Making Dark, Gritty Photos in Photoshop

[K4rMa]

In today's Photoshop tutorial, you'll be learning a simple method of giving everyday photos a scary, gritty effect. This photo effect is extremely versatile, and can be used to come up with all sorts of results.

 

Step 1. Make sure you start with a photo that has lots of texture. Images that are mostly smooth textures (like water) probably will not become gritty or scary looking,

 

 

The first thing we need to do is change your photo into a black and white. You can do this by opening your photo in photoshop and going to Enhance> Convert to Black and White. If your image already is, then yay for you! Skip to Step 2.

 

 

Step 2. Now we will give your photo a grittier look. Apply Photoshop's Unsharp Mask by going to Enhance> Unsharp Mask. In the option window that pops up, play with the settings until you have a look you're happy with. It should increase the contrast and give it a gritty look, but make sure that you DON'T LOSE DETAILS. This is very important! If some areas of the photo are completely white or completely black where they shouldn't be, lower the Radius amount.

 

 

Step 3. Create a new blank layer and fill it with a warm medium brown.

 

 

Set the blending mode of the brown layer in the Layers Palette to "Color Burn".

 

 

Step 4. Photoshop's "Color Burn" blending mode can create very dramatic effects, but you will also probably lose some of the details in your photo in shadows. To fix this, you can use the Dodge tool to lighten specific area of your image.

 

Choose the Dodge Brush (found in the lower left corner of Photoshop's interface). Choose a soft round brush, set the Range to "Shadows" and the Exposure to 10%.

 

 

With the brown color layer still selected, use the tool to go over shadow areas to bring out details that may have been lost. Also use the tool on any areas that you'd like to be especially bright, like eyes. After i had used the tool, my brown layer looked something like this.

 

 

And my overall image looked like this.

 

 

Here is the image before and after I used the dodge tool, just to give you an idea of the effect the tool can have.

 

 

And here are the Original and Final Images

 

 

Depending on the photo, this tutorial will not necessarily create a menacing effect. Here are some other before and afters using this effect.

 

 

 

 

Credits for sharing ~~>  ginismagic