ChasmPrism wrote:
I haven't done any photomanipulation in a year, trying to get back into it. At the moment, I am working on a streampunk image and I need to figure out how to make it look like some of the skin is breaking and there are gears under it. I tried doing it with the use of masks, but then the gears just blur into the skin. I also tried doing it by playing around with the shadows to create depth, almost worked but not quite. I might have to paint it manually, but I would first like to know if there is a quicker way of creating the depth. Instead of the gears being on the skin, I was trying to make them look like they were under the skin. Any advice? I thought of using crack brushes to define and darken the edges, and then drawing tiny little cracks in the skin around.

Try making an alpha channel based on luminance value of the gears (this assumes you already have the gears as an image in place on the skin), then apply an amount of emboss (you determine the amount) to the channel. The result should leave you with a predominantly middle gray channel with highlight and shadow detail delineated. Ask for a curve for the channel you created, putting the shadow point at 0 output/128 input, and the highlight point at 255 output/191 input. This will effectively give you the highlight portion of your embossing to play with. Load this channel and ask for a layer curve placing it above the skin layer to be affected. Adjust the highlight portion of the curve to suit your tastes. Re-do the process, but this time, invert the channel while still predominantly gray, to affect the shadow portion of the emboss on the channel.

You can blur the masks once they are part of the layer curve, if you feel like softening the effect.

DigitalArticulation wrote:
do a search on crack brushes and grunge brushes.. it can be added as an eraser brush to create holes where you can put gears and the likes behind..

create the hole and doge and burn midtones around the area

forget the eraser, use a layer mask.