Create Wrinkles??!!

When I think of Photoshop and wrinkles, I think "how to get rid of them," not "how to create them." But when it came to this bulldog, I needed to create them, and not with the pen tool.  Simple lines were not creating the look I wanted.

But when I was playing around with the layer effects in another project, I realized that with a combination of blending options and the smudge tool, I could "paint" the wrinkles in on the bulldog.

I used the pen tool to create a few shapes that followed the shape of the lines and filled them with the color of the dog.

Using the bevel blending option gave me the shadows and creases I needed, but too sharp a curve.  And using the smudge tool only moved the shadows around. 

What I needed was to be able to "flatten" the layer like you can "raster" a type layer, so that the layer effects were flattened.  To get around my inability to do that, I created an empty layer beneath the effected layer and merged the two.  (I copied the un-rastered layer first so I'd have a protected version.)

Then I was able to use the smudge tool to move and soften the edges and the dodge tool to lighten the shadows without worrying about the effects.

All I needed was a little work with the stamp tool.

 

 At this point I realized that I had found a way to create the natural folds that occur in the dog's face.