Self-portrait photo doctoring for the self-conscious.

Or

So you want to be a myspace whore?

By Dave - November 10, 2005

I'm highly self-conscious... it's because I'm ugly. My wife used to accuse me of being vain because I would constantly check myself out in the mirror. This is a common misconception -- vain people stare at themselves in mirrors because they look good and they enjoy what they see. Self-conscious people check themselves out in the mirror to fret about how ugly they are.

Fortunately, age and marriage have given me the ability to not give a shit. Or, at least, to give less of a shit. However, that doesn't mean I shouldn't share my basic knowledge of Photoshop with others who are self-conscious and wanting to become myspace whores.

Now the biggest tip I can give anyone is to learn photography. That said, photography totally escapes me, so fuck that. There ain't that much you can fuck up with a point-and-shoot digital camera anyway. Besides, digital SLRs cost a lot.

The first step in photoshopping yourself is to find a suitable picture. So grab your digital camera, and start snapping a ton of pictures of yourself.

Now, I know people might be thinking: "That's so vain!" And of course they would be wrong. Vain people take a picture or several of themselves, and post it on the net and say, "Look how pretty I am." Self-conscious people, on the other hand, take a ton of pictures of themselves, cry a lot because none of them are good enough to show anyone, take more pictures, and finally settle on one that's the least ugly. Then they spend hours doctoring it, put it online and say, "Oh, it's just a crappy picture of me I had laying around," so that other people won't realize that this is as good looking as they are ever going to get.

Interestingly, most everyone on myspace/friendster has doctored their photos... I'll let you draw your own conclusions about that.

Because I'll do anything for humor, including humiliating myself, let's take a look at several of the shots I took of myself in the bathroom for this tutorial. Remember to do the following things that I didn't: 1) Spend the two bits on a shave and a haircut, 2) shower, and 3) wait at least an hour after waking up before taking pictures of yourself.

"Fear my lazy eye, bitches!"

"See, kids -- marijuana is bad for you."

"The twin black holes of my nose."

"Maybe changing bathrooms will help?"

"WHAT THE FUCK!?"

"Good times, good times."

Finally, the picture I've decided on using.

Now, it's time to crop and resize the photo. This is backwards from most graphical work. Usually you do that at the end. But in this case we want to crop out unnecessary stuff now, and resize to our web-viewing resolution before hand.

Why?

Because we will not be making HiRes images (HiRes images show evil blemishes (see below)) and because we'll be using some pixel-based patterns that don't resize well.

"Sweet JESUS, that's some bad skin!" -- HiRes = BAD

Resizing: I don't recommend that your width or height be above 600 pixels.

The next step is to make our image grayscale. Go to "Layer->New Adjustment Layer->Hue/Saturation..."

Lower the saturation all the way, and your image will be grayscale.

Next is the most important part. Contrast. The key is to increase the contrast so much that you bleach out any blemishes, and add lots of artsy shadows to show how bad-assed you are.

Go to "Layer->New Adjustment Layer->Brightness/Contrast..."

Adjust the contrast way up there (not so much that you're monotone, but enough that you've got true shades of white and black) and then adjust the brightness to taste.

Now, to add some texture to the image. Create a new image with the following settings: Width: 1 pixel, Height: 2 pixels, Background: Transparent. Zoom in on it as much as possible. Then select the pencil tool and set the brush diameter to 1 pixel and the hardness to maximum. Paint one of the two pixels in the image black using the pencil. Now select both pixels (Ctrl-A) and go to "Edit->Define Pattern..." Create the pattern calling it "scanlines" or something similar. Close the image. Back on our original image, select "Layer->New Fill Layer->Pattern..." and create a pattern layer with the "scanlines" pattern we just created.

Set the blending of the pattern layer to "overlay" or "soft light." This will blend the scanlines only into the grey areas of the image and not the black or white areas, giving the picture a nice grainy texture.

Now, to add some color, select "Layer->New Fill Layer->Solid Color..." and create a solid fill layer of a color you like. I chose a bright green to give it a Matrix-esque hue. Then I changed the blending of the layer to "overlay" (once again to preserve my blacks and whites) and adjusted the opacity to taste.

Finally we have this image:

So instead of a loser in a bathroom, we now have a picture of a loser in a subway station who is probably looking to score some heroin. Yeah, now I kinda look like I would suck dick for a dimebag, but since you're a moody emo-kid, that's probably the look you were going for anyway.