Create a Custom Jack-O-Lantern Pattern in Photoshop Express

It has been a while since I have done a tutorial so in time for the season, here is the How-to create a custom Jack-o-Lantern pattern in Photoshop or Photoshop Express.  What could be scarier on your front porch than George Ford (of Addanac City fame) greeting all the kids in the neighborhood.  I swear I would pick on someone else sometime but the rest of you don’t post enough pictures on the web.

Step 1

- Open a new document (I made mine about 8inx8in), paste your picture in the document and resize it so there is some white background showing.

- Using the brush tool, make a white border around the entire picture.  I used a 10pt brush.

Step 2

- Color the background layer black.

Step 3

- Select Image>Mode>Grayscale

- You want to make sure the color is balanced.  My original pic was too bright so you can adjust by going to Enhance>Adjust Lighting>Brightness/Contrast in Photoshop Express or Image>Adjustments>Brightness/Contrast in full Photoshop.

Step 4

- Select Filter>Adjustments>Posterize (Express) or Image>Adjustments>Posterize (Full).  Choose 3 levels and select and it will give you a Black, White and Gray Image.  If the outline that you did in Step 1 is full white, change it to 50% gray.  You should get above.   You will notice that it has bits of color all over the picture that you don’t want to have to carve so,

- Using your pen too set to black, white or gray color in the image to remove some of the dithering and random color spots.

Step 5

As you can see in the above pic I cleaned up the image to make it into cutable chunks.   In the end you are going to want to shave off the skin of the gray area, cut the white area completely through, and leave the black area alone.  Look at your white area.  If there is danger of you cutting away detail of the gray you need to adjust your picture more.  As you can see in the final template in the first image of this post, I added more gray area around the nose so I wouldn’t cut my nose to spite my face..haha

George was too scary to carve so instead I did Bearman.

Here is what it looks like unlit.  It was my first time trying to use a dremel so I need to clean it up.

As you can see, in this one I only posterized to 2 colors (black and white).  For the white, I pulled off the skin and the black I left alone.  I then put two full holes in the eyes.

Here is the the final look when lit.

And in case you want to make your own Bearman Pumpkin…here is the template.

Bearman heads to Addanac City

In case you all don’t have George Ford on speed dial, he has decided to bring the Bearman persona over to Addanac City for his latest story arc.  Someone has to class the place up (even a guy named Leslie).  So if you haven’t already, head over and give George some love.

For the above cartoon in full go here
For the before where BEARMAN enters the picture go here
And for the beginning of the current story arc, go here.

What is that BEARMANiacs?  You aren’t familiar with George Ford.  Well he is the original BEARMANiac.  In fact, last year when I asked people to show me their BEARMANiac best…this is what I got.  I hope to god he was wearing pants.

George Ford Caricature

Source:

So after I posted the caricature I did for my 1000th Twitter follower, my good friend George of Addanac City was bitching, moaning, pleading, begging, wondering when I might finally get around to doing a caricature of him.  So I was playing around on my ipad and did a little sketch that I sent to him.  I told him to be patient and I would finish it soon enough.

Is George patient.  NO!  Go see how he tortured my work trying to color it himself.   Didn’t color in the mustache, half an eyebrow not filled it.  But of course he went overtime on the background. 

Anyway, I finally finished it (I kept his theme for the background).  And now that it is finished, I realized that he and his character Hank have the same eyes.

Yearbook Yourself

Above is the illustrious George Ford of Addanac City through the years made in a new discovery called Yearbook Yourself.

Yearbook Yourself allows you to upload a picture and take a look at yourself in a yearbook photo from the years 1950-2000.  I immediately thought of George when I saw this because he still can’t get enough of my  “Things to do with your photos before you put them on Facebook” post I did several years ago.  Now I know how he will spend his President’s Day.  Personally I think 1986 was his best years as he was getting his Kid and Play on.

But he isn’t the only one who loves the manipulated photos.  Brit at Blunt Delivery is also a big fan of my original post.  So here she is in all her splendor (I think they took the 1988 photo template from someone I know). 

And lest anyone forget, the two of them were Homecoming King and Queen in 1978.

So head over to www.yearbookyourself.com and let us know what you come up with.

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