B Black

By DillDoe | February 11, 2007

It’s February, Black History Month!
(or is it African American History Month?)
What better way to celebrate it than being Black!

Can you guess who this is?

I’m gonna show you how to make yourself Black in Photoshop, quickly!
Intro

First you must know this is more of a Caricature since it emphasizes more on stereotypical features.

What stereotype(s) you ask.
Well bigger nose & lips, dark skin, curly hair, etc..

While some are true, not all share the same characteristics. This is done to drastically change the features of the original subject and leave no mistake that its a black man.

So enough blabbing on with the tutorials!

Step 1.

Open your photo in Photoshop. Create a snapshot in history to speed things up (you’ll see later) and select it for history brush (just click the box to the left of it, not the snapshot itself.)

Yup, in case you haven’t figured it out, that’s Tom Cruise.

Step 2.

Lasso the exposed skin. Don’t have to be neat, you can clean it up later with the history brush (see I told you it’ll speed things up!)

Step 3.

Go to Image > Adjustment > Variation

Give your subject a nice deep tan (lol)

You want to focus on darker, reds and blues to darken the subject. Make sure you move the slidebar closer to fine to gradually change the photo.

Step 4.

Create Snapshot. With the history brush on the original Snapshot, restore the eyes and the background that was included when you did your lasso.

Step 5.

Create another snapshot.

Time to create the ‘Black’ features.

Using the Liquify tool (Filter > Liquify) we want to enlarge the nose, mouth and cheek bones.

Using the finger looking tool (spreader?) pull the nose wider. Use the expand tool (expanding bubble looking thing) to enlarge the lips, bridge of the nose and the cheekbones.

Step 6.

Time to add the afro. Using the ‘Hair’ style brush (tutorial can be found here)

You want the back color to be the highlight of your subject’s hair.

You can paint the hair on a new layer or create another snapshot (incase you make a mistake)

And you’re done!

Quick and dirty way to go from white to black. Not claiming this is the official method, just one I discovered to allow me to quickly make someone black.

Post your comments, suggestions and/or chop!

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