How To Make Fake Blood In Photoshop - A Phlearn Video Tutorial

Making fake blood in Photoshop for a Halloween portrait — a custom Multiply-mode brush, Bevel and Emboss for depth, and a hand-warped blood pool for bite-mark wounds that actually look wet and dimensional.

CHAPTERS
00:00 The idea: fake blood beats real blood
02:26 Using a reference image for realistic blood
03:20 Painting blood with a Multiply-mode brush
05:11 Building depth with Bevel and Emboss
06:30 Adding gnarly texture for realism
07:53 Carving out bite-mark holes
09:18 Shaping a blood pool with Lasso and Refine Edge
10:36 Warping and positioning the blood
12:44 Blurring a layer without losing its effect
13:48 Adding highlights and color for realism
15:53 Final blur and smudge cleanup

THE STEPS
1. Find a real photo reference of blood before you start — it's fine to look at for shape and color, you're not compositing it in.
2. Pick a deep red, set your brush to Multiply mode, and turn on Shape Dynamics with Size, Scattering, and Opacity Jitter so repeated strokes build up naturally.
3. Double-click the layer to open Layer Style, add an outer Bevel and Emboss, and set your highlight and shadow colors to skin tones instead of black and white so it reads as depth, not a cutout.
4. Add a Pattern or Texture overlay so the wound doesn't look too smooth or artificial.
5. Erase parts of your painted shape with a low-flow eraser to carve out uneven bite-mark holes.
6. For a blood pool, draw a rough shape with the Lasso tool, use Select and Mask (Refine Edge) to soften and smooth the edges, then paint inside it with your blood brush.
7. Free Transform and Warp the blood shape to follow the contour of skin or neck, then reposition and rotate as needed.
8. Duplicate and merge layers before applying Gaussian Blur, since a layer's blend-mode effects don't blur along with it directly.
9. Add white highlight layers at low opacity and a Hue/Saturation-adjusted overlay pass for extra red glow around the wound, then finish with a light Gaussian Blur or Smudge tool pass to blend everything into the skin.

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phlearn.com/photoshop-tutorials/

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#Photoshop #Halloween #SpecialEffects