Special Effects

Hey everybody!

 

So, I've been asked numerous times on how I get this effect. Well, I was inspired by a technique called the "Dragon Effect" as the linked video will show you. This, is my own variation of this "effect". It's still a bit of work, just like most of the youtube clips will explain to you.

 

Me, I think I've followed most of the steps, but, still doing it my way... I guess I have this thing about following rules... I use them as a guide.

Two more examples at the end of my story.

 

Your initial image should at least look good to start with. This example taken in the middle of the day is a good platform to work with, but not exactly the best.

 

Time to start putting this onion together, one layer at a time.

 

This guy was neglected by his decade long employers and left behind in a small town that is also neglected.

Please note that I do all of this in the fantastic Photoshop CS5 and hope you will understand my tutorial here as I don't go into details. I don't show clips of settings, screen dumps or any of those that you see in other tutorials. I just tell you what I did and how I did it. I will however try to give you as much detail as I can remember.

(I'm glad I saved the .psd file so that I could dismantle it and give a brief on how-in-the-hell I did this.)

 

Right, first thing I did was to shift the shadow/highlights drastically.

(Image -> Asjustments -> Shadow/Highlights)

By shifting these sliders, you can tweak the levels until you find yorself with quite a nice balance between lifted shadows and darkened highlights.

 

 

Then a quick copy of the layer (Ctrl -J Win/Cmnd J Mac), which gets some Gaussian Blur thrown at it (Filter -> Blur -> Gaussian Blur). This is to wipe out any freaky looking ghosting and edge halo's that are caused by the shadow/highlight procedure. There are other ways, but this is what I did. Oh yes, don't forget to now ERASE the subject so that only the background is blurred (this can be achieved in various ways, such as using quick select too, magnetic lasso, or just erasing). I used a combo of quick select and eraser.

 

 

 Ok, cool... So you've noticed a MAJOR saturation explosion, don't worry, we'll get to that. Before that (and this is why I'm not phased by the saturation) I add yet another layer. This layer gets desaturated (Ctrl+shift+U), then more shadow/highlights, then contrasted and finally, the layer filter is set to "Soft Light". Don't really notice it below? Probably because I shifted the fill and opacity just a tad...

 

Again, duplicated that same desaturated layer and gave it a hint of gaussian blur (less than half of the first blur used for the background) and the the fill and opacity brought back up to 100%.

 

 

Now, it's starting to look good and, as you'll notice, the saturation is slowly reducing...

Next steps are "the painter's steps" where I painstakingly sit with different size brushes of black and white and multiple layers (don't get intimidated, this is optional and can be done in different easy ways). Background get first priority... Remember your selection? It should still be available (Select -> reselect), if not, select again the same way you did for the blurred bachground. Cool?

 

Right, inverse this selection so that you now have the background selected and not your subject. Paint with brush, or use the paint bucket... either, or...

Oh, then set the layer to soft light. Background's looking cool, but still a bit of work.

 

Duplicate that layer, use a (reasonable sized) feathered eraser to trim around your subject so that you get a bit of a glow and nice rich, dark bacground, just like below.

This layer will get quite a heavy gaussian blur to blend it in nicely.

 

 

Okay, now the face, this is what can take the most time.

Another layer to the onion, set to soft light (again, sigh...) and this time, very small, feathered brushes will be used. Why? Because, stop asking questions.

This is to work on the details in the face, to accentuate the creases and "character lines" in his face, to make them stand out more.

There is another way, a photocopy layer, whites removed, blurred, but it isn't as effective as being selective and means a ton more erasing... I tried that route... it can be effective, but is just so time consuming.

 

Okay, the next two steps are basically, the same... okay, they are...

New layer, painted bucket black, erase the centre with large, very large feathered eraser with opacity set to around um, 20%. Then it's case if erasing from the centre outwards. Yeah, to create a vignette.

 

 

Duplicate that layer, erase a little more to have a lesser vignette. Play with these until desired effect.

Please note: They ARE optional, but work for me.

 

 

Okay... now it's time to deal with that saturation (which you could probably see, has been changing with each layer added) by using the new adjustment layer tool... selecting saturation and adjusting the master slider. You can, however also opt for selective colour saturation by clicking on the drop down box that says, Master... I just toned down the entire colour spectrum altogether.

 

 

Finally, I added my signature and then saved it.

(okay, I might have tweaked the  brightness once more after)

 

 

That's it, as easy as that.

Do enjoy, let me know if there anything you'd like to know.

csphoto76@gmail.com

 

Okay, two more examples.

 

This one, I managed to get it better, practice...

 

 

the first one I did, this was done using the photocopy layer story I mentioned earlier.

 

 

Seascapes

So yes, I got myself a Sony Alpha A200 camera and had to learn to use it. I set out to finally capture some beaches, some sunsets and amongst all this other things too. I would set out at sunset, or sunrise to capture some of nature's beauty... Below is a taste of things to come from my lovely little A200.

Roadsides of South Africa

~o0o~

You know, travelling a lot can get quite tedious, boring and tiring… very tiring. But, if you have camera at hand, it changes everything just that little bit. Well, for me it does...

You see, I take some of the most boring roads in South Africa and seem to find beauty in them. It is finding the exceptional in the ordinary that makes the many hours in the car so worthwhile.

