The Creation of “Mechanical Man” Photo Manipulation in Photoshop

In this tutorial, I will show you the process of creating this “Mechanical Man” digital art in Photoshop. We will use a number of photo manipulation techniques to merge several objects into one piece, and apply image adjustments to fine-tune each of the objects to achieve the desired effect.

This is an immediate level tutorial and some steps can be a little tricky, have a try!

Note: The Photoshop tutorial is done in CS6 – therefore some screenshot may have slighting different layout as in the earlier version. Some brushes are exclusive to Photoshop CS6.

Here is a preview of the final effect I have for this tutorial: (click to enlarge)

mechanical man flatten 550x332 The Creation of Mechanical Man Photo Manipulation in Photoshop

OK Let’s get started!

To complete this tutorial, you will need the following stocks:

Model

Old factory stock 1

Old factory stock 2

Abstract Brushset (pick a few sets from the list)

Note: This tutorial utilises heavily on layer mask techiques – if you have any difficulty with layer mask, please check out this video tutorial below:

Step 1

Create a new document sized 1400px * 800px with white background. Load the model stock into Photoshop and select the facial area as shown below:

1 sel 535x700 The Creation of Mechanical Man Photo Manipulation in Photoshop

Copy and paste the selection over to our document, reduce its size and place it at the center of the canvas:

1 paste1 550x300 The Creation of Mechanical Man Photo Manipulation in Photoshop

Apply the following Unsharp Mask filtter settings to sharpen this face layer a little:

1 unsharp The Creation of Mechanical Man Photo Manipulation in Photoshop

Use the eraser tool to fade the edges of the face as shown below:

1 erase1 550x345 The Creation of Mechanical Man Photo Manipulation in Photoshop

Add the following 2 adjustment layers as clipping mask to the face layer:

Black and White

1 bw1 The Creation of Mechanical Man Photo Manipulation in Photoshop

Set the layer blending mode of this black and white adjustment layer to “Hard Light”:

1 hard light 550x394 The Creation of Mechanical Man Photo Manipulation in Photoshop

Then add the following layer mask on this black and white adjustment layer:

1 bw mask 550x498 The Creation of Mechanical Man Photo Manipulation in Photoshop

Curves

1 curves The Creation of Mechanical Man Photo Manipulation in Photoshop

and here is the effect so far:

1 effect1 550x371 The Creation of Mechanical Man Photo Manipulation in Photoshop

Step 2

We will starting the mechanical parts into the image in the step. Load the “Factory stock 1″ image into Photoshop and select the pipe on the top:

2 sel1 550x272 The Creation of Mechanical Man Photo Manipulation in Photoshop

Copy and paste the selection over to our image and adjust its size as shown below:

2 attach 550x433 The Creation of Mechanical Man Photo Manipulation in Photoshop

Add the following 2 adjustment layers as clipping mask to this new pipe layer:

Black and White

2 bw1 The Creation of Mechanical Man Photo Manipulation in Photoshop

Levels

2 lvs1 The Creation of Mechanical Man Photo Manipulation in Photoshop

and here is your effect so far:

2 effect1 550x444 The Creation of Mechanical Man Photo Manipulation in Photoshop

Repeat the above steps and add another pipe on top: (with a different angle)

2 dup 550x449 The Creation of Mechanical Man Photo Manipulation in Photoshop

Step 3

We will keep adding more mechanical parts to the image. Select this round piece from the “Factory stock 1″ image:

3 sel1 550x440 The Creation of Mechanical Man Photo Manipulation in Photoshop

Copy and paste the selection over to our document, resize and place it onto the following position:

3 paste1 550x259 The Creation of Mechanical Man Photo Manipulation in Photoshop

Add the following 2 adjustment layers as clipping mask to it:

Black and White

3 bw The Creation of Mechanical Man Photo Manipulation in Photoshop

Levels

3 lvs The Creation of Mechanical Man Photo Manipulation in Photoshop

and here is the effect you will have so far:

3 effect1 550x354 The Creation of Mechanical Man Photo Manipulation in Photoshop

Repeat the above step and add more of these mechanical pieces to our image – use free transform tool to rotate and resize the pieces as you see fit.

You will aim to achieve the following effect:

3 dup 550x342 The Creation of Mechanical Man Photo Manipulation in Photoshop

Step 4

We will add more mechanical piece into the image. Load the “Factory stock 2″ image into Photoshop and select the bottom one as shown below:

4 sel 550x436 The Creation of Mechanical Man Photo Manipulation in Photoshop

Copy and paste the selection over to our image, place the new layer below the face layer and use a cloud or smoke brush (you should find lots of them on Google) as eraser, remove portions of it as shown below:

4 erase1 550x381 The Creation of Mechanical Man Photo Manipulation in Photoshop

Optionally, you can a few low visibility meters to the image (set layer opacity to around 20%):

4 more clocks 550x267 The Creation of Mechanical Man Photo Manipulation in Photoshop

Step 5

We’re almost done! For final touches, we can add a few brush patterns below the face with the abstract brush sets you downloaded:

5 pattern 550x274 The Creation of Mechanical Man Photo Manipulation in Photoshop

The strokes on the right were added with a 20px Round Point Stiff brush:

5 brush 550x259 The Creation of Mechanical Man Photo Manipulation in Photoshop

and erase parts of it with the eraser tool:

5 erase The Creation of Mechanical Man Photo Manipulation in Photoshop

I further added the colour balance of this image with a few colour balance and curves adjustment layers, and here is my final effect: (click to enlarge)

mechanical man flatten 550x332 The Creation of Mechanical Man Photo Manipulation in Photoshop

You can check out the following video tutorial on how to add colours with adjustment layers:

That’s it for this tutorial! Hope you enjoy going through it and find it useful. Drop me a comment below if you have any question.

Till next time, have a great day!

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