Manipulate a Man Portrait into Dark Wizard in Photoshop

In this tutorial, I will show you the steps I took to manipulate a man portrait into dark wizard in Photoshop. We will use some bare metal texture and fire stock images, plus a number of image adjustment techniques to form this effect. Have a try!

This is an intermediate level tutorial so some steps can be challenging.

Note: The Photoshop tutorial is done in Photoshop CC – therefore some screenshot may have slighting different layout as in the earlier version. Some brushes are exclusive to Photoshop CS6.

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

OK Let’s get started!

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

Model Stock Image (Photo by Portia Shao, Model Jason Aaron Baca)

Metal

Fire

Step 1

Load the model image into Photoshop. Firstly we can make some adjustments to his face and make a gap appear in the middle. Use the Pen Tool to select the left side of face as shown below:

Make a selection of this work path:

Duplicate this selection and move the left side of the face slightly to the left. Use the Burn Tool to darken the inside edge of the face:

Repeat the above process with the right side of the face, and move it slightly to the right:

Step 2

We will add the following image adjustment layers on top of the previous layers:

Black and White

Levels

Layer mask on the levels adjustment layer:

Curves

Layer mask on the curves adjustment layer:

Create a new layer and draw a selection as shown below and fill it with black:

Use a soft eraser tool to fade the edges of this black strip, and here is my effect so far:

Step 3

We will apply some texture over the model. Load the metal texture into Photoshop and select a portion of it. Copy the selection and paste it to cover the model’s face. Make sure you reveal the eyes and the middle part of the face:

Add the following adjustment layer as clipping mask to this texture layer:

Black and White

Levels

and here is my effect so far:

Repeat the above process and attach more texture around the arms and neck:

Step 4

We will add some fire sparks into the image. Load the fire stock image into Photoshop and select the following portion:

Copy and paste the selection over to our document, compress it as shown below:

Add more fire textures as shown below:

Step 5

We can go back to the fire stock image and select the following portion:

Copy and paste the selection to our document. Set the blending mode of this new layer to “Screen”:

Duplicate this new spark layer a few times and scatter them around the canvas as shown below:

Step 6

We’re almost done! To finalise the effect, we can add some particles around the model as shown below:

Use a cloud brush or cloud filter to render some cloud around the model:

We can also some extra fire sparks around the arms as shown below:

I apply some colour effect with the colour balance adjustment layer, and here is my final effect: (click to enlarge)

That’s it for this Photoshop tutorial! Hope you enjoy it and find it somehow useful. Drop me a comment if you have any questions. Till next time, have a great day!