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Adding Blood to Your Photos

Adding Blood to Your Photos

 

BOOM! Headshot! Or in the case of the following images, chest shot. Either way, we get another Photoshop tutorial and a dead Viper, courtesy of forum Officer Fled74! I find this is a very useful tutorial, and something I know a lot of people struggle with. Fled74 makes it seem easy! And I think if you follow the carefully laid out steps, you’ll start finding it a lot easier, too!

“First off, let me apologise for the long delay in creating this tutorial. I blame Max Payne 3 and Grand Theft Auto 4 for being too damn addictive.

Anyway, here goes.

Blood has always been a distasteful subject, but during the course of diorama photography and the pursuit of greater realism, we may eventually encounter dio situations where bloodshed is necessary.

Applying actual “blood” (Halloween blood or similar) to your diorama is certainly effective, but not everyone is willing to potentially stain a prized dio piece or figure. Also, blood spray is a very difficult effect to achieve “in camera” at such a small scale.
This is where programs such as Photoshop come in.

There are many websites that offer free downloadable user-made Photoshop brushes (Google will help you find them), but for this tutorial I chose to make my own image overlays instead:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I made my own “blood mix” by blending Halloween fake blood with red and black acrylic paint.

I loaded an old 1/3 inch flat brush with the mix and let it drip onto a sheet of white styrene plastic. I achieved the spatter effect by blowing the large droplets around through a drinking straw, and by raking a toothpick across the brush bristles.

Feel free to use these images, but please don’t upload them elsewhere.

Please note that I am no Photoshop guru, and other people may have their own way of doing things. However, I find that these techniques work well for me.

And remember – SAVE OFTEN.

1. I’ll start with an image some of you may be familiar with – a similar pic I took was our site banner image a few months ago.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

2. Once your image is cropped and resized, open one of the blood pics.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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About Ian Walker

Just a stay at home dad, part time internet troll, and amateur photographer, with delusions of grandeur and a love for 1:18th scale toys.

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