How to Turn a Portrait into a Sculpture in Photoshop

Photography Tips  •  Portrait Photography

Want to be really creative with your portraits? Dutch Photoshop wizard, photographer, designer, and artist Dracorubio, has a unique way of blending art forms in Photoshop to create breathtaking images. Here, he transforms a simple portrait into an amazing sculpture:

The process involves using Clipping Masks and Drop Shadows—and having a lot of imagination—to create surreal images. Dracorubio uses many different layers and freely paints shapes over the model’s face and around the portrait to create shadows.

For the first part of the tutorial, he’s only using brushes to show us the steps, but you can also use vector shapes, which he shows us here:

Go through each layer to blend the colors with the face and make them flow using the clone stamp. Also, clean up the image and bring out more detail.

Then add any other effects you want, adjust colors, be creative!

There are so many things you can do in post production to bring your images to the next level. You just need to think creatively and be willing to experiment. Take the time, make mistakes. And learn from others.