|
One of the fun aspects of digital photography is the amount of control you
have after the image is captured. It’s easy to take a simple photo and
turn it into a “work of art” using the options available in your
image-editing application, or with plug-ins available separately. The best part
of this is knowing you can always return to the original image and try something
new. It’s not only a fun way to jazz up an image, it’s also one
of the best ways to learn how filters work and how images respond to editing.
Regardless of the application you use, there will be editing controls available
to either duplicate the effects I show here or come up with similar variations.
Tip 1: Turn A Portrait Into A Painting
Photoshop Elements and Photoshop CS2 both include filters that enable you to
easily modify your photos to give them a painted look. For this example, I’ve
used two filters—Palette Knife and Texture. Start out with your original
image and create an adjustment layer (this step is optional, but I always try
to work on a layer rather than the actual image so I can make adjustments later).
Next, select Filter>Filter Gallery and then expand the Artistic group. When
I’m not sure what effect I want to use, I prefer to use the Filter Gallery
because it gives me access to most of the filters in one window where I can
apply them one at a time to see which I like the best. If you know which filter
you want to use, in this case the Palette Knife, you can select it directly
by choosing Filter>Artistic> Palette Brush. For the image shown here,
I used a Stroke Size of 14, Stroke Detail of 3, and Softness
of 4. Click OK to apply the filter to your image.
Select the Filter Gallery again, and this time in the Texture group select Texturizer.
I used Canvas with a Scaling of 100 percent and Relief set to 4. The end result,
(bottom image) has a nice painterly look to it.
 |
|
Tip 2: Old-Fashioned Color
Hand-colored images have always impressed me, but when I’ve tried to do
them the traditional way I fail miserably. Of course, I was never that good
at coloring between the lines either, but let’s not go there. The easiest
way to achieve the hand-colored look is to use layers. Begin by opening your
image, and duplicating the layer.
For this second layer, convert to black and white by selecting Enhance> Adjust
Color>Remove Color (Elements) or Image> Adjustments>Desaturate (Photoshop).
Now, on the layers palette, reduce the Opacity to about 60 percent. This will
give the image a soft color effect similar to the old hand-colored photos. If
you want to intensify the effect in a particular area, use the Eraser with the
Opacity set at about 50 percent and go over the area you want to modify. This
will let the color show through more than the rest of the image, but not as
much as the original color shot.
 |
|
Tip 3: Infrared Anyone?
Infrared images have a ethereal feel to them. Although you can create your own
IR look with the Channel Mixer in Photoshop, it’s a heck of a lot easier
to use one of the plug-ins or filters that are available. One of the very best
is found in the nik Color Efex 2.0 package from nik Multimedia. The Color Efex
package has both black and white and color infrared filters with a number of
options so you can fine-tune your image until you get just what you’re
looking for. For this particular example, I used the Infrared: Black & White,
which has several options for filter style, contrast, and highlight controls.
|
