How to give that ol' Gothic feel to a castle (or church)

So looking Godly doesn't cut it eh?

Bricks and stone and other hardened building materials come together to make a very nice..building. Be it a castle or a church, it's just not 'dark' enough for you. You need DARK.. doom..gloom… GOTHIC! While I can't show you how to make your picture rain down fire and brimstone (yet), I can show you how to give it that good ol' Gothic feel…

and turn your plain castle (or church)	in to a DARK AND SCARY HOME FOR DEMONS!!! …

or at least something that will look cool on your Vampire Freaks profile page.

What you'll need

• This Image
• Photoshop CS3 or Higher
• A sticky note on your computer monitor that reminds you to SAVE OFTEN!

Part I

• File>Open boring_castle.jpg
• Layer>Duplicate Layer

Always duplicate your working layer in case you royally screw up! You can easily erase, undo, or just delete the layer you don't need and have your original ready to go again.

Once your layer is duplicated, go to Image>Adjustments>Brightness/Contrast. Adjust the sliders until you reach the desired darkness for your image.

When you have your brightness/contrast set go to Image>Adjustments>Hue/Saturation. This is where we choose our first color overlay for our dark castle. Begin by clicking the 'colorize' option, then continue to adjust your sliders under Hue, Saturation, and Lightness until you reach the desired color for your image.

In my image I chose to go with a yellow/green color overlay. You may choose whichever color suits your idea best.

Time to Erase!

For my image I decided to keep some of the colors from the original image to add some variation to the end result. You can do this by erasing the parts of your 'background copy' layer. Select the Eraser tool. I chose to use a Soft Round brush, size 65, with my flow set to 50%. Adjust these to your preferences.

With your Eraser brush, begin erasing the parts of your image you wish to keep original. For my image, I erased the color overlay from all the grassy areas, the tree in front, and the shrubs.

This step does not have to be done perfectly. Take your time and simply erase. Do this in small steps so that if you erase too much, you can simply 'undo' the changes and try again. (TIP: To 'undo' changes, hit ctrl + alt + z on your keyboard)

At this point, if you're satisfied with your image, go to Layer>Flatten Image.

Can't seem to get it right? Watch Part 1 of this video tutorial below!

Part II

Now that you've darkened and colored your image, let's stab it some more!

With your image still open, duplicate your background layer again. This time we're going to darken some edges using our Burn tool. With your 'Background Copy' layer selected, click on your burn tool. I chose a soft round brush, size 65, Range set to Midtones and Exposure set to 50%.

With your burn tool, start to darken parts of your image that you want..DARK! Don't overdo it on this step though. We'll be using this tool again later and if you burn too much now, you'll have one really black image when we're done. I use this tool to 'outline' so to speak. I like darker edges. So play around with the burn tool. Make yourself some dark edges. My example is below.

Once you're happy with your image, go to Layers>Flatten Image. Now let's add some dark and scary clouds.

• Layers>Duplicate Layer

With your Background Copy layer selected, go to Filter>Render>Clouds. This will give you an image full of.. CLOUDS!! And not very scary ones, but we'll fix that in a sec ^.^

Now that we have some pretty fluffy clouds, let's chop them up start making them evil. Grab your eraser tool again. I set my brush size to 100px 'soft round this time to clear out a larger area each time I click. With your eraser, start removing parts of the clouds. I start at the bottom of the image and work my way up to the top. You can leave spots of clouds here and there to resemble fog or mist if you want. Once you get closer to the top of your image, I suggest lowering the opacity of your working layer so that you can see where the top of your building is and only erase what you need to versus erasing too much of the clouds and having to start over. (If you have no idea what opacity is or how to use it, I would recommend my video tutorial!) Once you've got the majority of your clouds erased from your castle, you can move your opacity back up to 100% and make your final adjustments. Here's my chopped up clouds!

Happy with your clouds? Excellent. On your layers palette, you'll see the word "Layers" and then directly under that you'll see a drop-down box with the word 'Normal'. Click that arrow and behold! A list of layer effects!

We want the one that says 'Color Burn' so click on it and what do we get?

DEMON CLOUDS!!!!

Now.. using your eraser, you can go back and remove any cloud areas that you don't want. If you're satisfied with your image, choose Layers>Flatten Image.

Can't seem to get it right? Watch Part 2 of this video tutorial below!

Part III

You are totally about to be the coolest person on the most famous Gothic website, EVER! So let's finish this baby up.

• Layers>Duplicate Layer

With your 'Background Copy' layer selected, grab your burn tool again. This step isn't really a requirement. I like to go back over my edges with the burn tool as well as the clouds and fill in some of those 'not-so-dark' spots.

Got it dark enough? Let's finish up then. With the same layer still selected, go to Image>Adjustments>Hue/Saturation again. This time we're going to leave 'colorize' UN-checked. Move your Hue, Saturation, and Lightness sliders until you find the colors that make you feel all warm and tingly about your new Gothic Castle/Church. You can see the values I used in the image below.

After this, you can use your eraser to go back over your image and remove any of the new color overlay parts you just made..OR… you can pat yourself on the back because YOU'RE DONE!

Not only did you make it through this whole tutorial, BUT.. you now have a brand spanking new picture to show off to all your friends.. the friends that you're going to send the link to WikiComplete to so they can be ALMOST as cool as you!

Can't seem to get it right? Watch Part 3 of this video tutorial below!