Halloween Photoshop Tutorial: Creating Zombie
This Photoshop CS2 tutorial will show you how to rot people’s face, expose their skull and turn them into zombie.
Video tutorial is also available here
What you need:
+ A portrait of the victim. AKA, the zombie and a picture of a human skull. Ideally in the roughly the same pose as your portrait which can be found on Google images.
+ Download The “Pretty” free brush collection found here. Ideally you will need to grab “Pretty Cuts`n`cracks” & “Pretty Sore”
+ Download The “Veins” brushes here.
+ It would also be nice if you had the `tonemapping` plug-in by Photomatix. Not essential but handy.
Let’s get started!
OK, First off, install the downloaded brushes into your Photoshop brushes folder, we’ll need them a bit later.
STAGE 1
Now, we need to prepare your portrait. These next steps are not obligatory, and you can skip to Stage 2 and start to zombify your image.
I would recommend resizing the image to roughly 1300 pixels at its longest edge. The reason for this is that some of the brushes we downloaded earlier look a bit crappy if we try to enlarge them to accommodate a bigger image, I found that working on a medium sized image allows us to retain the clarity of the brushes later on. You may crop it to the desired format at this point as well as I have below.
Next, and this part is optional, we tonemap the image. So first off you will need to convert the image to 16-bit, the run the tonemapping filter. Play with the sliders until you get an effect you like. I use tonemapping as it gives the image a nice dirty look.
Next I duplicate that bottom layer,s o now we have two layers the same. Selecting the top layer You need to Desaturate it (CTRL+SHIFT+U) then set the blending mode of the newest layer to OVERLAY. Set the opacity of the new layer to roughly 70%. You should end up with something akin to this.
We need to bring the eye detail back into the image, so we are going to add a layer mask to the top layer. To do this, select the layer and click the little black rectangle with the white circle at the bottom of the layers palette. You should now get a white rectangle alongside the thumbnail of the top layer. Next select the brush tool and select black as your colour. Now click on the white rectangle next to the top layer thumbnail to select it. Now you should be able to `paint` over the eye and you will see the bottom layer appear. Close up view below.
OK, now that’s all done, we will flatten these two layers into a new single layer, press CTRL+SHIFT+ALT+N then CTRL+SHIFT+ALT+E. this will consolidate all the work we have done so far into a new, single layer. This will now act as our base image. You may hide the previous 2 layers.
STAGE 2 - Adding the skull
Right, now we need to add the skull to the image and fit it to our face. The image of the skull I use in this tutorial was a skull I borrowed from the Oral Surgery department at the hospital where I work. Anyway, I opened the image in Photoshop, cropped the skull to size, then copied it into my base document.
I reduced the opacity of the skull to 50%, then hit CTRL+T to enter into transform mode. Move and resize the skull to fit your face. The best way to line this up so it is more realistic is to pay attention to key feature. The most important being the upper ridge of the eye-socket lines up with the same ridge on your face, the jawbone needs to roughly line up as well, and also make sure the teeth and nose are in roughly the right place. This may mean you need to distort the skull image quite a lot from how it originally looked, but since we wont be seeing too much of the skull it doesn’t matter if the rest of it isn’t perfect.. basically the ridges of the eyes/eyebrows, the teeth and the nose are the most important here. See below for example.
Once you are happy with the skull placement, hit enter and then set the opacity of the layer back upto 100%. Add a layer mask to the skull layer and mask out the edges around the skull. I also had to mask around the fingers as they would, in real-life(?) be obstructing the face/skull. This is what I have so far, hopefully yours will be looking something like this now.
OK, next we need to go back to our base layer, that is the composite of the first two layers, and duplicate it and drag it to the top of the layer stack. Create a layer mask on that layer and get ready to scrape away some of your skin!!
Selecting the newest layer mask, select the brush tool, medium hardness, and select black from the colour palette (remember you can switch between Black and White by pressing the “X” key). Now, when you start to paint on the face, you will see the skull layer beginning to appear, freaky huh? I find its best to completely paint out the nose and one of the eyes and of course the teeth! Another great tip to remember is to use the square brackets “[ & ]” to alter your brush size on-the-fly.
Take you time on this stage and have fun, pay particular attention to the area around the teeth and try to make the skin/teeth blend in nicely together. Hopefully your image will look something similar to this now.
