Now I know there are several tutorials out there that show you how to
make an image looked cracked and peeling away. But I have never seen one
that demonstrates how to reveal another image beneath the cracks and
peels. Hopefully that is what this tutorial will teach you to do just
that.
Well the first thing we have to do is
find the images we want to use. This is the normally the most important
and difficult step. You’ll need the image you want to crack and peel (I
picked a portrait of a woman), you’ll need an image for the texture you
want to use for the cracks (I picked the dried and cracked mud picture),
then you need the image you want to reveal underneath the peels (for
this I picked a circuit board). I got all my images from http://www.sxc.hu. If you click on the thumbnails of them below it will take you to the full size images .
First
off lets open the image with the circuit board (in photo shop of
course). What we are going to do here is blend the circuit board into
the holes in the rust. So open up the image of the rust and use the Move Tool 
to drag a copy of the rust over the circuit board. Position it over the
circuit board where you will have the most flakes. You can also resize
it to just cover the circuit board. I want to achieve an effect of a
large peel so I didn’t resize it. In the image below I have reduced the
opacity of the rust layer so you can see how I positioned it over the
circuit board. You DO NOT have to do this.
Now
what we want to do is let the Circuit board show through beneath the
areas where the rust has peeled away. We will do this by using a layer
mask as it is easy to fix mistakes as we make them. Click the Layer Mask Button 
at the bottom of your Layers palette.
Now
select a soft brush that will fit in the rust hole hole and begin to
paint black to reveal the circuit board beneath as in the above image.
You may have to adjust the size of the brush as you go. I like to use
the [ and ] keys to change the size as
I go. Try to get close to the edge, if you go over switch to white to
remove any part of the circuit board that extends outside of the rust
hole. Pay attention to not reveal the circuit board on the inside of the
flakes that are hanging there. I first take a small soft brush and go
along the edges, once I have all the edges done I select a harder larger
brush to fill in the center. Clicking on the Brush Drop Down 
allows you to change the hardness or softness of your brush.
Take
your time doing this masking, the more attention to detail you give it
the better the end result. Above is my masking almost complete. Once
your masking is done go to Layer > Merge Flatten Image. Its a good idea to save this image at this point so we can use it later.
Now if you haven’t already opened the portrait picture and the cracked earth picture in photo shop, do so now. Again using the Move
drag the cracked earth image over the portrait image. I then used the
handles to transform it to fit completely over the woman’s skin. Go to
your Layers Palette and select Multiply in the blending mode and adjust the opacity to about 50%.
Now
if you look at the above image you’ll see the color just doesn’t seem
right and some of those cracks don’t look realistic. First lets start by
correcting the color hit Ctrl +L to bring up the levels adjuster. Now how you set your levels will depend greatly on the images you are using. Dragging the far left slider will darken the image, using the far right slider will lighten it. In my case I needed to lighten it a fair bit.
Now
we have to fix some of those cracks. I don’t want to have cracks
through the eyes, or the lips. So once again I use a layer mask by
selecting the layer mask icon .
I paint the eyes with a soft black brush to remove the cracks. If I
screw up I just go over that area with white. Now because a real face is
3D and a picture is 2D we have to turn our attention to the areas of
the face where the height would change in 3D. For example the neck, and
nose. We can’t really have a crack continue from the neck onto the chin.
So zoom in to these areas and mask off the continuing cracks so they
look as below.
- Alright now we have achieved a cracking effect on the face. It is now time to use the rust peel image we created. Using the Move Tool drag your peel image on the portrait. Now I changed the Opacity
of this layer so I could better resize and position it. I want the main
peels to be on her fore head and top of the face so by resizing and
moving the peel image around I can achieve this. - Once you have placed the circuit/rust layer and resized it to want you want hit the Enter key to accept the transformation. Now turn your Opacity up to around 90%, and select multiply from the blending level. Just as with the cracks you now have to hit Ctrl +L
- Now
if you look at the above image you’ll notice a few things glaring at
you. Firstly some of our peels don’t seem to blend very well. Secondly
we got a bit of the blue stripe from our rust image showing. So to fix
this we once again as we did with the crack image use a layer mask.
Select the Layer Mask button. Using a large soft brush and having your foreground color set to black, (TipI you press the D and then X keys it will change your foreground color to black) paint out the areas you don’t want and blend the edges. - Now
you can use levels here to blend the colors and make the image appear
more realistic. But in something like this I like to use color over
lays. I find if can give a really nice effect. So create a new layer by
clicking on the New Layer Button
.
Now double click on your foreground color to bring up the color picker.
If you want to use the same colors I did type b79631 by the number sign
in the color picker.
Select the Fill Tool 
and click on the image. Change your Blending Mode in your Layers Pallet to color. - Next add another new layer, and fill this layer with the same color. This time however set your Blending Mode to Overlay and adjust the Opacity until you achieve a sort of film look.
This tutorial has been collected from http://www.tenaciouscreations.com visit them to see more.