How to Create Pop Art in Photoshop Pt.2

How to Create Pop Art in Photoshop, Part 2

With the subject cut out and a custom splatter brush ready from Part 1, this second half turns that groundwork into a finished, colorful pop art piece. This tutorial restricts splatter color to a subject’s midtones with Blend If, hand-draws a stylized mouth with the Pen tool, and builds an entirely separate splattered background from photographed paint splatter and layered colors.

Preparing the Subject to Receive Splatter Color

Flattening the subject’s own color and contrast first gives the upcoming splatter colors a cleaner, more neutral surface to sit on top of.

1. Desaturate the Subject With a Clipped Hue/Saturation Layer

   Add a Hue/Saturation adjustment layer, press Option/Alt+Cmd/Ctrl+G to clip it to the subject, and bring the saturation all the way down to zero.

2. Flatten Contrast With a Clipped Levels Layer

   Add a Levels adjustment layer, clip it the same way, and raise both the white point and the black point to reduce contrast.

Applying the Custom Splatter Brush to the Subject

Painting with the custom brush built in part one, clipped to the subject, covers the portrait in randomly varied splatter.

3. Create a New Clipped Layer

   Create a new layer above the subject and clip it so paint only appears where the subject is visible.

4. Paint With the Custom Splatter Brush

   Use a large brush size with the custom splatter brush from part one to cover the subject in splatter shapes.

Restricting Splatter Color to the Midtones With Blend If

Blend If narrows the splatter so it only shows up in the grays between the subject’s highlights and shadows, rather than everywhere at once.

5. Open Blending Options on the Splatter Layer

   Double-click the splatter layer to open its Blending Options.

6. Restrict Visibility to the Underlying Grays

   Adjust the underlying layer sliders so the splatter color only shows where the layer beneath is neither pure black nor pure white, just the midtone grays.

7. Split the Sliders for a Refined Edge

   Hold Alt/Option and drag one half of a slider away from the other to soften the transition between where the splatter is and isn’t visible.

Why Restricting Splatter to the Grays Creates a More Intentional Look

Without any Blend If restriction, painted splatter colors would sit as one flat layer on top of the subject, with no relationship to the underlying light and shadow. Limiting the color to the midtone grays specifically means the splatter naturally avoids the deepest shadows and brightest highlights, so it reads as color emerging from the image’s own form rather than a random overlay.

Using the Brush’s Built-In Color Variation While Painting

Because the custom brush already has Hue Jitter built in from part one, simply switching the foreground color and clicking around produces varied, naturally shifting color patterns automatically.

8. Choose a Foreground Color and Click Around

   Select a foreground color, such as blue for hair or red for an accent area, and click repeatedly with the splatter brush to build up color in that region.

9. Switch Colors for Different Areas

   Change the foreground color for each different area of the subject, letting the brush’s own jitter settings handle the natural variation within each color choice.

Why Relying on Brush Jitter Beats Manually Reselecting Colors

Manually picking a new color for every single click would slow the whole process down and still risk looking too uniform within each region. Because Hue Jitter is already varying the color slightly with every click, switching the foreground color only a handful of times across the whole subject is enough to produce a naturally varied result without constant manual adjustment.

Hand-Drawing a Stylized Mouth With the Pen Tool

Rather than relying on splatter alone, a hand-drawn mouth shape gives this particular area a more deliberate, illustrated look.

10. Trace a Mouth Shape With the Pen Tool

    Press P for the Pen tool and draw an exaggerated, stylized mouth shape, treating precision as less important than an intentional, artistic exaggeration.

11. Convert the Path to a Selection and Fill It

    Right-click the path, choose Make Selection, then fill the selection with a solid color on a new clipped layer.

12. Select Teeth With Color Range

    Go to Select > Color Range, click inside the teeth area, and hold Shift while clicking to add any additional teeth areas to the selection.

13. Paint White Within the Selection

    With the Color Range selection active, paint white to fill in the selected teeth area.

Finishing Small Subject Details

A few last clipped layers add small, deliberate touches like recoloring jewelry and adjusting eye color.