Even at this stage the picture looks super gruesome already, but what kind of self-respecting zombie doesn’t have a bit of flesh-rot to really stink up the place!! This is where things get very nasty indeed.
STAGE 3 - Rips and Scars and Veins, oh my!!
OK, next you need to create another layer, name this one VEINS.
OK, here you need to load up the “Pretty Cracks & Sores” brush set we downloaded earlier. These are pretty big brushes, however we really need them to cover the whole face (we will mask out the surplus veins in a minute). Select a brush you like the look of, choose a nice dark, deep red from the colour picker (and RGB value of 74,0,0 works well) and stamp it over your face (on the new layer). Don’t worry if it looks a bit strange at the moment. Add a layer mask to this layer and use the black brush tool to delete the veins’n’stuff from areas that don’t need them (eyes, bits of skull, fingers, teeth etc). Set the layer mode to `Multiply”. Again, spend a bit of time on this to make it look badass. Once finished, right click on the layer. Select “Blending Options” and put a tick in the “Bevel & Emboss” check box, here I used the defaults but adjusted the depth a tiny bit to increase the bumpiness of the veins.
Now, you can add more layers and use more of the brushes we download earlier to add more scarring, tearing and veinage, experiment and have fun, it really is great defacing yourself or a loved one!! Remember to use separate layers for the hands, body etc.
So next is just a few more overall cosmetic changes to the image to make it darker & grittier. Basically I just add a gradient map layer (black to white), contrast/brightness layer and adjust to taste!! Now, hopefully you should be zombified up to the max. George Romero would be proud of you! R.I.P.
Rate this tutorial: 
(359 votes, average: 4.57 out of 5)
Loading …
Creating Zombie Tutorial by Mark Simms [ e-mail | Flickr | DPChalange ]
Other Great Photoshop Tutorials
Learn Photoshop In Just 2 Hours
Master The Basics Of Adobe Photoshop In Under 2 Hours With Easy To Follow Instantly Accessible Online Video Tutorials.
Photo Editing With Photoshop
Learn How To Use Adobe Photoshop To Quickly And Easily Edit Your Photos Like The Professionals.
Photoshop Video Training Tutorials
Learn How To Master Both Beginner And Advanced Photoshop Techniques In Under 2 Hours With These Easy-to-follow Photoshop Training Videos, Recorded By Adobe Certified Professionals.
See also: Photoshop Tutorials
Share your photos with our readers, make your own profile page, create blog, get unlimited storage for your photos, discuss photography equipment & techniques by joining our photo community
Print This Post | Email This Post
Great tutorial! Thank you for sharing this..
No probs, I wuld love to see other images people create using this tutorial.
http://tvlookplay.deviantart.com/art/Zombie-85818849
heres what i did X]
good one!
(Comments wont nest below this level)+1 Great tutorial still. This method could be used for so many other special effects with images.
Mark, thank you for the tutorial. Is the `tonemapping plugin available for free? Where can I download it? Thank you.
Daniella, sadly its a payware plugin.. dont fret thoughy because it isnt essential to this tutorial.
Sweet Effects. This tutorial is really well explained. keep it up. good show.
this is cool.. Gotta to try it soon!
That’s great technique! The only thing I would change is that skull. Atm it looks too clean, maybe another color filter would do the trick
Very nice tut
I learned alot!
Here’s my result:
http://img413.imageshack.us/img413/1845/pwnagephotoshopnessgr8.png
I changed the skull layer to Hard Light cause it didn’t blend in very well with the face, and it turned out to be a really good idea
Btw: that guy isn’t me
just ftr
It’s my first Photoshop Zombie ever and my god am i proud of it ^.^ Thanks for the tut
good job on the tutorial. fox: nice work man.
Thanks for all the comments guys.. I am putting another together for a similar yet altogether cooler effect, I will contact Paul to see if he is interested in posting it on this blog..
Great image FOX!! Very disturbing, which is perfect!!
Mark.. Just shoot me an email when your next tutorial is ready..
Awesome tutorial! I’m surprised at how well mine came out, considering it was one of my first serious photoshop endeavors. Check it out and let me know what you think!
http://www.geocities.com/niconc2/finished.jpg
Great tutorial, one of my favourites.
