This Just In: Chicks Dig Tattoos!

     Recent studies* indicate that tattoos are the "artistic way into a girls heart." There are a number ways people justify puncturing their outer layer of skin to fill the layer underneath with a motorized pen. A large portion of tattoos are designed with sentimental value attached, others go for the intimidation factor, while others simply have a bad case of the, "Ooh I gotta have it!" But either way this is an expensive processes leading to a few weeks of maintenance introducing you to an entire lifetime of being Ed Hardy's scrap book. I bet people just wish they could see themselves with these artistic creations before they become permanent. So lets get to why this is relevant.

     The addition of tattoos are nothing new or spectacular to Photoshop. It is nothing more than a routine edit, but I have some insight to give pictures a more realistic look. Unfortunately my desktop with all my work crashed earlier today, thank god for photoshop, but unfortunately I wont be able to show you step by step photos of what I did so the power of speech (or text?) will have to suffice.

Basic Technique to Add a Tattoo:
-Add a New Layer
-Paste black and white tattoo image on a predetermined area
-Change the blending option to Multiply
-Transform accordingly (Ctrl + t)
-Decrease Opacity to your liking
-Blur if necessary.
Example using THIS for a tattoo:

I hope I'm not talking out of pure experience, but sometimes you may get a friend asking you to put this crazy unnecessary tribal style wings to put on his back and your given nothing but the never-going-to-happen tattoo image and a picture from your friends phone. I know, the odds of this happening are crazy but sometimes your posed with a high quality tattoo image and a not so great quality photo to put it on. This is how I deal:

Added Techniques When Given a Low Quality Photo:
-Add Noise. By disrupting the entire photo you seem to lose the obvious sense of high quality and low. It does the same affect you expect from a blur but in a more natural sense. A low quality photo is more likely to look fuzzy then blurry. Don't believe me? Which do you believe? The noisy tattoo picture below or the blurry pictures of big foot...

-Shade the tattoo. Use the Lasso Tool and select the areas lighter, or darker depending on which is less dominant, then the rest of the picture and go to Brightness/Contrast and scale accordingly.

-Decrease the Brightness of the entire pictures, as the final step to be used only when the photo doesn't come together as you please. When dealing with photos of a high difference in quality you deal with images that are considered sharp like a hunter's knife when the other is just a butter knife. After doing this the difference in qualities should be hardly distinct if at all.

To make this work I used ALL of these steps indicated above, both routine and new. How do you think it turned out? I used THIS for the tattoo. (Once again I apologize for not having my work backed up, I won't let it happen again)

*By recent study, I mean some girl I asked the other day...