Faking an icy face

Hi,

I'd like to take a head shot of someone who looks freezing cold. Ideally they'd be slightly blue and covered in frost.

I'm thinking that the blue look might be possible by playing with the colour balance, however I have no idea how to simulate frost. Does anyone here have any bright ideas?

Tim

P.S. Buying and expensive professional make up is a no-no. This is just for fun, I don't want to have to put much money into it...

Block of ice

You could buy a block/bag of ice from the grocery....or you can buy canned christmas tree flock that looks like snow and spray it on someone's hair. Go to the craft supply store.

Hi Tim,

Epsom salts, castor sugar and glycerine, when I was a kid (or did that make explosives?)

Best wishes,

Ray

Hi Tim,

I have started creating a brush in PS to stimulate frost, will post results shortly.

Cheers,

Cem Usakligil said:

Hi Tim,

I have started creating a brush in PS to stimulate frost, will post results shortly.

Cheers,

Click to expand...

Hi Cem,

Looking forwards to seeing the results!

Tim

Here is a first try

Hi Tim,

This is what I could achieve by trial and error. What do you reckon, is it worth pursuing any further?



Cheers,

That's looking great Cem! How did you create the brush?

That's cool, Cem. .......Seriously, quite impressive.

Tim Armes said:

That's looking great Cem! How did you create the brush?

Click to expand...

Hi Tim,

I'm glad you've liked it. This is what I've done.

1) Found a drawing of a snowflake somewhere though it could have been any other angular shape. Converted it into grayscale, cleaned up, saved as a brush.

2) Opened up the brush presets and set it as follows (try and see what works for you)
- Brush Tip shape: made oval and used some angle, spacing 30%
- Shape dynamics: size jitter 100%, min. diameter 10%, Angle jitter 75%, Roundness jitter 60%, Min. roundness 15%
- Scattering: 300% both axes, count 1
- Color dynamics: fore/background jitter 15%, hue jitter 5%
- Other dynamics: opacity jitter 85%, flow jitter 50%
- Noise: yes
- Wet edges: yes
- Smoothing: yes
- Protect texture: yes

3) Set the foreground color to very light gray and the background to light pale blue

4) Create an adjustment layer for a photo filter on top of your image, mask the face/skin areas.

5) Apply photo filter to your taste to make your subject look bluish

6) Create an empty layer above all others

7) Choose your new brush, opacity 70%, flow 50% and size depending on the area being painted. Apply frost to all hairy areas, eyelashes, eyebrows, nose, ears, etc.

8) Vary with frequency and size. If you dislike the last one you've painted, undo and do something else. Make the final image look convincing. Change opacity of the layer if needed.

9) The snow/forst might look like yellowish due to the skin tone underneath. If so, adjust the frost layer using curves or hue/saturation until it looks grayish.

10) There it is .

Hope this helps,

Cheers,