Photoshop Fun With DC Universe Infinite Heroes Batman!

Today we’re going to share a Photoshop procedural, starring the DC Universe Infinite Heroes Batman action figure! This line of Mattel action figures were pretty cool, although they were slightly smaller and lacked some of the articulation of the Hasbro line of Marvel Universe toys. I like the Batman figure because of its simple design, reminding me of the Dick Grayson-as-Batman from the Batman and Robin series, save for him not having the Batman logo belt buckle. Sometimes I like the yellow and black bat shield, but this larger, more subtle icon.

For this photo project, I took a picture of Batman in front of a cityscape shot that I found online. I took the picture with Batman right in front of the LCD display on my desktop. Doing this is a lot easier than superimposing him over the background image. The trick is to make sure your camera is focusing just on Batman instead of the whole background. That helps make a sense of depth.

I wanted to do something in black and white, because I was looking through the Batman: Black and White book the other day at Barnes and Noble. First step was to convert the image to black and white and I played around with some of the contrast settings. Next I duplicated the layer and used the motion and radial blurs, followed by the feathered erase to have Batman popping out.

I decided that I wanted to make an old comic book or magazine cover, so I lifted the “Batman” comic mast-head, the old DC and Comics Code indica from an actual Batman cover. I wanted to make this really beat up, so I added a scratched up texture to the image. This was done by finding a scratched up texture on Google, adding it as a new layer on top, switching it to “Multiply” mode and lowering the opacity.

I really wanted to make it look even more beaten up. Enter Pixlr-O-Matic. This site lets you apply Instagram like color processing and all kinds of effects to your photos. It’s free and web-based.

I played around with the settings to make it look like it was extremely beat up. Voila! We’ve made a really, really b eat up old Batman comic book cover!