How to Create a Grunge Portrait in Photoshop

To create a grunge portrait, you’ll need:

• Adobe Photoshop
• Picture of lady
• Grunge texture
• Splatter brushes

Step 1

Open the picture of lady in Photoshop and resize it.

Step 2

Grab the Lasso Tool and select the lady’s head. Then, add a layer mask by clicking on the Add Layer Mask option at the bottom of the layer’s palette.

Click on the thumbnail of the lady’s layer, go to Image > Adjustments > Threshold, and set 90 as the Threshold value. Now, there are two methods of removing the eliminated pixels; you can either use the Eraser Tool or select the layer mask and paint over them with a black brush.

Step 3

Make sure your Foreground color is black, then go to Select > Color Range and set 200 as the Fuzziness value.

Switch to the Paths palette, click on the small arrow in the top-right corner and select Make Work Path from the list that appears. Use the Tolerance value shown in the picture below. Now, go back to the layers palette, create a new layer and name it “lady black”. Select the Pen Tool, right-click on the canvas and choose Fill Path. You can now delete the path and hide the other lady layer.

Create a new layer and with a black brush, paint over the white areas in the lady’s hair. Then, create a new layer, fill it with white and place it below the lady black layer.

Step 4

Create a new layer and with the splatter brushes, paint around the lady’s head. You can easily find many splatter brushes on the internet.

Step 5

Now, copy and paste the grunge texture. With the grunge texture layer still selected, cmd/ctrl-click on the lady black layer and then Shift + Cmd/Ctrl + Click on the layer on which you have painted with the brush.

Add a layer mask to the texture layer. Next, hide all the layers except for the white background layer.

Step 6

Finally, we will add a Gradient adjustment layer to add some color to the effect. To do so, click on the Create New Fill or Adjustment Layer option at the bottom of the layers palette and select Gradient from the list that appears. You can choose one of the default gradients or create your own. Then, change the Gradient adjustment layer’s blending mode to Overlay.

And we’re done creating a grunge portrait!