Making Blood with Photoshop

Last month I wrote a tutorial on how to remove a digit from a hand, this month I thought I’d show you how to add some blood to this picture. This isn’t the only way you can make blood and I’m sure other people have other ideas. Treat this more of a stepping stone on the way to creating the effect you want.

Step 1 – follow last month tutorial on how to remove a finger, then come back here…! 😀

Step 2 – We now want to make a red puddle under the finger and hand, this is a very basic blood splat that we will improve. First make a new Layer under the finger layer, name this Layer Blood. Then Select the Brush Tool and change the hardness to 0%, set the Foreground Colour to Red (#ff0000).

Step 3 – We now want to add a Layer Mask to the Blood Layer(Layer>Layer Mask>Reveal All), lower the size of the Brush and set the foreground Colour to black and remove some of the blood so it appears that the finger was cut off and pulled forward (or hand backwards).

 

Step 4 – Next we shall darken the blood up using a Hue / Saturation Adjustment Layer, Add a new Hue / Saturation adjustment Layer above the blood layer by going to Layer>New Adjustment Layer>Hue / Saturation. Tick Colourize and set Hue to 0, Saturation to -61 and Lightness to -34. Next Clip the Adjustment Layer to the Blood Layer.

Step 5 – Make a new Layer Below the Adjustment Layer called Hightlights / Shadows. Reset the colour swatch by pressing D on your keyboard, then with a soft brush paint some shadows and highlights to the blood.

Step 6 – The Blood is now pretty much finished so now take some time to adjust the finger and make sure it looks seamless by adjusting the Mask. You can add / adjust the adjustment layers and blending mode if you wish to give darker / lighter effects.