znalazlem w sieci niby kompletny opis techniki retuszu swiatlem (efekt bardzo podobny do prac Dragana) ale niestety po angielsku
czy ktos sprubuje przetlumaczyc, niby proste ale zawile:)
Thanks you all for liking my image.
I apologize for not posting it earlier, its just that that insomnia keeps you awake but doesnt let you think or work.
I still cant embed my images but here is the link to the finished work:
http://www.pbase.com/image/31708070
Before I continue, here is my small disclaimer used before:
Yeah, original picture is from gettyimages! PS work is mine. And its not the only picture, I will work on about 5 or 10. They are just to practice, so dont freak out on copyright issues, k?!
What do his pictures look like?
He told us to look very closely at his images. I still have to go back and look some more. But here is what I noticed.
Muted colors - this means there is some sort of desaturation involved.
Oil-painting feel. - He mentions he does some coloring. I think this is what adds to the picturesque feel.
Extraordinary eyes - Very sharp. Almost all are light-colored
On a photo.net post, he mentioned something about a blue layer nd how it makes imperfections come out.
He also notes that there is layering involved, sometimes in soft mode, sometime just "sandwiched" together. This meant I had to explore different types of blending modes.
Ok, so here is how I started.
I have always been fascinated at how some people manage to make incredible black and whites with a beautiful tonal range. I have worked on it myself and thing Im not all that bad, not goog maybe, but not bad.
I recently did a shoot, some self portraits. I turned them into black and white, adjusted contrast, levels, did come colorizing, etc. Here is what I ended up with:
http://www.pbase.com/image/31716888
So I thought to myself, How can I bring those tonal values to my color image?
I made two copies of my background layer.
On the top layer (I will term it BWLAYER) With all others turned off:
I went to the channel mixer, clicked on monochrome, and adjusted the red, green and blue channels. I pulled back the bar on the red very close to 0, maybe even past 0, maybe around -10, -30. Anyway, its diferent in every case. I find that the green channel serves me well between -5 and 50. The Blue channel is always a positive, maybe from 30 to 120. It all depends on the image you are using, so I never follow the same numbers here. But I always strive for tonal values that look like my selfportrait. How much or less you want might be a matter of personal choice style.
Turned on the bottom layer
I experimented with blending modes and found that Multiply gave me good results, of course it made the image a bit dark, but nothing I couldnt fix later.
I set opacity close to 100%
I remembered the eyes needed to stand out, maybe with a slight hint of unnatural beauty but not too much that everybody can spot it.
I added a mask to BWLAYER
-filled it with black
- I either choose a white brush with low opacity, or a grey one, sorry i cant remember.
- I painted over the eyes to reveal some color.
As you can see, this already looks similar to his effect.
When I was happy I merged this layer with a background copy
I dublicated the background layer again.
-I deeply darkened all the image.
-I created a mask for it, filled it with black and selectively painted with a white brush over the background. If I got some on his face, all I had to do was paint over his face (on the mask) with a black brush.
-Ok, so now the BG is dark but its still does not have that gradient look to it. I will come back to this later.
Layer Adjustments :
Im going to artificialy bring back color to my image with color balance
Color Balance (Blue):
Clicked on shadows, and tweaked the blue to bring out more of that skin contrast. I was somewhere around 15.
Set Blending mode to color.
I turned off blue and created
Color Balance (yellow):
Midtones.
Pushed yellow to about 40, and red to -8
I wanted a very rich yellow/golden hue. It was more than I need, but remember, I was to combine this layer with the blue one. that would correct the colors.
blending mode set to color
I turned both layers (blue and yellow) on along with BWLAYER
I thought It needed red, so I did this:
Color Balance (red):
Midtones.
I adjusted until I brought back some life to him, not too much that I would ruin the skin contrast. It turned out to be something like +15 on the red.
I need it to give a bit more of a pictureseque feel, so I did the following:
Color Balance:
Highlights.
I pushed it much more than I needed.
-Creted a mask, filled it with black
-With a white brush set to low opacity, somewhat large and extremely feathered, I painted over the cheeks and nose. I also tried the chin and forehead but to me this looked more like rash.
If it was too overpowering, I just reduced the opacity of the layer.
Polishing up the image:
Levels adjusment layer- Used to brighten the image (It was darkened when I used multiply in the BWLAYER, remeber)
Brightness and contrast: just a bit of contrast. +4
Fix the BG:
I added another levels adjusment layer.
-darkened the image again
-Applyed a mask, filled it with black
-Then used the radial gradient filter (from white to transparent) and painted over the mask.
High pass filter:
Used to sharpen the image. I found the the result was a bit to stark, so I changed the blending mode to soft light and reduced opacity to about 30.
Done.
Before and After:
http://www.pbase.com/image/31713537
I am doing more practice works, I will most them I finish them.
Here is one:
http://www.pbase.com/image/31723349
one last thing:
Thanks again
I hope to see all of your results and learn from your personal approach and techniques!!!
Cheers!!
-Danny
