Vernon Trent started topic 3 years ago  

884 forum posts and 240 photos.

Well, it happens very often that you take some cool photographs and they look cool in your camera display but when you’re back home and look at them on your screen,
they’re pretty flat and not so vibrant.
In the next steps I’ll show you how you can spice up such an image.


The work mentioned below can be done with any image editing software which supports layer techniques and layer blending modes. Adobe Photoshop is my choice but you can do this
with Gimp or PaintShop Pro as well.
Please keep in mind that in Gimp or PaintShop Pro the blending modes have different names.
Consult your software manual or grab the internet for appropriate instructions.

OK, let’s start.

1. We load our basic image


2. After duplicating the layer, we do a brightness/contrast adjustment.
In this case I took the contrast +30 and added +10 brightness, so the image is not too dark.


3. Now we duplicate the adjusted layer and desaturate it with ctrl+shift+u.


After that, we set the blending mode to overlay and set the opacity to 50%


4. Well, we normally could finish here but let’s tweak the image a bit more.
We add a new layer, set the blending mode to overlay and use a big soft brush with 20% opacity and paint with black color the edges, in fact we paint a slight vignette to focus the main subject.
As the result, the waterdrops are now more accentuated.


5. The color friends stop here and the B&W friends follow me with the next steps.
We add a gradient layer and choose the black/white gradient.


6. After that we add another layer. This time we choose the levels layer and adjust the mids and blacks to boost the overall contrast.


Now your image is ready for print. If you intend to publish online, then flatten the image,
assign the sRGB color profile, resize for web, sharpen and you’re done.

A working file with all the steps above is available for download as a zipped layered tiff.


Download

Have fun processing. Feedback is very much appreciated. :)

Cheers, Vernon Trent

Last edited by Ralf Stelander at 20080822 11:02:45

Jacob Jovelou  HOMEPAGE  replied 3 years ago  

CREW: Founder   4254 forum posts and 96 photos.

Thanks for posting this excellent guide here, Vernon!

/ Jacob

Fedor Soreks replied 3 years ago  

1089 forum posts and 0 photos.

Great how-to, concise and to the point.

Andre Gehrmann replied 3 years ago  

108 forum posts and 35 photos.

Thx a lot Vernon for your work!

cheers
André

Doris Doppler replied 3 years ago  

52 forum posts and 32 photos.

Thank you very much, Vernon! I've never worked with layers so far but I'll give it a try now.

Samuel Lakdja replied 3 years ago  

Inactive photographer. 216 forum posts and 25 photos.

I used this tutorial on "The ballerinas"


Thank you very much Vernon!

Last edited by Samuel Lakdja at 20071014 21:07:48

Arjun replied 3 years ago  

25 forum posts and 8 photos.

Thanks for this article, it was a big help.

Cile Bailey replied 3 years ago  

174 forum posts and 74 photos.

I have so much to learn, thanks vt , this is great! Always, Cile

kyla replied 3 years ago  

3 forum posts and 8 photos.

thanks for the step by step- you are a great and patient teacher not to mention a not-so-bad photographer (said tongue in cheek) :-))

U. Midtgaard replied 3 years ago  

108 forum posts and 13 photos.

Thank you very much for sharing this idea. A great tutorial. It really did the trick on my new upload, since I finally had one accepted after a long period of rejections. So, thanks again.
Regards U.M.

Vernon Trent replied 3 years ago  

884 forum posts and 240 photos.

glad to read that it has helped a bit :-)

thanks

Tracy Wallace replied two years ago  

54 forum posts and 4 photos.

Today is the first day i have stepped foot in the 'articles Forum' and I'm so glad I did.
There is oodles of info and tips here which I am looking forward to reading. Thank You Vernon :)

KoPi replied two years ago  

1122 forum posts and 53 photos.

Well, thanks to Tracy too lol, as I followed the "new post" and ended up here. This will come in so handy. thanks Vernon

Vernon Trent replied two years ago  

884 forum posts and 240 photos.

for those who have missed the download file
it's working again now :-))

Alexandre Buisse replied two years ago  

1186 forum posts and 69 photos.

The trick which copies a layer, desaturates it and sets blend mode to overlay has become one of my favourites and has been helpful more times than I can remember. Thanks again Vernon!

Christiane Anna K. Lepke  HOMEPAGE  replied two years ago  

469 forum posts and 16 photos.

Thank you, thank you, thank you.

:-)

I believe I did understand it just reading once. :-D

Giulio.Ercolani replied two years ago  

1 forum post and 25 photos.

Very useful and very clear! Thank you Vernon!

Scott Crouse  HOMEPAGE  replied two years ago  

228 forum posts and 8 photos.

Nice tutorial Vernon thanks! Be giving it a try this evening. Oh no, even more Black and White images.... kidding! ;-)

Giorgio Lorcet  HOMEPAGE  replied two years ago  

354 forum posts and 52 photos.

great Vernon, many thanks!

Vernon Trent replied two years ago  

884 forum posts and 240 photos.

cool that it's useful for you all :-)))

Angela Vicedomini replied two years ago  

CREW: Photo screener   353 forum posts and 134 photos.

