Haunted house tutorial

Haunted house tutorial

Let’s turn an ordinary house into a haunted one! Most of the techniques used here are for intermediate users who are already familiar with Pixelmator. Some of the techniques used are background removal, Hue & Saturation adjustment, and painting with bitmap brushes.

Step 1

The first step is to isolate the house by erasing the sky around it. Magick Eraser is the perfect tool for this. Select Magick Eraser and erase the areas around the house. You don’t need to be very precise, just make sure you don’t erase too much. Use the Polygonal Lasso tool to clear the areas around the roof or other areas that weren’t cleared by Magick Eraser.

Step 2

Now find a good picture of a stormy sky. Now find a good picture of a stormy sky. Add the sky photo to your image and position it so it fully encloses the erased area around the house. Move the sky layer below your house layer.

Step 3

You may notice some artifacts left from the old sky. I simply used Eraser to quickly erase those. Erase any unneeded remaining areas, especially around the rain drain pipes, etc.

Step 4

Make sure the house layer is selected. Then choose the Magick Wand tool and select the sky area, as pictured. Choose Edit > Refine Selection… Depending on how well you erased the old sky, you might need to play with the Size setting. 1% worked fine for me. Set Feather to around 10 and click OK. Choose Edit > Clear to clear the selected area. Don’t deselect yet.

Step 5

Choose Edit > Refine Selection… again. You’ll need to enlarge the selection area again and play with the Size setting. I chose 2% this time and once again set the Feather to 10. Click OK.

Step 6

Choose Image > Hue & Saturation and lower the Saturation slider to minimum. You might also want to play with the Hue setting so the edges of the house match the sky.

Step 7

If your house photo has grass like mine does, select it with the Magick Wand tool. Since grass is not a solid surface, you might need to use other selection tools to select any gaps. I used the Polygonal Lasso tool to fix the selection holes.

Step 8

Once the grass is properly selected, choose Image > Hue Saturation. What we want to do here is make the grass look like it’s old and belongs to the haunted house. Lower the saturation slider to your own taste. You might also want to rotate the Hue wheel to get the desired result.

Step 9

Now choose Edit > Inverse and then Image > Hue Saturation again. Lower the Saturation slider to make the house look more haunted and like a less-than-desirable place to live. Just don’t overdo it. You still want to leave the original color visible.

Step 10

The house may still look too good to be haunted. Choose Image > Levels and play with the middle knob to fix this.

Step 11

Now the fun part! Download brushes from http://skulpt.deviantart.com/art/Holes-Holes-Holes-62550652

Download cracks collection from http://env1ro.deviantart.com/art/Demolished-Cracks-93061508

Holes and Cracks: http://falln-stock.deviantart.com/art/Cracks-and-Holes-Brushes-92725525

Add them to your brushes palette.

Step 12

It’s time for improvisation. I used the new brushes to add various holes and cracks to my house. I’ve also added dirt, using crack brushes with opacity at 50%. Don’t be afraid to get creative.

Notice that the bigger holes were created by applying the same brush to the same spot several times. Just undo it if you decide that the hole is too big.

Conclusion

This tutorial covered some important image editing basics, such as background removal and Hue & Saturation adjustment. Basic techniques used in this tutorial can be applied to various other image editing tasks.