Sliced Head Manipulation – Photoshop CC Tutorial

CREATE THIS PHOTO MANIPULATION USING SHAPES & LAYERS! | In this Photoshop tutorial we’ll go over how to create this head sliced photo manipulation effect with relative ease.

Effect inspired by this awesome artist: http://www.magdiellopez.com/dailyposters/

In this Photoshop tutorial, we’ll use selection and shape tools to create the 3D illusion of a head sliced into a few pieces and we’ll paint in some shadows and make things look pretty cool using a couple tips and tricks in Photoshop CC.

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Tutorial Recording Notes:

Disclaimer: these are the actual notes I used to record this video and are written in a language you may or may not understand. Hopefully, you find them useful or cool.

1. Select Subject and then Select & Mask to clean up a selection for his head. Don’t worry about focusing on the edges of the model’s body.
2. Output to a new layer with layer mask.
3. Use the Poly lasso to create a quick selection around the body and fill that part of the mask with black
4. Use the brush tool and create a smooth edge around his chin.
5. Create a color fill layer beneath the head and fill with #a8a8a8
6. Create another Color fill layer and fill with #e3e3e3 and mask to a glowing ball in the middle of the background by blurring 500-1000px
7. Create a Gradient map to black and white the head and select head + grad map layer and merge these to a new layer
8. Shut off the original head and grad map layers and focus on the new head
9. Grab the Ellipse tool and choose to draw a path, not a shape
10. Draw an ellipse for the bottom-most slice. This should be the thickest ellipse.
11. Free transform the path so it is perfectly lined up with the edges of the face.
12. Duplicate this path layer and move it upward and make it a little thinner and re-stretch so it’s as wide as the face.
13. Make a total of four slice ellipses and make the height a little smaller as you get near the top of the head. NOTE: The thickness and order of sizing up or down will depend on the camera angle of your model’s head.
14. Cmd/Ctrl + click the bottom path in the Paths panel and invert the selection and grab the lasso tool and set it to “Intersect with Selection” and loop a selection around the bottom of the chin
15. Cut this chin selected area to a new layer
16. Do the same for the remaining slices we created
17. Select each path and convert them, one at a time, to a shape layer and fill with CMYK themed colors #05c3ea – #eb0e80 – #ffa302 – #222222
18. Offset the slices with color shapes
19. Use the Direct Selection tool and tweak the very edges of the colored ellipses to make a more believable top edge of each slice
20. Next, group the colored top with the piece of face below it and name these groups “Kslice”, “Yslice”, etc…
21. Use the colored shape to load a selection and create a layer that will be clipped to these layer groups to create angled and lightly (10px or so) blurred shapes that will make the shadows to build the depth between the head slices
22. Spend the time to create nice shadows and don’t be afraid to get in there with a large, soft-edged brush at 10% opacity and dab in shadow where it’s needed
23. Create a three-layered blur beneath his chin to build out the environment’s 3D ambience.
24. Create a 50% gray layer and use camera RAW editor to add some fine grain at 100% opacity and Soft Light
25. Duplicate that grain layer and go back into camera RAW and add chunky, bit grain and set to Soft Light and 45%
26. Add a Selective Color Adjustment layer and boost the blacks in the whites of the image to +10% and reduce the blacks in the blacks -10%
27. Create a new blank layer and use a foreground to transparent gradient (black to trans) to add shadowing at the top left and bottom right of the image
28. Set to Overlay blend mode to let the grain shine through
29. Add a Channel Mixer adjustment and reduce the 100%-ness of the green and blue channels to nothing and show this effect (red overlay strong)
30. Add a Gradient map layer that runs from #320223 to #fd0000 and show that
31. Then, add a Color Balance layer and set M: -60/-5/+40 H:-10/+10/-10 and S:-50/+25/+25
32. Combine or mix and match these different layers for different effects or just go with the original faded black and white option!
33. BOOM!