I’ve loved SNl my whole life, and I have had an interest in photography for the past five or so years. i love fiddling around with photoshop and i decided i would try to combine my two loves and create snl Host bumper pictures, so here is a tutorial of how i did it!

start with your image. i have a pretty crappy camera, its a glorified point and shoot olympus. however, this is a testament to the fact that a good photo doesn’t depend on the camera. now, when taking your picture, consider some kind of prop or make some kind of quirky face. Snl bumper pictures are known to be pretty whimsical and show a lot of personality. Also, lighting is key! i simply pointed my desk lamp at my face and voila.

once you have your image taken, turn it into black and white and increase the contrast. you want very little detail in the highlights, but plenty of shadow too. also, the background should be dark, or white.

here i just burned out sme of the remaining details in the background. now to choose a colour!

make a new layer and set it to lighten. choose your colour, and make a slight gradient with a colour a shade darker.

the reason the blue is a little darker here is because i set the layer to a lower opacity while i masked it. this part probably takes the most time. the more detail you put into the edges while you are erasing the blue, the better. you probably have a preference on how you like to mask, but i simply paint out the parts. i also added a lot of little flyaways from my hair to make it more realistic.

there, the blue is at full opacity again! and this is the most fun part! colour in the black and white photo! in a layer UNDER the blue colour. create a new layer set to overlay and go nuts, choose the most vibrant colours, add details to the props and you hair, have fun! using a soft brush, colour in your skin, your hair, your clothes, don’t forget the whites of your eyes and eye colour, or your teeth and lips!

once you’re done colouring, merge the layers and mess with the curves. make even more contrast and vibrancy with the colours.

then add another layer of the background colour on top and set it to lighten. mess with the opacity until you like the way it looks. then copy and paste this image http://geekstronomy.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/SNL-Logo.jpg into your photo. invert the image and set it to lighten again. adjust the opacity until it looks more like a watermark

more contrast, and boom. you can live out all your wildest dreams with photoshop!