I’ll definately check into finding more of yours.
I attached my pic to the comment, it’s okay, i’m 95% happy with it, I just wished the skull was a little darker.
http://img231.imageshack.us/img231/9523/zombie2lw7.jpg
(It didn’t attach last time i sent)
That is scarry!
how can i convert my image to 16/32 bit?? I’d tried everything, but i still can’t use the tonemapping function…
can somebody help me?
please reply if you can! thank you
To convert from 8bit to 16bit, in Photoshop goto Image->mode->16bit
thats it!!
Thank you! I was wondering about this too..
Zajebiste!!
the first time ever i did sth with photoshop! great tutorial!
hey just some criticism, but I think it would look better if you got rid of the cuts and blood and whatnot on the skull since its sort of impossible for a skull to bleed lol
hey as i said on your flickr profile, these are great, I love the tutorial ^__^
http://www.the-alien.co.uk/ozombie.png
http://www.the-alien.co.uk/rhi_zombie.png
those are my first two real attempts =) I did one or two others butthey went kind of crap *eyeroll* =P
once again, your pics are ace and thanks for the tut =)
Thanks for all the great comments and sharing your creations, some outstanding work there by everyone..
Still putting together my next tut, should be ready soon..
Woot ! man that’s f****n awesome !
Keep Up The Good Work.
I’ll add myself zombifief soon
Yep nice job blah blah, only criticism is the misnomer of being labled as a zombie instead of any other evil/dark creature you appear to be
watch more zombie movies with oozing blood
u need the ooze
Actually I must disagree, a zombie, by generally received definition, is a reanimated corpse, basically a dead person that has kind of been bought back to life. Thus the person would of been in the grave for a while and a certain amount of decomposition would of occured, the chances of ANY oozing blood would be highly unlikely since it would of coagulated only hours after the original death of the person.
So I am of the thinking that my image showing rotten skin, scabbed up blood and parts of the skull showing through is closer to how a zombie would look than ones seen in films.. ANy oozing blood seen on these creatures would more likely be blood from one of their freshly killed and eaten victims, and not their own blood.
Hope this clears up this matter.
hey i think it was a little hard to understand but thanks for the free brushes!!! they are really nice maybe you should make a video of you doing the steps so people like me who are novice can better follow.
Currently working on a video tut, once its done I will stick it up on youtube and ask the site admin here to post a link.
I’m so confused without the tonemapping thing I need help
I have the skull and my picture..
and I don’t get.. it.. how it says
CTRL+T ..
I tried that.. and it didn’t do anything O.o
I need help..
These intructions are very confusing, they need to zoom in the whole.. deal..
:/
Sorry
Not at all, hopefully you will revisit this site shortly when I post the video tutorial, hopefully that will make things a lot clearer.
However, CTRL-T activates the transform mode, make sure you have the skull layer selected. WHen you enter transform mode you will see a scalable box highlight the edge of the current layer. slecting any of the boxes on the edge will allow you to resize the skull to fit the shape of the face layer.
I should of mentioned that this tutorial is aimed at “above-beginner” level, it should be accessible to anyone comfortable working with layers & masks.
and here’s my result:
http://nasza-klasa.pl/photos/230725/11_real.jpeg
I went to your DeviantArt page to download the brushes and apparently everything downloaded okay. I saved the files on my computer, tried to open them and then Photoshop opened and I can`t find the brushes. I clicked on the brushes tab on the top next to the file browser and they aren`t there.
Is there anywhere else they would be or anything else I have to do to get them? I’m new to this and I couldn’t even get passed the tonemapping section in here. Help please?
awesome tutorial
i made one
it’s not as good as yours but yeah
my zombified self
hi guys, all of you did a very good job, (awesome) i want to do my own, can anyone link me some crack image, can;t find good crack image,.. thnkx guys,..
The links to the `crack` brushes are all in the tutorial.
the link to the pretty brushes works. then I go to the person’s page who made them. once there I clicked on the link for their site to download and the site doesn’t work.. Help?
I can switch to 16-bit mode and have the tonemapping plugin installed but I got no clue how to use it.
I looked through all the filters and it’s not listed there - any ideas?
