In this tutorial I'll show you how to use subtle retouch techniques to give an authentic vampire/zombie/corpse effect to a portrait photo.
To begin we'll smooth the skin tones and sharpen the details of the face.
Open the image in Photoshop and make two copies of the Background layer.
Select the middle layer, and go to Filter> Blur> Surface blur.
Adjust the sliders so that skin is blurred, but the features like eyes and nose still have definition, then click OK.
Click on the layer mask button at the bottom of the layers panel.
With the layer mask selected, fill the image with black to mask out the blur, then use a white brush to re-apply it to just the skin areas.
Set the layer's opacity to 75%.
Now select the top layer and go to Filter> Other> High Pass.
Set the slider to around 2 pixels.
Change this layer's blending mode to Linear Light.
Next we will dull the skin colour by using a Black and White adjustment layer.
Click on the adjustment layers button at the bottom of the layers panel, and choose Black and White.
Set the Opacity to 65% so that some colour still shows through.
By using a Black and White adjustment layer instead of just desaturating the whole image, you can use the sliders to adjust the brightness of each individual colour.
You can either choose a suitable preset from the dropdown bar, or play with the sliders until you find a result you are happy with.
Next add a Curves adjustment layer and use a couple of points on the chart to boost the contrast, as shown above.
Next we'll do some shading around the eyes in a new layer, below the Curves layer.
Set the new new layer's blending mode to Overlay.
Then take a small black 0% hard brush set to Darken, and it's Opacity at 15%.
Paint around the eyes a few times with varying brush sizes to build up a dark colour.
Then add another Overlay layer for the face shading.
Increase the brush size and go over the jaw area a couple of times.
And use a smaller brush to darken the edges of the nostrils, and the corners of the mouth.
Next we will redden the eyes.
Add another new layer set to Overlay, and 75% Opacity.
This time set the brush's opacity to 30% and choose a dark red colour.
Use a tiny brush to go around the edges of each eye, then a larger brush to go over the area again.
Now we'll lighten the irises. Select the bottom layer...
...and select the Dodge tool set to Highlights and 5% Exposure.
With the brush slightly smaller than the width of the iris, paint over it a few times to lighten it.
Finally we'll give the image a slight blue tint to cool the colours.
Add a Photo Filter adjustment layer above all the other layers.
Use Cooling Filter (82) with the Density set to 5%.
Your layers panel should end up looking like the image above.
And here is the final outcome.
