TUTORIAL: How to make a monochrome pic a la Che Guevara
You know the timeless portrait of Che Guevara, the famous guerrilla leader and revolutionary? Well, I guess it's time we superimposed someone over top of him.
You can either take the already-stylized picture of Che off the Internet (like this one), or do it yourself with the original black-and-white photo. I'll start off with the original picture for the sake of this tutorial.
USE THIS PICTURE AND FOLLOW ALONG:
1) Paste the black-and-white photo of Che into a new Photoshop document. You might want to duplicate the layer it's on (Ctrl + J) and work with the duplicate in case you make a mistake.
2) Go to Filter > Artistic > Cutout. There, adjust the settings to below:
Number of Levels: 2
Edge Simplicity: 3
Edge Fidelity: 3
3) Go to Enhance > Adjust LIghting > Levels (or press Ctrl + L). The Levels dialog box should pop up. In the Input Levels box, drag the black and white slider to the middle. This gets rid of all of the gray so that the image will be fully rendered in black-and-white.
4) Go to Filter > Artistic > Paint Daubs, and, depending on your image, choose something similar to these settings:
Brush Size: 8
Sharpness: 0
Brush Type: Simple
6) To smooth the edges further, go to Filter > Artistic > Palette Knife, and choose something similar to these settings:
Stroke Size: 5
Stroke Detail: 3;
Softness: 5
We now have our very own Che Guevara monochrome from scratch! Now, time to pick a suitable face.
7) Go onto Google and search for the face that you want to go over top of Che's. Make sure that he/she is facing the camera as directly as possible. Go and paste this into the current document you have of Che.
8) Use whatever tools necessary to cut out the face -- the Magic Wand, Eraser, and Magic Eraser tools all are options. When finished, press Ctrl + Shift + U to desaturate the image.
Now repeat steps 1-6 again, but with the face this time.
If you find that the image is too dark, use the Dodge Tool (O) to brighten up dark spots. Ideal areas to use the dodge tool are the cheeks, lips, the tip of the nose, and the forehead. If it is still too dark, use Levels and enhance the lights of the image somewhat by dragging the white slider a bit to the left.
9) Make a new layer by pressing the 'New Layer' button or by hitting Ctrl + Shift + N. Make the entire layer red by using the Paint Bucket tool (K). Drag this red layer down to the very bottom of the Layers panel (if you don't have it open, go to Window and check 'Layers'.
10) On the 'Che' Layer, erase the eyes, nose, and mouth of Che Guevara. Keep any shadows on the face.
11) Change the blending modes of the face and Che to "Multiply".
12) FINISH!
added pic to highlight steps. Hope I didn't leave out anything! :)