Brilliant mate, thank you for a great tutorial. I was able to download a trial version of tonemapping but they put ugly text over your image. I thought I could outsmart them by working with a massive image, but they’ve accounted for that by placing the text in multiple places. Tricky bastards
Instead I played with hue, brightness and contrast and a bunch of burn to try and get the dirty look.
As the others have said before me, it’s not as good as yours but I had fun and want to thank you for the knowledge!
It is a photo of me and I am striking the same pose as you. There can be only a master and an apprentice…
http://www.mike250.com/images/textures/michael_skull.jpg
This is so good, I learned a lot.
Heres what I came up with: http://i19.tinypic.com/4lgq3ap.jpg
I made of my 8 year ols son a zombie. Great tutorial, and it was real fun to create this!
Greetings from Belgium
http://img205.imageshack.us/my.php?image=zombieaffichenieuwkm2.jpg
Nice work everyone. Thanks for all the nice comments and emails!
my firts extreme makeover ever
gr8 tutorial!!
http://img99.imageshack.us/img99/6206/ldin4.jpg
that’s what i got.
here is mine, im pretty happy with results
http://i22.tinypic.com/2u5sv15.jpg
great tut. thnx a lot.,
and here’s my result… again
http://photos4.nasza-klasa.pl/dev14/0/003/581/0003581527.jpg
for the beginners, it is hard to perform. You didn’t give any detail about how to open, how to draw, how to change.
I couldn’t understand the second page.
Sorry you found the tutorial difficult, all the feedback I have received so far has been very positive.
I am sorry to say, but if you are not comfortable with `opening` files in photoshop then maybe you should really go back to basics before attempting a tutorial such as this, especially one that deals with alpha channels and masking.
Can someone help me with the gradient map, its the last step, either its something really simple, or something I couldn’t find… Thanks.
how can i save my picture as a jpg?
Hi, not being funny, but if you are not sure how to save as a JPG in photoshop then this tutorial may be a bit above your skill level at the moment.
Hi all,
just to let you know I have put together a 4 minute video of how this was done, its not meant to be a tutorial, merely an addition to my tutorial above, the actual time taken to create the zombie was 13 minutes, but I have sped the video up to fit inside 4 minutes.
http://youtube.com/watch?v=BTMIjvZ8DL4
thanks for the GREAT post! Very useful…
Love this tutorial.
this is how mine came out
Great tutorial. This is only my third day using photoshop, so with a little practice I’m sure i could do better. Learned a lot, though. Here’s my result.
http://www.geneseo.edu/~jrj3/zombie.jpg
This is too cool!.. but I cant get the teeth to fit “nicely” with the “living” and “dead”(wrong size and distance) but the rest fits perfectly! ^^
this is good effect in the photoshop I like it plz send some more effect in myid
Awesome tutorial! Keep on the good work!
what is tonemapping?thnx
Hey, Thanks for the Tut. I didn’t quite follow it bit for bit.. Just the basics but here is mine.
(If that dosn’t work - Link to Original: http://www.imagecross.com/myspace-image-upload-viewer-7.php?id=4167Skull.jpg)
the tutorial is good but i get stuck with the layer mask for hours, especially the second time. it never works for me.
“Set the layer mode to `Multiply”.”
I can’t seem to find how to do that, any help!?
On the layers panel, highlight the layer then click the `layer mode` drop box at the top of the layers panel - choose Overlay from in there.
Amazing!!!
I have done 3 pictures inspired by this, one im proud of, one im ashamed of, and one im semi ok with.
Sadly, they went in THAT order. My first was my fave, but i overlaid the skull, and it ruined it.
The second one turned into planet of the apes
The third one, i left the skull alone, but its color just isnt right… and im still having trouble with the scars…
great tut
wow i loved this.
mine came out REALLY good.
oops, it didnt work.
here it is:
http://i27.tinypic.com/33nc7sl.jpg
AMAZING TUTORIAL, its helped me alot!
except
i want to try another zombie looking picture, just with tonemapping.
i have no idea what i need to do or where to find it??
HELP PLEASE.
omg..
you elp me pass my photography class…
thank you so much!!!!!!!!
That’s great, glad you found it helpful.. I am working on a new tutorial now that is even cooler!! Congrats on passing your class!
