[Tutorial] Extracting tattoos, makeup etc. from textures baked into skin

Gordig

I just worked out how to do this for myself, so I thought I'd share it for anyone else who's ever wanted to use a tattoo, makeup or whatnot on a character, but found that the texture was baked into the skin texture. Here's what you do:

1. Open both the base skin texture and the altered texture in Photoshop, GIMP or whatever image editing program you use.
2. Paste the clean texture as a new layer above the altered texture
3. Set the layer style on the clean texture to Divide. What you should see now is just the parts that are different between the two
4. Export the new texture to wherever you want it

If you want to create an opacity mask, the next steps depend on the image, but will require you to merge the layers. If the results are already in greyscale, like an all-black tattoo, you can simply invert the merged layers. If, on the other hand, you need to preserve all the color values and create an all-white mask, like I had to do in order to use Kola's cybernetic textures, you can set white as the alpha channel and/or turn the resulting image all-white, for example with contrast or levels.

For an example, here's Rosa Maria 8.1 wearing VYK Baylee's tattoos and Teen Kola's cybernetic implants (minus emission because I don't have PBRSkin Plus):

WendyLuvsCatz

cool suggestion 

Ninefold

This is great, thank you!

Lonewolf

Dude thanks for this! ur a lifesaver. It's not perfect with the colors but saves you a bulk load of time trying to extract it using brush,