This tutorial will show you how to take an image and split it into two personalities. One side will be dark and evil, the other light and sparkly.

The tutorial should take about 20 to 45 minutes to complete. If you have any questions, drop a comment and I’ll do my best to help you out.

Step 1 Let’s get started!

The foundation of a solid photo manipulation is a having a good, high-quality Image to work with. For this tutorial’s sake, I chose Stock-33 by liquid-venus because, well, she’s real purty. Open it up and resize the image by heading in Image/Image Size. Enter a 800×690 pixel value and press Ok to resize.

Since we’re going to create two different looks, I split my image in half by creating a 400×690px rectangular selection on the right-side, pressing Ctrl+C then Ctrl+V to create a new layer with the selection by copying and pasting.

That should leave you with two layers: your base image layer and your right side. If you haven’t done so yet, rename your new layer to Right Side and set it’s Blending Mode to Soft Light. Don’t worry about the funky colors, we’ll fix later on. Also create a new layer on top and create a black line in the middle of the canvas to split up the image.

Click on your Base Image layer to activate it and grab your Sponge Tool. Desaturate some of the left side’s color. This will be our “Evil” side.

Step 2 Playing with Blending

Click the Right Side layer to activate it and select the Lasso Tool. Now, select the outside of the right eye. Once that’s done, press Ctrl+C then Ctrl+V again. Rename the new layer to Eye and set it’s Blending Mode to Soft Light. If your selection was a bit rough, you can use Layer Masking to remove the excess.

Now would also be a good time to tweak that eye’s color by pressing Ctrl+U to enter the Hue and Saturation panel. Remember that we’re trying to get a soft, light feel on the right side so be conservative and try not to use colors that are too vivid. I went with a light green.

While we’re on the subject, create a new Layer and rename it to Left Eye. Now, grab a Soft Round brush and in pure black (#000000), carefully brush over the left eye in black. Don’t worry if it doesn’t look too realistic for now, we can always come back later and tweak it.

Step 3 Hue are you?

Go back to your Base Image layer and create a 400×690 rectangular selection over the left side. Copy/Paste like before to create a new Layer. Rename that layer to Left Side.

Set that layer’s blending mode to, you guessed it, Soft Light. Press Ctrl+U to adjust that layer’s hue and saturation. Since the layer is set to Soft Light, different colors will produce various results, so experiment. I gave my layer a deep blue hue and reduced the saturation. Give it a few tries until you find a result that satisfies you. Remember: You want an evil look for this layer!

Step 4 Evils I tells ya, evil!

Texture time! Go and get the Concrete Texture Thing texture and set it over all of your other layers. Rename the layer to Texture and set the Blending mode to Hard Light and lower the opacity down to 90% or so. Now, get a Layer Mask going and mask away parts that the texture shouldn’t be applied to such as the Eye, Hair and Lip area.

Since the texture should only be over the “Evil” side, don’t forget to mask away the whole right side too.

Step 5 Brush me…

This step requires a bit of creativity. Take your favorite Grunge brushes and get creative on a couple of new layers for the “Evil” side.

For good brushes, visit Vered’s to get you started. As a rule of thumb, you’ll want to use black for your brush color and use low opacity and various Blending Modes to create effects.

I personally used a variation of brushes to:

1. Wound the eye area using the Overlay Blending mode.
2. Create a messy makeup effect.
3. Create a “drip” on the Lips.
4. Create other small dark spots and miscellaneous effects.

Step 6 Color adjustments

We’re already seeing a solid difference between our two sides but something is off, isn’t it? Click on your Texture layer and create a new Hue and Saturation Adjustment Layer.

Once in the Hue/Saturation panel, play around with the settings until you find something you like but essentially, lowering the Saturation and very slightly adjusting the Hue should do the trick.

I’ve left the Hue Slider untouched because I wanted to keep the original colors but simply have them less lively.

Step 7 Goodie two shoes

Well, our “Dark” side is almost done so let’s work a bit on the “Light” side. We’ll be creating a sort of cool-looking Sparkly effect because sparkles are cool… right?

Create a new Layer and grab your Brush Tool . Rename the new layer to Sparkles then Right-Click in the canvas and select Reset Brushes from the Drop-Down menu.

Now, go into your brush selection and scroll down the list until you see the 14pt brush illustrated here. Click it to select it and head into the Brush Presets on the top-right corner of your screen.

Now, adjust the brush preset with the settings below. This should help you create a sparkly brush that will be easy to work with.

Brush Tip Set :
Spacing : 100%

Shape Dynamics :
Size Jitter : 100%
Angle Jitter : 100%

Scattering :
Scatter : 1000%
Both Axes Checked.
Count : 2

Now, with that tweaked brush, do one or two long strokes over the right-side to create some sparkles and not multiple short strokes. Once you have those down, go into that layer’s styles by double-clicking on it and apply an Outer Glow and/or a color overlay if you need to do so.

Step 8 More brush work

Our Light side is almost done! The only thing left to do now is add some final brushwork and tweaks.

This is also the time to finalize the eye color or any other setting you wanted to come back to and revise.

I took this time to desaturate some of the Dark side’s spots and add some trendy text, nature brushes and other miscellaneous stuff to the Light side.

On the dark side, I’ve also added some Photo Scratches using low opacity white brushes to finalize the “beat-up” effect.

Step 9 The Finishing Touch

Time to finish up. Head into Image/Canvas size and increase the size by 100px on Width and Length. This leaves us 50px on each side for a border. Create a new layer and fill 50px on every side with black.

Double-click the new Layer and Head into the Stroke layer style to add a 1px Inside Stroke. It should preferably be in white but you can also use another color if you think it looks good.

Our image is done and so is our border. What’s left? Typography! Add your text, if any, and you’re all done!

Click the thumbnail to see my final result and enjoy. If you have any questions, feel free to drop a comment and I’ll help you out as best as I can.