My secret? I challenge myself, if I can put it that way. What I do is look ahead, still watching the road, but also the sun’s position, time of day, and the scenery. If I spot something up ahead, I start to plan what’s around it, where can I stop, how is the lighting etc… if It all seems okay, I’ll slow down, double check my surroundings and the safety of the stop. If all plays out, stop, hazards on, get out and walk around to find the best composition.

Then I take a few shots, different angles etc because I still don’t get it right the first time and one take is never enough.

I have travelled quite a few roads and have impressed many people with my images.

Look, sometimes, I do the quick runaround thing because I do have timelines and thus get the images either under or over exposed but usually nothing that a little Photoshop can’t uh, fix.

So, next time you’re planning a short drive of more than an hour or between two cities with open countryside, look around, then look some more. Pull over, take a breather, sometimes you see things you wouldn’t usually see when you’re next to the car stretching your legs…

Bear in mind, these images are all shot with a compact camera.

HDR – An alternative process

So, HDR is the way forward for post editing images these days. It’s a great way of converting your normal image into something more… a work of art if you’d like to call it that.

What is HDR? High Dynamic Range – more can be read ->HERE<-

There are various ways of doing HDR conversion. The primary (and said to be proper) way is to take multiple images of the same scene [set at different exposures] then using software like Photomatix or Photoshop to basically merge these layers together creating a final single image that has the fullest colour range, without all the bright bits of a normal photo.

Well, I do it differently.

I use one image that I blend and alter in various layers.

Okay, so the original, like this one below, is actually “not bad” to start with. Good light, nice colour and detail but it’s just another photograph… yawn… I started out just adjusting the colour for richness and a little more vibrancy. As usual, I got carried away and started to add more and more layers.

First port of call was to address the bright sky and darker foreground selectively, basically try to recover some of the detail in the clouds and lighten the trees and brick work. I did this in two additional layers. The first is just a light painting of black over the clouds, I set the brush opacity to around 20% and painted all the sky. It’s fine to spill over a little, that’s what the eraser is for. The second layer was to get a little light back over the foreground, darken some spots and lighten others. This is again done with black and white paint. I set this layer to soft light and painted areas like the paving and parts of the wall with black. I painted over the trees and the foreground shadows with white to lighten these up a notch or two… and then set the layer opacity to 40% (though this changes depending on image and how much I want it to reveal or blend).

Woops! Now I have it looking somewhat flat! My bad… okay not really. This is deliberate, you’ll see why in a bit. I now duplicated the original image and adjusted the exposure up a tad to brighten things up again and give back some colour [opacity remains at 100%]. I set this layer to soft light as well for obvious reasons. Now it’s starting to look more like a nice image with pretty colour and detail, right? I then duplicated the original again, set it to soft light too with opacity of 12% and it made the slightest of difference but will come into play later as it merely tones the image by that 12% colour wise.

Now, one of usual tricks is of course, the black & white layer (desaturation and brightness/contrast adjustments merged into layer). Soft light setting again and this time 35% opacity (yes, opacity will vary depending on how much shadow you wanting back). The problem with this layer is now the clouds become even brighter than before. No problem to my trusty eraser… be careful not to over erase though. Look! It’s really standing out now! How cool am I?

But, the sky, seriously, look at that sky!! Still too bright and clashing with the rest of the picture. New layer again and yes, you guessed it, set to soft light again (with opacity at 100). I used a heavy brush of black paint and got to painting all the light spots like the sky and all the pillars. You have to admit, it was needed, right? Okay, none of this is really needed, but I love doing it, so I will do it.

Looking good? Almost… I’m still not happy with those bright clouds. So, another [soft light] layer is added and more heavy paint work is done. This time, just to the clouds because the pillars look good to me. This has now gotten the colours and detail of the clouds to match the rest of the image quite nicely I think.

But, all this work comes at a price of course… in this case, it was light, the image is now a lot darker than when I started out on this project. So I played just a little more adjusting levels and then of course playing with the selective colour feature… as always… what can I say, I like to enhance the colours to give you this pretty little picture.

So, ladies and gentlemen, another tidbit to add to your learning curve. Remember, shoot wisely, plan carefully and always, always have fun doing it.

Oh, you can also drop me a mail on cdscott76@gmail.com if you’re keen on any prints or other queries you might have.

Landscapes From Recent Road Trips

Recently I embarked on another couple of road trips. First was off to Mpumalanga region. Sabie, White River, Nelspruit through to Piet Retief and moolman before returning to Pretoria. Among the tall trees of Sabie, there are many roads such as this.

In between all the trees, roads and little of anything else, I spotted one of many old neglected houses...

They too had little roads leading into the forests. The guest lodge I stayed at had a pretty cool pool.

Just outside Nelspruit, the sky began to clear up. Taken amongst the hills and valleys of Mpumalanga. This Giraffe and Zebra were spotted along the side of the road, behind fencing of course on a game farm just outside Nelsruit. Up the hills and back into the contry side. Misty morning in Moolman, a tiny place not even spotted on a map, but 15 minutes from Piet Retief.

I then did Free State and Northern Cape regions. Quite different part of the world with much to see. For now I just posted some windmills spotted along the road.

Our land is as diverse as the people, if not more. You can travel 50kms and the colour of the earth itself will change constantly. This is typical Free State farm lands.

Nature's sculpturing is phenominal.