of cash monies so that I can eat tonight.  No?  Okay, moving on.

To make the skin pasty white – you know, because vampires hate light, except for the fact that the vampires in Twilight walked around in the daylight all the time, but we won’t get into that here, now will we –  I adjusted the levels using the Selective Color, Gradient Map, and Exposure tools found in the Layers drop down menu.  I also added an outer glow to the layer of me awkwardly straddling my brother using Layer Styles.  It’s looking pretty fly for two pasty white guys.  The sparkly vampire Twilight poster is nearly complete.

Step 7:  Get Punched In The Face

The poster is lacking something to give it that final punch.  It needs more Fabio.  Because what is a sparkly vampire Twilight poster without some long hair flowing, chisel-chested Fabio staring dreamily at us with those engaging eyes.  Punch us in the face, Fabio, but please go gentle with our hearts.

I’d like to raise one last toast.  To the fabulous Fabio, ladies and gentlemen, to my fellow dimwits.  Prepare to keep those glasses raised, because you will be the toast of the town when you reveal your finished poster to your friends and colleagues.

Congratulations on becoming the newest Hollywood star of the greatest movie series ever made, and cheers to you for a job well done.  That concludes the Photoshop tutorial for today.  Join me next time as I teach you how to Photoshop yourself into a Manotaur with a Mike Tyson face tattoo.