14. Recolor Small Accessories

    Add a new clipped layer and paint over small details like earrings with a different color to help them stand out.

15. Adjust Eye Color With Blend If and Hue/Saturation

    Paint a color over the eyes on a clipped layer, restrict it with Blend If so it doesn’t spill into the surrounding lighter or darker skin, then use Hue/Saturation to fine-tune the exact shade.

16. Group the Finished Subject Layers

    Select every layer affecting the subject and press Cmd/Ctrl+G to group them together.

Building a Splattered Background From Photographed Splatter

With the subject cut out from its original background in part one, an entirely new background gets built from separately photographed paint splatter images.

17. Bring In Photographed Splatter Images

    Bring in several separate images of photographed paint splatter and group them together.

18. Fill a Base Layer With Solid Color

    Add a Solid Color adjustment layer as a base background color to build the splatter layers on top of.

19. Change Blending Modes to Remove White Backgrounds

    Cycle through blending modes like Multiply or Screen on each splatter layer to remove its white background and let only the dark splatter shapes show through.

20. Invert Colors as Needed

    Press Cmd/Ctrl+I on a layer to invert dark-on-light splatter into light-on-dark, giving more flexibility in how each layer blends.

21. Shift Hue to Vary Splatter Color

    Press Cmd/Ctrl+U on individual splatter layers to shift their hue, keeping color variation controlled rather than clashing with the already colorful subject.

Isolating Individual Splatter Shapes With Color Range Masks

Color Range selections turn a full splatter photo into a mask that isolates just the splatter shape, ready to scale, duplicate, and reposition freely.

22. Select the Background Color With Color Range

    Go to Select > Color Range and click the light background areas of a splatter photo, holding Shift to add more areas as needed.

23. Add and Invert a Layer Mask From the Selection

    Add a layer mask from the selection, then invert it if needed so the splatter shape itself remains visible.

24. Clean Up the Mask Edge

    Use the brush tool to paint directly on the mask and clean up any visible edge artifacts.

25. Duplicate and Reposition Splatter Shapes

    Press Cmd/Ctrl+J to duplicate an isolated splatter shape, then transform, recolor, and reposition each copy to build up the background.

Why Color Range Masks Make Splatter Shapes Reusable

Manually erasing a splatter photo’s background would produce a single fixed result with no easy way to adjust the edge later. Turning that same selection into a layer mask instead keeps the isolated splatter shape fully editable, so it can be cleaned up, duplicated, recolored, and repositioned as many times as needed to build up the full background.

Why This Approach Works

Restricting splatter color to the subject’s midtone grays with Blend If is what keeps a randomly clicked brush from looking arbitrary, tying every splash of color to the image’s own existing light and shadow. Building the background entirely separately from photographed splatter, rather than reusing the subject’s own brush strokes, keeps the two halves of the composition visually distinct while still sharing the same overall aesthetic. Treating every layer as disposable and endlessly adjustable, freely trying colors and blend modes without committing early, is what actually makes an experimental effect like this practical to pull off.

Final Thoughts

Between the clipped, Blend-If-restricted splatter on the subject and the separately built splatter background, this effect turns out to be less about any single complicated technique and more about combining a handful of simple ones freely and without overthinking each choice. The same custom brush and layered splatter approach works on any subject, not just this one, so it’s worth trying the same layered approach on a completely different portrait or photo.

Quick Reference: Keys, Menus and Settings

• Neutral baseHue/Saturation, Saturation down; Levels, raise the white and black points; clip each with Option/Alt + Cmd/Ctrl + G
• Splatter in the graysDouble-click the layer, Blend If Underlying Layer; Alt/Option-drag to split a slider
• MouthP for the Pen tool, right-click > Make Selection, Alt/Option + Delete
• TeethSelect > Color Range, plus eyedropper, paint white
• Group the subjectCmd/Ctrl + G
• Background splattersSolid Color layer; Multiply or Screen; Cmd/Ctrl + I inverts, Cmd/Ctrl + U shifts hue
• Cycle blend modesV, then Shift + +