Friday, October 25, 2013

Photographic Processing

I've been trying to come up with a recipe to emulate a look that I frequently see in Vogue and Chatelaine. It is supposed to hint of faded polaroid.

I did this one some time ago:


I quite like how it turned out. The key to the process is supposed to be cool, teal shadows and warm highlights.

Here's my second attempt:

The effect can be seen if you compare it to the original:


I'm not sure I have it down yet - I think I need some more work. The two examples I have here I have used a teal tone for the shadows and I'm thinking something a little more cyan might work better. I think I could also try a darker tone - in the second image, the highlight hue is warmer and the overlay lighter, so I reduced the opacity to keep it from going too light. but I'm thinking that isn't the way to go. I ended up adding a tone-control layer to keep highlights in check.

I think that the way to do this is:
  1. crop
  2. sharpen
  3. tone
  4. flatten all
  5. prepare luminosity masks
  6. apply colours with said masks

More in the future, probably.

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