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As I developed the spec for my book Photoshop For Right Brainers: The Art Of Photo Manipulation, I found out something interesting about myself. As I began designing art and techniques, putting them into an outline that would eventually become the book, I found that lurking somewhere in the musty recesses of my brain was a twisted, darker version of myself that translated to the work I was developing. As I looked at the finished outline I found that several – over half in fact – of the book's techniques were going to be rather "dark"; creepy effects that I found fascinating (but may not be to everyone in my target audience). Thanks to some expert tact on my editor's part, the book turned out far more "well rounded" than a Photoshop Creepfest, although some of those darker pieces and how-to-do-them did make it into the pages.
One of my favorite techniques in the book involved taking a photo of my daughter and turning her into something that resembled the creepy girl from the movie The Ring. To this day, my wife has a fit about that photo, although my daughter loved it. Something about that image in the movie of the girl crawling out of the TV just brought the hackles up on my neck. I'm not sure if it has something to do with the concept of merging innocence with evil or if it's just plain freaky, but that really bugged me out. Ever since I've found myself attempting to duplicate that effect.
For this tutorial I want to revisit that effect, using three photos to create the final piece. This is just one of many variations Photoshop is capable of – the decision of whether the end piece is successful or not is up to the artist. That being said, here is another way of turning an innocent photo into something… well… diabolical.
All three photos I'm going to use are available on Photos.com. I'll start with a shot of a child. I think the eyes and half-smile expression of this shot will work well for the effect I'm looking for.
As is my habit, duplicate the background layer to save the original.
Although the image already doesn't have much color, reduce it even more with a Hue/Saturation adjustment layer. I'm going to alter the hue as well as reduce the saturation to give it a bit of an "unreal" feel.
 
A Levels adjustment layer will help darken the photo a bit. I'm just going to move the center RGB slider to the right, nearly to the edge but not quite.
 
A sure-fire way to insinuate wickedness is to alter the eyes. As you can see, the Levels adjustment darkened them quite a bit, nearly to black. Since I used an Adjustment Layer, I'll simply paint over the eyes in the mask with Black to reveal the lighter version in the layer beneath.
I'm going to tweak the Hue/Saturation adjustment layer again, as I want to bring in a somewhat more natural skin tone. It's just a matter of personal taste. That's starting to look a bit wicked. We still have a way to go before I'm happy, though.
 
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