April 12th, 2009

Back when I worked primarily with film and a darkroom the options to style a finished image were relatively limited. Color palets were mostly a function of film type, the contrast and natural coloring a function of the paper, and toning could only be accomplished by chemical agents like Selenium, red wine, bleaching, and adjustments to the white balance of the darkroom enlarger. If I wanted to see how an image would look with a particular toning, contrast, or white balance it would take hours of work to produce a relatively limited range of options.

Now with Photoshop such creative experimentation can be done in seconds. Some photographers bemoan the reduction in skills required to create these different styles in the digital age, but I feel differently. Now that the photographer can see a dozen iterations of a photograph with relatively little technical effort the photographer can focus on the image rather than the process.

Below are seven different takes on image toning and styling. Strictly speaking these styles were the result of image processing (conversion from the raw file into a processed file) rather than retouching (manipulation of the processed image).

If you’re feeling sociable then leave a comment to say which style is your favorite.

Clothing, makeup, and wardrobe styling by Pearl and Company.

May 11th, 2008

Creating iPodesque Silhouettes

1) Shoot a silhouette. Raw file flexibility will make this process much faster, but even a point and shoot camera will do. Do NOT rim lite the subject as you want the harsh edges from a total silhouette.

2) Add an S-Curve to increase contrast. This makes it easier to edit.

3) Using the magnetic lasso, trace the body. Adjust the “frequency” (pixels between anchor points) until you capture details like hair, but otherwise have smooth lines.

4) Fill the person-shaped selection with 100% white.

5) Add a drop shadow with a spread of 100% and distance 0. The radius will be the thickness of the outline, so experiment until you like what you see. I’ve reduced the opacity to 75% to allow the color added in the next step to show in the outline as well as the background.

6) At this point you can use the brush, eraser, or other tool to reshape the body. In two of these images I’ve repositioned limbs which didn’t look right in silhouette. The Shift button is your friend here, click on a point, hold shift and click on a second point and a line will be brushed (or erased).

7) Add a Hue/Saturation Adjustment Layer set to Colorize. I’ve found saturation set to 25 gives a very appealing pastel color. If you’re doing multiple images experiment with Hues which are spaced 90 degrees apart. The hue of the three featured images in this post are 0, 90, 270.

8) Select All, then Select > Modify > Contract. This width will become your frame.

9) Fill the frame-selection with 100% white.

August 25th, 2006

Our assignment: High Key fashion using a piece of fabric and a model.

____-Key refers to the range of tones in the image. A High-Key image is predominately gray-to-white in tones, while a Low-Key image is predominately black-to-gray in tones.

This was not an assignment I expected much success out of. I am not a fashionable guy, nor care to be, and I know very little about fabric. However, in the interest of making my semester abroad worthwhile I put forth a good effort.

I came across a model at Uni who had natural red hair and freckles. My roommate was nice enough to take me to a fabric store and we picked out a light blue sheer chiffon and a green satin that would compliment the model’s hair color. I thought of many ideas before the shoot and when the model arrived we went through most of them in good time. I had a very good assistant, who I know from America. She did an excellent job in helping the model pose and arranging the clothing.

For the photographically inclined, here is my lighting diagram: