Have you ever wondered how makeup artists and special effect creators actually turn actors and actresses into space aliens or bumpy, frumpy monster-like beings? The truth is it's a time-consuming process that involves a lot of skill and expertise. However, we can produce similar effects on a much smaller scale, comparatively speaking, using layer styles in Photoshop.

In this article, we'll show you how to paint textures onto your graphics using layer styles in order to create some realistic but out-of-this-world artwork, such as this month's cover image. It's really quite easy; not to mention, once you master the technique you can have fun turning all of your friends (and foes) into grizzly breasts. Sounds fun, doesn't it? Let's see how it works.

A Stylish Process
In order to create some interesting surface textures using layer styles, we'll begin by choosing an image to transform and open it in Photoshop. Then we'll create a new layer in the Layers palette and apply a layer style to it. Next, we'll use a variety of paintbrushes to apply the texture to our image. After we're done with the basics, we'll go over a few simple ways to fine-tune your image for the best possible end result.

Find the Perfect Face
As we mentioned before, the first thing to do is find an image to manipulate. Starting out, you may want to keep things simple and use a close-up mug shot of yourself or whomever. If you're looking for more of a challenge, you may want to choose a more complex image, showing an entire person so you have more to work with. We decided to go with a basic photograph of a mask for our example, as shown in figure A.

Once you decide on an image, scan it as an RGB document at 200 ppi and open it in Photoshop. Now you're ready to begin the process of non-surgical facial restructuring-in other words, painting texture onto your image.

Figure A: Choose an image to transform into something out of this world.

Layer on the Effects
Now for the fun part. What we'll do is create layers and fill them with specific layer styles so that we can then just paint the styles onto our image. To do so, click on the Layers palette. If the palette is hidden, choose Window > Show Layers. Then click the Create A New Layer button at the base of the palette to make a new layer.

It's All About Choice
Now choose Window > Show Styles to display the Styles palette, as shown in figure B. You'll notice that there are 17 different styles to choose from, but there aren't many textures included in that bunch. So what we're going to do is add a few texture styles to our palette. Choose Textures.asl from the pop-up menu located at the top right corner of the Styles palette. Then, in the resulting dialog box, click Append. This adds the textures to your palette without replacing those currently there. Your palette should now resemble ours shown in figure C.

Figure B: Open the Styles palette to display the default styles that Adobe has to offer.

Figure C: For increased options and more flexibility, add the texture styles to the Styles palette.