Could you make this post a sticky, Andrew?
At nbalive.org, i wrote:Well, i've never tried dividing the photo face, but i've seen some faces where the patcher used that technique and most of them look like shit.
Ok, i'll tell what my technique is...but for the patchers out there...i don't want any of you thinking "well duh", ok?this is for n00bs only..
I might aswell make a small tutorial... I'll use this Amare Stoudemire patch i'm about to make as an example... I don't know what you use, but I use Adobe Photoshop 5.5, Most people probably have Photoshop 7, but they're somewhat the same, except 7 has more features.
Firstly, Before we start blending, we have to get the shape of the face in the photo to match the shape of the face in EA's bhed. What i do is get the face on the photo to be the same size as the face on the EA bhed and make a lasso around the face on the photo, as you can see in THIS PIC.
After you lasso, push CTRL + C to copy the image in the lasso, then go to the EA Bhed and push CTRL + V to paste...as you probably already know. It would look LIKE THIS.
Now we need to get the mouth, eyes and nose to match up to the mouth, eyes and nose on EA's bhed. So we're going to use a tool called "Free Trasform" to get the photo more so like the face on EA's bhed. So push CTRL + T to get the Free Trasform tool up (yes, that's right, it's free!) and a square like thingy will come up. With this, you drag the corners and sides untill you get the image just the way you want it.
Mine turned out LIKE THIS. It may take a while to get it just right, so experiment with it. There's a high chance that it wont match up to EA's bhed very well, (unless you used the same player pic as EA) so don't stress.
With my patch, the eyes matched up, but the nose and mouth didn't. This is because he was slightly tilting his head to one side. So i'm going to cut some of the photo and move it somwhere else. This will be hard for me to explain, but easy to do, so bare with me. (Note: Always save as you go. In case you make a mistake soon, you can just revert back to the saved one.)
I'm going to lasso through the nose and down the sides of the face ({click}), then push copy, then push paste. ({click}) Then push left, right, down and up to nudge it around, and also use Free Trasform tool to rotate it to fit the mouth and nose of EA's bhed, so that it all matches up. ({click})
Now, even though i matched up the facial features, the nose looks a little crooked. so i set the eraser tool to 90 and erased the top of the nose, and down the middle. ({click}), i did a pretty half-arsed job, but when you're making a tutorial, you can't be bothered perfectionating (if that's even a word).
Now, we've matched up the facial features, so we're up to blending! Matching up the facial features is the hard part... Lets go down the home straight! (by the way, at the moment i have 3 different layers of the face, i want to merge them all together before i start blending. I push CTRL + E to merge down.)
The face so far, looks to be a potentially good looking patch. when everything matches up, that's always a great sign. But if don't blend well, things can get DISASTEROUS!Colour is also an important thing. So follow my lead skip13...
In this case, the face is lighter than EA's bhed, so we'll try to get the photo face to be darker, but at the same time, we don't want to loose quality in doing so. This Picture looks pretty desaturated, so i'll add some saturation, also, i'm going to make it darker, obviously. So i clicked on 'Image > Adjust > Hue/Saturation' I lowered the hue by 1, lowered the saturation by 6 (even though i thought it needed more, i found that it looked better when it was down, see, there's a good example of good patching for you. Experimenting is good.) and lowered the Lightness by 20. ({click})
Ok, it seems the colour looks okay to me. Some other things you could use are 'Image > Adjust > Brightness/contrast' or 'Image > Adjust > Color Balance' or 'Image > Adjust > Selective Color'. Well, these are the ones i use. some other patches might be different.
Ok, we've done the color, now we'll blend.
This can vary a lot with different patchers and their difference techniques, but i don't know of anybody who does it the same way i do. I discovered this method myself when i was experimenting around with different tools, so it's a pretty big deal that i'm sharing it with you.
Ok...There is a tool that's called 'Cloning tool' or 'rubber stamp tool'. It is VERY handy. What i do with it is clone the edge of the photo ALL around. (You use the tool by hodling ALT then click. then let go of alt, then click somewhere else, and it will clone the area that you clicked on while holding alt, don't understand? experiment. experiment. experiment. You'll get the hang of it.) Then i erase around the edges afterwards to make it smooth. Kind of hard to explain.
(In this pic, i've just cloned the around the edges. It looks dogdy at the moment, but we'll erase around the edge and it will look better. Set the rubber stamp to 70 opacity.)
(I've erased around the edges, and i realise that the cheeks are too light compared to the rest of the face.)
(Using the Magic wand tool, i select the light area that is out of wack with the rest of the face.)
(I then go to 'Image > Adjust > Hue/Saturation' and lower the lightness by 7...and up the saturation by 2.)
Then we're done! It turned out Like this! This patch isn't perfect, i'll probably touch it up a bit before releasing, but atleast it gives you a feel for how to blend.
Now, this just my method. I'm sure everybody has a different method of doing things. I've always been curious to know Tony's method,he always produces top notch stuff.
I hope you learned something! Because this tutorial took me 2 hours To make!!
marvelous, if I had photoshop I'd try out the tutorial right now, but I don't.
and i really don't like the tutorials on nbaliveturkey, i was just wondering if this same tutorial is available elsewhere? 
