Stylish Photo Edit using Photoshop

Step 1:

Firstly start by finding a nice stock photo, a man or a woman. I got my stock photo from DeviantART, you can get it from here.

Now open up your stock photo in Photoshop. After I opened my stock photo I resized it to 70-80% of it's original size. (Image > Image Size…)

Step 2:

After you've got your stock photo ready, you can start editting and adjusting.

Start by sharpening your image, then fading the sharpen if necesary. (Filter > Sharpen > Sharpen, Edit > Fade Sharpen.)

Now duplicate your main/Background layer and apply Filter > Blur > Gaussian Blur, use a radius of about 1.5-3.5, then change the layer mode to Overlay and lower the opacity if you think it needs it, which it probably will. I used an opacity of 30-50%.

Step 3:

Now let's make some more image adjustments.

Start by brightening up the image with an adjustment layer, you can make a Brightness/Contrast layer by going to Layer > New Adjustment Layer > Brightness/Contrast …, you can use similar settings to mine:

That will have given the entire image a very nice, dark-contrast look.

Step 4:

Again with the adjustment layers, make a Gradient Map adjustment layer by going to Layer > New Adjustment Layer > Gradient Map…, use similar settings as mine:

Now you'll have a very weird looking image, but don't worry. Change the layer mode for your Gradient Map layer to Lighten, and lower the opacity of the layer to 10-20%.

Step 5:

Firstly, download this brush file, and load it into your Photoshop. After loading your brush, create a new layer, size your brush down a fair bit and paint a splat on the canvas.

Note that after I brushed my splat on my canvas I erased a few corners and applied Filter > Blur > Gaussian Blur.

Again with the splat brush, brush again in the same corner with a differnet part of the brush, use white.

One last time, brush a splat on the canvas using a bright pink color.

Step 6:

Pretty much the last thing I added for this effect was a bright-pink flare kind of thing. I did this by first creating a new layer, then making a bright pink to black radial gradient inside of the layer.

Changing the layer mode for your gradient layer to Screen will get you an effect like this:

Also try out the layer modes Lighten, Color Dodge, Linear Dodge.

Thanks for reading the tutorial, we hope it helped you out.