Adding a Tattoo in Photoshop

This will be a quick lesson that will cover a few basic items in Photoshop, as well as one really cool tool that has tons of functions. For this lesson, we will all work through adding three basic tattoos to an image, and then you will work independently to create another image using a different portrait and all new tattoos of your choice.

Let’s get started by opening up our model image.

  1. Surf to the Document Manager page of my teacher website. Go the Photoshop/Photoshop Images folder and download the Tattoo0, Tattoo1, Tattoo2, and Tattoo3 files to your network folder. Open all of the files in Photoshop…

    This is singerTaylor Swift…and she is ok with us using her for this (well, if she knew about it I’m sure she would be ok with it)
  2. Save the file as a Photoshop file in your student folder as TATTOO.PSD

Now we need some tattoos – these can basically be any image we want to use, but if you want to use actual tattoos drawn by real tattoo artists then you need to get your hands on some of their ‘tattoo flash’. This is the term for the drawings tattoo artists make of their tattoos before they actually place them on people. You can search Google Images for ‘tattoo flash’ and be presented with tons of images that work great (you can also search for ‘tattoo pattern’ or something similar, or you can look for actual tattoos on people that you like, but beware that these are far more difficult to remove and use for this technique as it is very hard to match the colors in a portrait to a real person).

For these directions we will be using these three tattoo images…

  1. Open the images Tattoo1, Tattoo2, and Tattoo3 in Photoshop
  2. Let’s start with the dragon tattoo on the right above, so make Tattoo1 your active image
  3. Press Ctrl+A to select the entire image
  4. Arrange your windows so you can see both the dragon and your background image.
  5. Use the Move Tool to click and drag the dragon tattoo onto your background image…

notice that Photoshop creates a new layer and places the dragon tattoo on it…

  1. At this point it should be obvious that our dragon tattoo is too large to be used on Taylor so we need to resize it; there are several ways we can do this, but since we are all using the same images let’s just resize the image by reducing the scale by an exact percentage – Click Edit then point at Transform and click Scale, notice that the options bar changes…
  1. Change the width and height percentages from 100% to 30%...

Notice that your dragon tattoo has shrunk…

  1. Press Enter to apply the transformation
  2. We only want the black to visible, so change the blending mode of the dragon tattoo layer to Multiply…

    Notice that the white has disappeared and only the black is visible

We are going to place this tattoo on Taylor’s left arm (it is the arm on the right to us, but if you are her it is her left arm), so we want to flip the tattoo horizontally so the dragon head will not get cut off,and then move the tattoo into position.

  1. Our tattoo is a bit too sharp, so let’s soften it up so it looks like it is actually painted on her skin by clicking Filter then pointing at Blur and clicking Gaussian Blur…

to open the Gaussian Blur window…

  1. Set the Radius to 1.0 and keep an eye on the image and notice that your dragon tattoo should soften up a bit…
  1. Let’s adjust the tattoo so that it matches the contour of her arm by clicking Edit then pointing at Transform and clicking Warp…
  1. Photoshop will place warp handles on the dragon tattoo…
  1. Click and drag the warp handles to reshape the tattoo so that it matches the contours of her arm…

Your warp does not have to match mine, but make sure it appears as though it is actually wrapped around her arm

  1. Press Enter to apply the warp
  2. Tattoos do not go off of skin, so zoom in and remove any parts of the tattoo that are not on skin
  3. Our final step is to reduce the brightness of the dragon tattoo so that it looks more natural, so let’s reduce the Opacity of the tattoo layer to 70%...
  1. So here is our final tattoo…
  1. Repeat the above process to place Tattoo2 on her other arm – for this one you will need to use the Free Transform tool by clicking Edit then Free Transform and using the resize handles so you can both resize and rotate the tattoo (rotate the tattoo by placing the cursor just off the selection box until you get a curved double-headed arrow and then dragging) – when complete it should look something like this…

For the final tattoo, we are going to place it on her shoulder so we can have some fun with the strap of her dress and the contours of her neck.

  1. Drag Tattoo3 onto the Taylor photo
  2. We need to remove all of the white by a different method than changing the blending mode so that we can add shadows and highlights later, so click the layer visibility icon (the little eye on the layer palette) for every layer but Layer 3 to turn the visibility of those layers off
  3. Click Select then click Color Range
  4. In the Color Range window set Select: to Highlights and make sure Image is selected (this option is below your preview)…
  5. Click OK
  6. Notice that all of the white in the image is now selected…
  1. Press the Delete key to remove all of the white…
  1. Press Ctrl+D to deselect everything
  2. Turn the visibility of the other layers back on
  3. Move the tattoo into place…
  1. Use the Warp tool to adjust the shape of the tattoo to match the contour of her chest – don’t worry about parts going off her shoulder or over her dress, we will deal with these areas later…
  2. Use the Eraser Tool to remove the areas off her shoulder and over her dress, but do not remove the areas over the see-through part of her dress…
  1. Reduce the layer’s Opacity…
  1. We need to soften the image on her shoulder so it looks like it is fading as her shoulder curves, so use the Eraser Tool with a soft edge brush and Opacity and Flow set to 50% to gently remove the areas of the tattoo on the curvature of her shoulder
  2. We also need to soften the area of the tattoo on the see-through portion of her dress – be careful not to remove too much, the tattoo should still be visible…

Look carefully and you will note that you can indeed still see the lines of the tattoo through me mesh portion of her dress

  1. (This step is optional) Now let’s add some shadow and highlights so that our tattoo better matches the contours of her body – use the Brush Tool with Opacity and Flow set to 50%, then use black to add shadows to the tattoo and use white to add highlights

When finished, you should have a brand new Taylor Swift…

  1. Save your work in your student folder.

At this point, you will need to use your own picture and add tattoos to it. Save this new image with tattoos as TaylorTatto.PSD in your student folder.

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