Lets face it - making people beautiful in Photoshop isn't exactly difficult.  A quick dabble with the healing brush and clone stamp can make even your mother in law look like a professional model.  But what if you want to achieve the opposite effect in Photoshop?  What if you want to turn a portrait of your cosmetically perfect sibling into something that will seriously make them worry about their complexion for years to come?   Well then, you are in luck!  This tutorial details a remarkably simple way to add sweat and grease shine to your photos, using nothing more than the default tools.   All you need are a high-resolution photograph, Photoshop, and a cruel disposition...

Important:  Please note that this tutorial works by enhancing surface detail already present in stock images.  If your source image is overly light, dark, or lacks decent color depth, the results will not come out as intended!
 

Step 1: Open up a stock image in Photoshop of any size and/or format. If you have a darkly-colored source image you may want to spend a few minutes playing with the contrast/brightness to improve the overall color clarity.  Please note that the image to my right was grabbed from the excellent SXC.HU archive - where there are portrait pictures aplenty.

Step 2: With the background layer selected in the layers palette, choose Layer > Duplicate Layer from the main menu. Select the new duplicated layer in the layers palette, rename it 'Sweat', and remove the color from the layer via Edit > Adjustments > Desaturate.  Once you have done this, change the layer blending mode to Lighten.

Step 3:  Now onto the fiddly bit!   With the Sweat layer still selected, load up the Image > Adjustments > Brightness / Contrast dialog, and drag the contrast slider all the way over to +95.  Without pressing OK, drag the Brightness slider way down until you are given the best possible sweat/grease shine effect.  For my example on the right, I needed a brightness setting of -95.  Yours will probably differ.  Press OK when you are happy with your result.

Step 4: In most cases the shine will be a little too strong, so reduce the sweat layer's opacity a little until it looks more realistic.  You may also want to use the Eraser Tool to remove unwanted areas of shine from other areas of the photo, such as clothes, etc.  A quick sweep with a 100% strength eraser coupled with a hard-edged brush should correct these problems. And that's it!   Have fun, and remember not to be too cruel!  After all, the poor soul on the receiving end of your photographic manipulations may know how to use Photoshop too...

- Tutorial written by Man1c M0g

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