I really like using this effect on outdoor portraits. It is designed to give your images an ethereal soft glow. While it can work for any image it seems to work best on outdoor images where the light source appears more natural.
It begins by converting your image to a smart object from which you may access your smart filters. After converting to a smart object it may be wise to double-check your foreground and background color. Make sure that color is set to black for foreground and white for background on the Photoshop toolbar. From your header click Filter to access your drop down menu; choose sketch then Halftone Pattern. Leave the default settings as 1 for size and 5 for contrast. Leave the pattern as Dot then press OK.
Within the layers panel, under Smart Filter you should see the words Halftone Pattern with what looks like a double arrow separated by a single line. Double click that icon. Change the blending mode to Overlay and adjust your opacity levels to your desired level; for our purposes 45% worked great. Then click OK. Your image should be showing deeper saturation and a color shift with some elevated exposure in highlighted areas.
Back on your original layer, go to the header and click Filter and drop down to Blur and then Gaussian Blur. Set your blur to your desired amount. For our purposes we used 50, then click OK.
Go back to your layers panel. Now you should see a sub-layer added called Gaussian Blur with the same triangle off to the right you saw earlier. Double-click that icon; set your blend mode to screen. You should see an immediate exposure change of your image. After which, set the opacity to your desired level. We used 90.
If your image is too heavy on saturation, create a new blank layer. After creating your new blank layer… on a PC, click Control-Shift-Alt-E. On a Mac click Command-Shift-Option-E. This merges all your filters and changes them into one new single layer. You may access Hue/Saturation from your header menu from Image, then adjustments or you may click your layer mask icon to the right of your layer adjustment icon on the bottom of your layer panel. Adjust your saturation to the desired level and Voila. Done.
All Image Rights Reserved
©2011 Helios Digital Imaging & Graphic Design
Images cannot be downloaded, altered, screen-captured, modified, re-reproduced, resized, or reconstituted in any way without written and signed consent by Helios Digital Imaging & Graphic Design copyright owner.
No comments:
Post a Comment