Thank you so much Vernon ! Tutorials like this are extremely helpful ! I really appreciate !

Peyo replied two years ago  

10 forum posts and 0 photos.

I just wanted to mention, that 'similar' result can be achieved in Picasa in much easier way.
Of course there is no point in comparing Picasa to PS, but this can be useful for someone who (like me, for example :) ) does not have PS (I use gimp). Picasa is free.

And it took only about half a minute.
This is what I did:

Effects: B&W
Effects: Sharpen
Basic Fixes: autocontrast
Tuning: Shadows set on about 3/4 of scale

Here's the final effect (of course a played with base.jpg):


(if the photo did not appear, here's the url: http://peyo.omega.pl/temp/base_picasa.jpg)

I still prefer effect made by Vernon (skintones on right hand), but if Picasa not so bad at this.
(but the biggest disadvantage of Picasa here is, that for example when I set shadow on about 3/4 of scale, there are no numbers, just a bar, so it is almost impossible to repeat exactly the same operation).

Peyo

Conor Lanphere replied two years ago  

57 forum posts and 2 photos.

You know Vernon, so far we've made a photo book, but maybe it should be considered to make a technical book filled with all your photoshop tricks and even the more important tricks of actual shooting. Just an idea, but I think it could be a good one.

Maxi Adrian San Agustin replied two years ago  

2 forum posts and 0 photos.

Hi Vernon, thanks for the tutorial. It is really helpful :)

Clyde Beamer replied two years ago  

2523 forum posts and 14 photos.

Hey, VT, nice tutorial, you work almost the same way I do on a lot of shots!! The difference in my layers stack would be that the layer you have labeled "adjusted layer b/c" would be with transfer mode Soft light and it would have saturation at about 25% of original.

Thanks for sharing this!!

Robert  HOMEPAGE  replied two years ago  

Forum moderator 7006 forum posts and 111 photos.

Thanks a lot for this!!!!!

Greetings Robert

Nicole Goggins replied two years ago  

138 forum posts and 20 photos.

fantastic! thanks so much for sharing - i'm going to try this out now!

Matthew M. Zeller replied two years ago  

8 forum posts and 0 photos.

What might be the equivalent process in GIMP? Are the saturation and opacity percentages the same or does the software differ in the way they each process similar techniques? I don't have access to PS so I have nothing to compare to.

I have no idea what you mean by this:

"6. After that we add another layer. This time we choose the levels layer and adjust the mids and blacks to boost the overall contrast."

Is this a PS specific step?

Thanks VT.

Vernon Trent replied two years ago  

884 forum posts and 240 photos.

level adjustment layer. adjust the middle and black tones.
not sure how that works in gimp.

there is a gimp version called gimpshop.
is has the same menu structure and commands like photoshop. :)

Patricia replied two years ago  

469 forum posts and 20 photos.

Thanks for sharing! I'm new to all this but I'm going to try it out. Your explenation is clear, even for me ; ) It's really helpfull. I'll let you know how it turned out.

Fabio Giannelli replied one year ago  

319 forum posts and 12 photos.

I used to do something similar but your way of operating is undoubtely more clean and simple. Thank you very much for sharing!

Giedrius replied one year ago  

1 forum post and 1 photo.

nice tutorial ;)

avil replied one year ago  

1 forum post and 0 photos.

Thanks so much sharing that

Hannes Cmarits replied one year ago  

71 forum posts and 0 photos.

Great work.Thank you.
Could you write a litte tutorial about textures?
Would appriciate it.
Bye and thanks again, Hannes

Oruç Gazi Kutluer replied one year ago  

Inactive photographer. 32 forum posts and 0 photos.

Good work.. One of the best way to establish this aesthetic view...

Nathan Flickinger replied one year ago  

22 forum posts and 0 photos.

Thank you very much for this tutorial. I've used your first method of overlaying a desatruated image and I find the results to be quite pleasing.

Thanks for the tips,
Nathan

Faddoush replied 11 months ago  

784 forum posts and 1 photo.

This is so cool...can't wait to try it your way!

Thanks!

J. Menna Barreto replied 11 months ago  

5 forum posts and 0 photos.

This is very cool!!

Ron B replied 10 months ago  

25 forum posts and 0 photos.

Thank you very much for this tutorial, Vernon.

Ian Munro replied 9 months ago  

105 forum posts and 12 photos.

Great tutorial. Thanks.

Ajven replied 7 months ago  

1 forum post and 4 photos.

very useful tutorial, thank you !!

donal husni replied 5 months ago  

35 forum posts and 0 photos.

thank you very much my friend.

Horia Berca replied 5 months ago  

95 forum posts and 1 photo.

thanks for sharing, nice tutorial to follow

migluis replied 3 months ago  

4 forum posts and 0 photos.

Thks a lot for sharing!!

Vivion Mulcahy replied 3 months ago  

228 forum posts and 8 photos.

Such a lot of work! I am too lazy for all that. I prefer to get the image right when taking the shot, not afterwards.

kenp  HOMEPAGE  replied 3 months ago  

107 forum posts and 45 photos.

Remind me, how do you get the contrast right in the camera when taking a street shot?