So you want to manipulate an image? Well, first off all, congrats on finally deciding to go down this road. It's a really fun road to walk and you can come up with all kinds of images and have them look really realistic if you practice and practice.

Before I begin, I want to say that this is not a specific picture how-to tutorial, meaning I haven't selected one of my pictures and made a tutorial out it. This is a general tutorial that contains loads of tips, tricks and things you should consider when working with manipulations.

First rule of thumb is the images you choose. First you need to choose the body for your manipulation. After you've scoured the net to find one, make sure it's in HQ, because it will make your work that much easier. When you've decided on the body it's time to move on to the face. Now this is a tricky part and it can take you hours, maybe days, to find the right picture of the face you want. The most important factors in this search is

A. The angle. If your face-angle isn't the same as the body then you're doomed to fail even before you begin. The face doesn't need to be tilted the same angle. Say the body is lying down and the face you're choosing isn't, that's perfectly fine, just make sure that the face is showing the right amount of chin, ears, eyes and mouth. As long as you've got that covered then the rest isn't a problem. Never choose an image for the face where the picture is taken from below/above and try and match it with a body where the picture is taken straight on or just the oposite of the face's angle of above/below.

B. Make sure that the face picture isn't in lower quality than the body, if it is, then you have pretty much just one choice - shrink down the body to fit the face, not the other way around because if you do THAT then you'll get a very crappy face in bad quality, compared to the body that is in fine HQ.

C. Shadows, make sure the face is shadowed the same way as the body, otherwise it will just look really weird. ;)

When you apply the face, "free transformation" under "edit" is your best friend. Make sure to change the opacity of the face so you can see the body's face underneath, but still see the face you're applying. That way you can angle the head right with the body and the original face of said body. You can also shrink down the head to the right size. Usually I keep the eyes and nose as a good pointer of facesize when shrinking it. If you match that up with the original then 9 times out of 10, you'll end up with the right size.

When melting the face into the body, I usually use the eraser, I don't mess around with layer masks and whatnot (I find them annoying ;)). When touching the hairline, make sure you don't come out with a hairline by the original body that doesn't match the face you're using, this can make or break it because either you'll end up with way too much forehead, or not enough and anyone can spot the manipulation when you're done. Now, this doesn't mean you CAN'T use the hairline in the body, why? Well, say it's a woman you're manipulating, her hair is down and it's got bangs perhaps, then you can use that to your advantage and keep it in, it'll give a new look to the face but it'll keep the original feel to it as well. Her hair can also be combed to the side or hang down over her forhead a bit, then you can again use the original hairline because it won't mess up the idea of the face's hairline. When it comes to males, that's a tricky one and personally I usually try to keep the face's hair instead of using the body's hair. It might be harder to cut out those small strains around their head if they've got short hair. Example: Jensen Ackles and David Boreanaz. Their hairstyle is pretty irratic and it takes time to clean that up, but with a lot of patience as this can take hours, and changing the size and hardness as well as the opacity of the eraser tool, you can get there and end up with a natural cut. It's definitely worth all the time in the end since you'll end up with a pic that looks natural and logical.

Tip: When it comes to females, sometimes you don't need to erase all of the hair if it's loose, you can keep parts of it in if the hairstyle (straight/curly) matches the body's hair, and even here you can keep the hair all together and skip the original if you want, it's trickier but it can be done! When the female's hair is loose on the face but not on the body, or the face's hair is longer than the body, make sure it flowes naturally around the shoulders, chest, back and neck. The same tricks with the eraser tool is very handy in this case too, as mentioned for the males.

The next thing you'll need to think about is the skintone color. This is a VERY important step of the process, I can't stress this enough because this is wher e people usually take the wrong road and end up where again, the manip can be seen from miles away. "Select Color", "Brightness/Contrast" and "Hue, Saturation and Lightning" is your best friends! When working with these you can after a lot of tweaking, repeating of some steps, you can get the right skintone as the body and the face will definitely melt into the body. IF this cannot be done after a buckload of work, like I've happened upon sometimes, then it's time to tweak the body's colors a bit, make them more workable. Use the same tools as mentioned for the face, and you'll get there. It's a hard, long, patience-inducing process but you'll get there in the end.

The next step is checking the eyes and lips, make sure the lips hasn't gotten too bright or too red or just gone overboard on the lipstick in general after you've fixed the skintone. If so, then duplicate your layer, cut out the lips and then play with "brightness/contrast" and "select color", sometimes "color balance" is a great tool as well. Same goes for the eyes, make sure they haven't turned into a color that eyes don't usually have, usually I just duplucate the original layer, cut out the eyes (and by eyes, I just mean the iris and pupil, not the entire eye!) and put that layer ontop of the one you've fixed the colors with, use "brightness/contrast" to enhance the colors in it, and then leave it or if you want, put it to "overlay" or change the opacity to melt it a bit into the colors that you ended up with when fixing the face.

The hair can also be tricky after you've fixed the skintones, especially if you're working with a blonde haired face. Then you can either duplicate your facelayer, erase the face and keep the hair in that layer and use "brightness/contrast", "select color" and "hue, saturation and lightning" to try and get it back to normal. The other, much easier step is to use the original facelayer, put that ontop of the fixed one, erase the face, and then pretty much keep the hair as is, since now you've gotten back the original haircolor and it looks that more natural.

Another thing to consider with the bodies is that they must be as close to the face's body as possible. By this I mean that you cannot choose a body that is short and scrawny and put Jared Padalecki's face on it. It will look so off that even people who doesn't care much about fanart WILL see that this is wrong. I managed to get away with this once, and it was when I made a group pic of Jensen Ackles, Jared Padalecki, Sarah Michelle Gellar and Eliza Dushku. How I managed to cheat on this rule was that Jared's body was in a sitting position and the body didn't look as scrawny/short as it did when it was in a standing position. This is pretty much the ONLY way to cheat on this rule. You should also consider the height between the men if you make a manip with say Jensen and Jared. Don't forget that Jared has about 15cm/6 inches on Jensen, so he CAN'T be the same height as Jensen, however much you love that picture. When manipulating women, don't forget their chest sizes. You can't put SMG's face on a very busty body, when you know that she isn't. it's a dead give away. And of course, you can't use a scrawny male body for a male you know is very muscular. Example: Jared Padalecki, David Boreanaz or Adam Baldwin matched with the body of Adam Brody.

If you're manipping two people in one picture, make sure that the faces you choose have the same kind of expression on their faces. You can't have a really happy, ditzy woman, and a oh so serious male together. This spells F-A-I-L.

I hope you find this tutorial helpful in one way, or another. If you do use it, make sure to credit me @ Chosen Art.

For examples of work using this tutorial, see all my manipulations under "fanart".

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