How to Creepify Your Photos for Halloween [Video]

Whether you want an extra creepy profile picture for your Facebook page, a scary image for your Halloween party invitation, or just want to frighten your friends and family, here are a few image editing techniques that can get your photos ready for Halloween.

Everything is demonstrated in the video above, so be sure to watch for a proper tutorial. For reference, here's the basic how-to for each technique.

Evil Eyes

The first technique demonstrated in the video is evil glowing white eyes. This is probably one of the easiest things to accomplish. Just follow these steps:

1. Set the foreground color to white (or whatever color you want the eyes to be) and grab the pen tool. Use it to trace the shape of the white part of the eyes. Be careful not to draw over the darker parts or the eyelashes. You can always adjust later if you need to.
2. Double-click the eye shape layer in the layers panel to open the effects panel. Then add an inner shadow with a distance of zero, an opacity of about 75%, and a size of around 3-5 (which should be increased if you're working with a large image).
3. Still in the effects panel, add an outer glow. Change the color to white or a light blue (or whatever makes sense for your eye color of choice). Change the size to be rather large and the opacity to be around 60%. This will keep the glow fairly minimal so it actually looks like the eyes are glowing and not just really blurry. Depending on the photo, however, you'll want to adjust these settings to look their best.

That's it! Now you have evil glowing eyes.

Spattered and Dripping Blood

In the video you can see blood spatter added to Whitson's teeth and mouth as well as a little bit of blood dripping down his face and neck. This is easy to do. Let's start with the spatter:

1. Select a brownish-red color as your foreground color and a spatter-like brush from the paintbrush tool. You'll want to switch between the different options and change their sizes regularly to get the best effect.
2. Paint the blood spatter where you want it.
3. Set the blood spatter layer's blending mode to overlay.
4. Duplicate the layer to make it darker (if necessary), and reduce the opacity until you get the right intensity of the blood.

For the dripping blood, follow these steps:

1. Paint the blood on your subject's face with the pen tool. This gives you a good amount of control when creating smooth curves that fit the contour of the face. You'll want to use the same reddish-brown color you used for the blood spatter.
2. Double-click the dripping blood shaper layer you just created and add a Gradient Overlay effect. Set its blending mode to Overlay and dial down the opacity to a small number so you can create just a little variation in the color.
3. You may also want to add very subtle drop and inner shadow effects to the dripping blood to help reduce contrast between it and your subject's face, but use your eyes to determine how much (if anything) is needed.

What will make this look most realistic is if you get the contours right, so be sure the blood looks like it's falling down your subject's face realistically. That's the most important thing when selling a fake blood drip effect.

Create a Darker Color Scheme

If your photo is looking a bit too bright, you should adjust the colors to make it darker. You can do this by creating an Curves, Levels, or Color Balance Adjustment Layer. I like Curves so that's what we're going to be talking about, but the principles are pretty much the same across the board.

• Bring up the blue levels in the shadows only.
• Bring up the red levels in the highlights, leave the midtones the same, and reduce the red levels in the shadows.
• Reduce the green levels in the midtones only.

If you're not sure how to make color adjustments, be sure to watch the video above for a demonstration.

---

Those are a few techniques that should make your photos extra creepy for Halloween. If you want to learn more about Photoshop, be sure to check out our Photoshop night school lessons.

You can follow Adam Dachis, the author of this post, on Twitter, Google+, and Facebook. ?Twitter's the best way to contact him, too.

Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/lifehacker/full/~3/JAM3hEtf7cc/how-to-creepify-your-photos-for-halloween

occupy midnight madness midnight madness john henry john henry zack greinke zack greinke