This tutorial was really helpful and clear
I just downloaded a 30 day trial of photoshop and this was my first time ever using it
http://i23.photobucket.com/albums/b369/Burashidou/zombie.jpg
thanks for the tutorial, it’s great, you give me good ideas, keep working on that to share with us, again thanks
loved the tutorial helped alot.im new to photoshop so i felt it didnt match the ones the rest did but cant blame a guy for trying now can you.
http://link.imgshare.us/9ljJ07
Thank you for this Tut,I had a certain urge to do something like this and this really helps. On top of what you’ve outlined here, I’ve gotten rid of my pupils, and also some other stuff.
Pretty awesome tutorial, there was only one or two things I didn’t understand or follow, but here’s the end result!
http://img136.imageshack.us/my.php?image=saaczombieid8.jpg
Where do you get that tonemapping filter?
i like your tutorial and must admit that it has brought some interesting new things to my attention…keep up the good work
this is my first attempt of creating this kind of a zombie not good as it could be but still it came out pretty fine
URI
Mark,
I bought CS3 earlier this year and this is the first time that I’ve come to use it, tonight.
Good tutorial, just wish I could do it in 13 mins!!
I reckon an hour or so, before I can get it to look good. Fingers crossed i can get it done for tomorrow!
woooop wooooop!
spylad
thanks - made this one now…
http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?pid=1426378&l=19429&id=556931166
andy
Very cool tutorial. Enjoyed the process a lot.
here is mine
THnx for the tutorial, really helped me a lot
Zombie me;
http://img259.imageshack.us/my.php?image=alihalowbi7.jpg
http://s114.photobucket.com/albums/n249/victorthecrab/?action=view¤t=SuleymanMugShotUD.jpg
thats what i got
join all the amazed company)) i’ll be trying))
Hey really nice tutorial. I tried it out, but I just don’t have a really good picture of a skull. I can’t find any good ones in Google
So if theres anyone who have a good one pls link 
Hey! I found a skull (after searhing for skulls in other languages :/ )
I had some problems with making the pretty cuts and cracks look real, so I only used some smaller veins and cracks.
Anyway this is what mine came out like
http://img301.imageshack.us/img301/8517/skullme6.jpg
Briliant…, I will learn it…
How do you do tonemapping on CS3?
Goto: http://www.hdrsoft.com , Tutorials
Hey, which version of photoshop do i need for this? and do i just google random skulls?
I have problem using quick mask tool, when i brush with black it masks but when i brush with white nothing happens
http://chomikuj.pl/Minimus/R*c3*b3*c5*bcne/Photoshop+-+brushe
The “Pretty” free brush collection…
Great tutorial! Thank you!
here’s mine:
http://forums.bradbarnett.net/showpost.php?p=5862543&postcount=2
Nice tutorial, I chose Barack Obama for mine (view at your own discretion)
http://i978.photobucket.com/albums/ae265/Bl4ke360/obamalives.jpg
very very good,,,,,,,,,
thank’s for tutorial
that stuff was pretty cool but i think it could of been better thats all im sayin
Here is mine
http://i38.tinypic.com/65cxf6.jpg
Thanks, took your advice and expanded.
Thanks let me know what you all think, I did a few.
http://i45.photobucket.com/albums/f83/jeremy_james_richards/myvamp.jpg
http://i45.photobucket.com/albums/f83/jeremy_james_richards/masked.jpg
http://i45.photobucket.com/albums/f83/jeremy_james_richards/zombie2.jpg
http://i45.photobucket.com/albums/f83/jeremy_james_richards/DSC01415122.jpg
woah buddy! Everyone did a great job. I’m a little envious.:)
here’s mine.
Thanks for the great tutorial, it was the first time I ever did anything else with PS than zit-removal…
http://twitpic.com/mvt0g
So your tutorial was AWESOME!!! I didn’t use the tonemapping filter, but I think it still came out pretty good. The link to the pretty cuts and scraps was 404.
I used what I could find on deviantart, and am still pleased. Here is a link to my picture. Thanks again for this awesome tut.
-Psyann
http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2554/4058612673_9748d7ab10_b.jpg
Fantastic tutorial. Never done anything like it before in PS. I think I did well. What you think?
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v95/ferball/zombiedamien2copy.jpg