20 Photoshop tutorial for creating scary themed effects

• October 10th, 2016
• Photoshop

Looking to add some spooky touches to your designs this Halloween? Check out this roundup collection of 20 tutorials for creating unique scary effects! Whether you’re an illustrator or a photo manipulation wizard, there’s something for everyone in this collection.

From ghostly apparitions to creepy crawly creatures, these tutorials will show you how to use Photoshop to apply a frightful touch to your designs. With step-by-step instructions and helpful screenshots, you can easily follow along and create your own chilling creations.

Don’t settle for a boring design this Halloween season. Use this perfect resource to help you add that extra scare factor to your work!

1. Quick Tip: Create a “Scary” Text Effect in Photoshop

In this quick tip tutorial, it will show you how to create a “scary” text effect using layer styles in Photoshop. Let’s get started!

2. Create a “Two-Faced” Digital Painting in Photoshop

Creating a nice character painting in Photoshop can be a difficult but rewarding task. In this tutorial, we will explain how to create a classic Batman villain in Photoshop.!

3. Create a “Two-Faced” Digital Painting in Photoshop

A great tutorial which guides you through the process of zombyfing almost any photo.

4. Create a Bloody Text Effect in Photoshop Using Layer Styles

In this quick tip tutorial we will show you how to create a bloody text effect using layer styles in Photoshop.

5. Ghosting An Image With Photoshop

In this Photoshop effects tutorial, we’re going to look at a way to give a photo a more “ghostly” appearance. I’m a fan of horror films, but I admit I’m a bit shallow in that I usually just watch them for the special effects. I’m usually sitting there thinking to myself, “I wonder how they did that”. So while playing around in Photoshop one night, I came up with this little technique for taking a living, breathing person and making them appear more like a ghost, which is why I called it”ghosting an image”. It’s a simple effect with only a few steps involved and they’re easy to do.

6. Create a Horror Movie-Themed Photo Composition in Photoshop

Creating a horror movie-themed photo composition in Photoshop can be a lot of fun. Choosing the right photos is an important step in the process, but it is also important to blend those photos together in a realistic and believable way. In this tutorial we will show you how to do this using the appropriate light balance, use of midtones, depth of field, blending, and more.

7. Create a Cute Zombie Illustration in Photoshop

Creating a horror movie-themed photo composition in Photoshop can be a lot of fun. Choosing the right photos is an important step in the process, but it is also important to blend those photos together in a realistic and believable way. In this tutorial we will show you how to do this using the appropriate light balance, use of midtones, depth of field, blending, and more.

8. Create a Cute Zombie Illustration in Photoshop

In this tutorial, Fabio Sasso shows you some techniques for creating a cyborg from photographic sources in Photoshop, tapping into the movie heritage of the cyborg, but mixing it with the glossy ‘Bleach-Bypass’ look of modern sci-fi TV shows such as V and The Event. You will use some stock photos and lots of adjustment layers, in order to achieve a convincing result.

9. Create an evil queen in photoshop

In this tutorial YOU will create the Evil Queen from Snow White and the Seven Dwarves using digital painting techniques in Photoshop.

10. Design repeating patterns for T-shirts

This tutorial guides you through the process of creating a repeating pattern for a T-shirt print. You’ll focus on creating one main element that will function as the key character of the pattern. You’ll then create elements that will make up the linking imagery – or ‘glue’ – that holds it together.

11. Create a Ghostly Demonic Being in Photoshop

Custom Brushes in Photoshop are very powerful tools for creating images and effects. In this tutorial, we will show you how to use custom brushes and Transformation tools to create a ghostly and demonic-looking being in Photoshop.

12. Design a Halloween Pumpkin Wallpaper in Photoshop

You’ll learn how to get this nice effect on any pumpkin picture, how to play with the colors, apply some layer blending modes to skip the extraction process, and more.

13. Speedy 1980s text effects

14. Speedy 1980s text effects

In this tutorial, we’re going to take a simple model shot and transform it into a spitting, crackling beacon of fire.

15. Monster makeover

This is a walkthrough of a painting process for Calamity Katie, I a lot of time giving her face an interesting and monstrous look, mostly through the characterisation of her features and with the use of colour and texture.

16. Create a skull out of type

This is a walkthrough of my painting process for Calamity Katie, I spent a lot of time giving her face an interesting and monstrous look, mostly through the characterisation of her features and with the use of colour and texture.

17. Get a unique look mixing pencils, pen and digital artistry

In this tutorial, artist Ollie Munden takes you through the process of creating his three-colour painting, Chasing The Dragon, through a mix of Photoshop and pencil techniques. First off you’ll mock up what you want to create using photography, then create a pencil drawing from that. Taking your drawing, you’ll retrace this by hand with a Brush Pen, then transform it into a slick-looking, three-colour digital artwork.

18. Surreal mixed-media illustration

THe details how he finds references to underpin his artwork and the techniques he uses to blend contrasting components that are slick and clean with those that are grainy and organic. The idea is to explore the whole spectrum of art and graphics and find common ground to link all the underlying pieces together.

19. Master the Liquify filter for surreal photo illustrations

The Liquify filter offers all sorts of ways to distort an image: you can twist and pull specific sections through the Warp tool, expand them so that they look like they’ve been inflated using the Bloat tool, or squish up sections using Pucker.

20. Design a highbrow horror-movie poster

Follow the tutorial to learn how to compose an image to draw the eye, create a spooky background and combine the elements seamlessly. You’ll also discover a great way to produce top-notch cutouts of intricate shapes.