I know I’ve already showed you guys a way to Burn things in Photoshop, but, that was with the Burn tool, which is objectively the ‘easy’ way to add that effect to your pictures.
But, you guys have come a long way since the first few tutorials, and with Halloween coming up, I thought now would be a great time to introduce you to the more complicated way to burn your pictures. This way I’m going to show you allows you to be more precise in your burning, which can be extremely helpful if you’re trying to edit a more detailed photo.
Step 1
As always, we’ll want to start with a brand new PHSH document and an image. I didn’t want to complicate things too much for the purposes of the tutorial, so I chose a simple building.
You can, of course, choose whatever kind of picture you’d like: the image above, a different kind of building, an ex’s face, a car, animal, etc. Whatever floats your boat! This effect should work with any kind of picture.
Once you’ve selected the picture you want to use, we’re going to need to make a Group. To do this, go down to the Layers panel and select the Group icon.
Next, we’re going to need to make a selection of the subject of the image. There’s a couple different ways to do this, so I will say to do whichever one you’re most comfortable with. For me, this means using the Quick Select tool and dragging it around the picture until everything I want is inside the dotted lines. For my specific picture, that’s just going to be the front of the building.
Now, we’re going to add a Layer Mask to the Group. To do this, go down to the bottom of the Layers Panel, and then click on the square that has a black circle in the middle of it. (This is the Layer Mask button)
The Layer Mask should only take on the shape of what you’ve selected. If it doesn’t, deselect (or hit CTRL + Z to Undo the last action) and try selecting the area and creating the Layer Mask again.
If you’re also not sure whether or not you’ve successfully created a Layer Mask because the thumbnail didn’t come up, you can go up to the top menu and then select Layer, then scroll down to Layer Mask and click the Reveal All option. This should make the thumbnail show up in the Layers panel, if it wasn’t already.
Step 2
Once that’s done, we’re going to start adding the ‘burn’ to the picture, which means we’re going to be playing around with the colours.
Before we do this, I’d recommend making a copy of your picture as-is, just in case you mess up/don’t like how things turn out/get confused and need a reminder of what the original looked like.
First thing we’re going to do, is go to Adjustments (which should be sitting on top of your Layers Panel) and add a Black and White Gradient Map and set it to 90% Opacity. The Gradient Map should be the last button in the last row, and looks like a gradual black to white square.
If, like me, your Gradient Map turned your Layer Mask the wrong colour, don’t panic! It applied the last/current colour in your Colour Swatches. (The ones showing in the swatches on the left-hand side at the very bottom of the Tool menu)
All you have to do to change this, is click the drop-down arrow next to the gradient that showed up in the Properties box, and then click a black to white gradient from the list.
Then, we’re going to add a Brightness/Contrast Adjustment (the sun looking icon in the Adjustments panel) and set the Brightness to -50 and the Contrast to 50.
Then we’re going to add a Curves adjustment (the 3rd icon in the Adjustment panel, that looks like an ‘s’ on a graph). The Curves adjustment values you change will depend on the initial colours of your picture, so if at the end things don’t look quite right, you can come back to this panel and re-adjust the values to see if it helps.
And finally, we’re going to add another Brightness/Contrast adjustment with the values of:
Brightness: -40
Contrast: 100
Once those are done, the picture should look like a higher contrasted black and white of the original.
Step 3
Create a new Group and name it something appropriate like Burn, Soot, Ash, Char, etc. And drop the first Group we made inside it.
Next, add a Layer Mask to the new group and fill it with Black. You might be able to do this by simply pressing CTRL + I on your keyboard. If not, you can Invert the colours by right-clicking and selecting the Invert Colour option.
Step 4
Now comes the fun part! We’re going to use any kind of Brush you want, and use it to brush the Layer Mask over any/every area of the picture you want to appear ashy/charred/burned. Make sure your brush colour is set to White, otherwise it won’t work.
You might find it helpful to separate the different areas of char into their own Groups. As long as you keep them all under the umbrella Char group, the brushing will work to uncover the black and white. Breaking them into different groups can be helpful if you uncover part of the mask where you didn’t want it and go to Erase. If it’s close to another area, you’ll end up erasing that part, as well, whereas if it’s in it’s own group, other parts won’t be affected.
Step 5 (Optional)
If you chose a picture with a smooth surface, (like a person’s skin) you can make the burn look more realistic by adding some texture to it!
To add texture, you can use any picture of a plain textured surface you may have, or, go to Filter – Texture and then click on the texture you’d like to add.
If using the picture method:
Place and re-size the textured image to fit the confines of your picture. You’ll also want to add it to whichever Group corresponds to the area you’re texturing. (Just so things don’t get confusing)
Once you’ve got it in the correct position, you’ll want to make it black and white. To do this, go up to Image – Adjustments – Black and White.
Next, you’re going to adjust the image’s Brightness and Contrast. The exact values will depend on the colours of your own image, but I’d recommend starting with a Brightness of -93 and Contrast of 100.
You’re also going to want to change the texture Layer from Normal to Overlay, so you can see the part of the image it’s over better. You’ll want to use Overlay here instead of Screen, because Overlay often darkens images, and Screen tends to lighten them. If however, they look the same to you, or if for some reason they are inverted (Screen makes the texture darker) use whichever one you prefer.
Lastly, you’ll need to repeat the texture overlay for every part of the image you darkened with the brush.
If you picked a picture that had a lot of texture already, like I did, you can go ahead and save your project once you’re happy with the results from Step 4.
And that’s it!
I hope you enjoyed this tutorial, and if you’re looking at your finished image and feeling like something is ‘missing’, don’t worry – the next tutorial I show you will be an effect that builds on this one.
Like this tutorial? Check out more here!
If you noticed my Layers panel has an extra layer, this is because I created 2 tear drop shapes. The first one I forgot to fill with white, and then wondered why Step 3 wasn’t working. I had to go back and re-draw the tear, so it will be a different shape for the rest of the tutorial. Also see? Even us pros mess up!
The option Merge Layers shouldn’t be greyed out if you have both selected. My option is greyed out because my computer is dumb sometimes and won’t show a click drop-down menu when I want it to. The picture above is my options while only having 1 layer selected.
Gradient Editor
Double click Colour Stop to bring up Colour Picker
