Make A Scary Alley Scene With A Zombie In Photoshop

While surfing I came across this beautiful stock of an alley. And after some deliberation I decided that i will go for a scary mood in the manipulation. Hence I first made dressed the alley so that it gave a spooky and rotten feel. Then I added a zombie to make it scary. I made the scene high contrast to give a dramatic feel. Here is a preview of the final version.

Preview

Before we start grab these amazing resources :

• Alley
• Cracks
• Vintage Car
• Bottle
• Zombie by Nicole
• Dried Blood Brush Pack

1. Adjust the lighting of the scene

In this layer we will adjust the lightning of the scene and make the contrast a little high to give it a sharp dramatic effect. Go to Image > adjustments > shadow/highlights. On the pop up menu click on ‘Show More Options‘ and add the following settings :

Next we need to add a brightness/contrast layer by clicking on Layer> New Adjustment Layer> Brightness/Contrast.Check ‘Use previous layer to create clipping mask‘ hit OK. Now set Brightness to +50 and Contrast to +100. Similarly, add a ‘Hue/Saturation‘ Layer with clipping mask checked. Here we will be doing a bit of adjustment so follow closely. We need to select different Hues from the drop down and adjust their settings individually without disturbing the master settings.

• Red » Hue 0, Saturation -58, lightness 0

• Yellow » Hue +28, Saturation -18, lightness +21

• Green » Hue -100,Saturation 0,lightness -30

Once done you would have something like this with you.

2. Crack the ground

Add the cracks stock image to the manipulation and desaturate it (Ctrl+Shift+U). We desaturate it as we need only the texture and not its color. After this drag this layer between the brightness layer and the alley layer. Make sure that all the three layers Hue/Saturation, Brightness/Contrast and Crack Layer are all in clipping mask mode for the Alley Layer.

3. Map the cracks to the road

Now press Ctrl+T to enter free transform and right click on the selected portion and select distort.Now modify the perspective such that the crack resembles the shape of the road. You will also need to make it wide. If it becomes wider then the road don’t worry use the eraser tool to remove the extra road. Once done change the crack layer’s blend mode to Overlay.You should have something like this by now.

Tip : To create a clipping mask use Alt+ click between the two layers. The upper layer becomes a clipping mask to the lower layer.

4. Add the Car

Now it time to add the car, the first thing we need to do is extract the car from the background. This should be pretty simple considering the background is totally white. I used the magic wand to select the background and remove it. To check other methods of selecting an object click here.

Now we need to mask the tires and tilt it to the right using the Free Transform (Ctrl+T). Once Tilted move it down till the right most portion of the car touches the road.

Also make sure that the other side of the car is touching the wall so that it looks like it leans of the wall.

5. Match the Car with the Scene

As you might have noticed the car is too bright and doesn’t match the alley. So add a new brightness/contrast adjustment layer with clipping mask option selected. Use the following settings Brightness -100 and Contrast -20. Also we need to add a shadow to the car. For this we will add a layer below the Car layer and use a soft brush of 20px and paint a horizontal shadow. Notice how the shadow climbs the wall and paint it accordingly; a little on the wall to complete the leaning effect. Once done change the blend mode of shadow layer to overlay and reduce the opacity to 70%. Group all the car layers in a group called Car and you will have something like this.

6. Put some Bottles.

We will be adding two bottles one vertical and one horizontal to give a extra feel of a dirty alley. To do so first extract the bottle and place two bottles opposite to car.

Mask the unnecessary portion of the horizontal bottle using Layer Mask. Add a brightness/contrast adjustment layer to the bottle layers too. Use following settings Brightness -50 and Contrast 0.

Add a shadow layer below the bottle layer and using a 3px soft brush paint a thin layer below the horizontal bottle. Change the blend mode of the layer to overlay and opacity to 50%.

7. Paint the walls with dried blood

Open the dried blood brush pack and add a splatter to the left hand wall with #43110e color . Adjust the perspective by using free transform>distort and add a brightness/contrast adjustment layer with clipping mask on and following settings brightness -21 and contrast +28. Put these layers into a single group called ‘Wall Marks’.

8. Spill some dried blood on the road

As in the above step we need to follow the same step here with same settings. Only difference will be that the splatter should be rather large since we need the hand of the zombie to ultimately fuse into the blood pool.Put these layer into a single group called ‘Alley Marks’.

9. Extract the zombie

Now we come to the difficult part of extracting the zombie from it stock. To learn how to extract the zombie refer to this tutorial. I used the quick selection tool with varying sizes along with channels.

Once done add the zombie to the front portion of the road above the ‘Alley Marks’ group. Adjust the size of the zombie according to whatever suits, and adjust the body so that its left hand comes right on top of the splatter.

10. Scar the zombie

To do this we need to open the brush pack and choose appropriate brushes to add to the body. I added an elongated scar to the left hand and one to the head and the other hand each. Keep the color of the brush a little dark, I used #210c0c. We also need to blend the left hand of zombie with blood puddle I used #552f2a and a small soft brush and slowly painted over the hand and fused it with the puddle. Make sure that all the scars are on their own layer.

11. Make the zombie look scary

To make the zombie a little more scary we will make it a shade darker.We will first adjust the shadow/highlights of the zombie by selecting the zombie layer and clicking on image>adjustments>shadow/highlights and use the following settings.

Next add a brightness/contrast adjustment layer to the zombie with following settings brightness -45 and contrast +100. Make sure that the layer and all subsequent scar layers till the zombie layer are used as clipping mask as shown.

You will now have something like this:

12. Make those eyes Red

To make the eyes more fleshy and scary select the outline of the eye using pen tool or the lasso tool. Then fill this selection with white color and reduce the opacity of this layer to 20% and the blending mode to softlight. Next select the eye balls using the same technique and make them red in color. Make the blend mode as Hard Light and reduce opacity to 50%. That should definitely make the eyes pop!

13. Give zombie its own shadow

Right the zombie is not looking real that is because its not casting any shadow! To cast a shadow simply Ctrl+Click on the thumbnail of the zombie layer to select the outline of the extracted zombie. Now with the silhouette of the zombie selected create a new layer and fill it with black. Bring the opacity down to 60% and the blend mode to multiply. Now go to edit>transform>flip vertical. Hit Ctrl+T and select distort after right clicking. Now match the perspective of the shadow with the ground.

14. Introduce some Smokey Effect

Finally to finish the manipulation on top with a tinge of smokey effect add a layer to the top with rendered clouds. To do this make a new new layer(Ctrl+Shift+N) and select the foreground and background colors as white and black. Now go to filter>render>clouds. Reduce the opacity of this layer to 50% and blend mode to overlay. Finally add a layer mask and hide the portions of cloud visible on the upper portions of the walls. And we are Done!