How to Create a Powerful, Prism Effect from a Photo

I'm going to show you how to create a powerful, prism portrait effect from a photo. The technique that I'll show you allows you to quickly replace your photo with otherswithout having to redo all the effects. Open a high-resolution, photo of a close-up of someone's face. I downloaded this one from Shutterstock. We'll crop it to a specific size and resolution. Open your Crop Tool and Crop presets. Click "16 : 9". 

In the Width field, type in 1920 "px" for pixels and in the Height field, type in 1080. Go to a corner and when you see a diagonal, double-arrow, press and hold Alt or Option+ Shift as you drag it out until the face is cropped to a size your like. Press Enter or Return. To slide the face up or down, press the Up or Down arrows on your keyboard. Then, click the check-mark at the top. To fit your document back onto the canvas, press Ctrl or Cmd + 0. Next, we'll cut our subject from the background. To do this, for this example, I'll use the Magic Wand Tool. If you're using this tool as well, make sure "Contiguous" is checked. I'll make the "Tolerance" 10 pixels. Click the white area on the left to make a selection of it and Shift-click the whitearea on the right to add its selection, as well. Invert the selection by pressing Ctrl or Cmd + Shift + I. Press Ctrl or Cmd + J to cut the subject and copy it to its own layer. Click the background to make it active. We'll fill it with black, but first, if your foreground and background colors aren't blackand white respectively, press "D" on your keyboard. Since your foreground color is black, press Alt or Option + Delete. Make the subject active. We'll convert our subject into a Smart Object, so we can modify it non-destructively, aswell as allow us to replace it with another photo without having to redo al the effects. Click the icon at the upper, right corner of the Layers panel and click "Convert to Smart Object".

 

 Make a copy of it by pressing Ctrl or Cmd + J.  Reduce its Opacity to 50%. Make 6 copies of this layer by pressing Ctrl or Cmd + J, 6 times. Alt-click or Option-click the eyeball icon next to the top layer to hide all the other layers. Scroll to the bottom and make the black background visible. Scroll back to the top and open your Rectangular Marquee Tool. Go to the top, left corner and drag a selection approximately this wide to the bottom of your subject. Click the Layer Mask icon to make a layer mask of the selection next to the top layer. Increase it’s opacity to 100%. and make the layer below it visible and active. Go to the upper, right corner of the last shape and drag another selection to the bottom. As before, click the layer mask icon to make a layer mask of the selection next to the active layer. Then, increase its opacity to 100%. Make the layer below it visible and active. Make sure the next selection covers most of the eye. Continue these steps for each copy of your subject. Scroll to the bottom of the Layers panel and hide the black background. Scroll back to the top. We'll slide each layer to the left or right, but first, open your Move Tool and make sure"Auto-Select" is checked. As soon as we click on our subject, Auto-Select automatically selects the respective layerthat corresponds to where we clicked on our subject. Now, we don't have to find and activate each layer manually in order to slide it. Click on the left of your subject and press and hold Shift as you slide the image to the left edge. To slide the next shape, click the left of your subject to make that layer active andagain, press and hold Shift as you drag the shape approximately here. Click on the right of your subject to make that layer active and press and hold Shiftas you it to the right edge. Slide the rest of the shapes to these approximate positions on your document. If you need to reposition any of them, simply click on the shape, press and hold Shift and slide it. Uncheck Auto-Select. To save space in the Layers panel, we'll group all of our subject's copies into a folder. Make the top layer active, scroll to the bottom and Shift-click the bottom copy of the subject. Press Ctrl or Cmd + G.  Make a copy of the folder and convert it into a Smart Object. Then, make a copy of it. I'll name the folder, "Strips", but you can name it whatever you like. Name the second layer, "Blur" and the top layer, "Dark". Make the black background visible. Press "v" to open your Move Tool and press and hold Shift as you drag the layer to theleft until an area aligns with an area of the layer below it. It's okay to leave a little space between the two layers. To center the subject’s face on our document, Shift-click the Blur layer to make it active,as well and press and hold Shift as you slide your image to the center. Click the Dark layer to make it active and reduce its opacity to 50%. Click the "fx" icon and click, "Bevel Emboss". The Style is Inner Bevel and the Technique is Smooth. The Depth is 100% and the Direction is Up. The Size is 68 pixels, the Angle is 180 degrees and the Altitude is 5 degrees. The Highlight Mode is Color Dodge and its Opacity is 75%. The Shadow Mode is Color Burn and its opacity is 30%. Make the Blur layer active and go to Filter,Blur and Gaussian Blur. Make the Radius: 15 pixels. Click the "fx" icon and click "Bevel Emboss". Keep the same settings as you had for the Dark layer, except make the Size: 100 pixels. To save space in the Layers panel, let's collapse the effects. Make the Dark layer active, click the Adjustment layer icon andclick "Black White". I did an in-depth tutorial on the Black White adjustment layer,so, you'd like to watch it, I provided its link in my video's description below. In the Properties panel, open the Preset list and click on each preset to see how it effects your image. For this example, I'll use use the Blue filter preset. To adjust a particular color component, select the On-image adjustment tool icon. The area that you click on corresponds to that specific color of your image. In this example, I'd like to brighten the irises of the eyes. So, I'll click on an iris and Drag the tool to left or right which makes that specificcolor darker or brighter in the image. Since the eyes are light blue, you'll notice that the "Cyan" slider automatically slidesto the right as I drag the tool to the right. Next, we'll create a dark, soft vignette on both sides of our image which helps to focusour attention to the center of the face. Make a new layer and open your Gradient Tool. Make sure the Linear Gradient icon is active and open your gradient presets. Click the Black to Transparent box and click on the left edge of your document. Press and hold Shift as you drag the tool straight across approximately this far and release. Go to the right edge and again, press and hold Shift as you drag the tool to the leftapproximately the same distance. Reduce its opacity to 60%.