Photo Stylin’
edgy
Here is a little trick I picked up quite a while ago, but I think it bears sharing.
Landeros Design Group • www.roblanderos.com • 4/29/2008
Here is the starting point and the end result of this particular exercise.
I
If you are a frequent viewer of Saturday Night Live, you have probably noticed the photos of the guest hosts used at commercial breaks throughout the show. They are striking, highly stylized photo portraits and I wouldn’t be surprised if they were done using a technique similar to this one. The technique involves a series of adjustments and filters, some of which you probably have noticed on the menus, but have never actually used. I will go through the steps and provide illustrations along the way. Although it may seem like a laborious process, it actually is. Therefore, I recommend, after you have gone through it manually once, that you then record it as an Action.
First start with a good subject matter. A pretty figure or face against a uniform background works well, as with this photo of Julia Roberts. In RGB mode, go to your Channels palette and select the channel with the most definition and contrast. This will usually be the Green channel. Duplicate it. You will have a new channel/selection called “Green copy”.
This illustration shows the action script for an easy-to-follow stepby-step list of instructions.
From the menu, choose Filter/ Stylize/Find Edges.* Then Image/ Adjustments/Invert. *In addition to using the Find Edges filter, experiment with the Glowing Edges filter.
Now choose Filter/Other/ Maximum. Experiment with the Radius setting. This will expand the white and lighter pixels. But they will be blocky. To smooth them out, use Filter/Noise/ Median. Then apply a Gaussian blur. The results of all these steps will look something like this.
Now go back to your Layers palette and with the Background layer selected, Select/Load Selection “Green copy”. Then create a new layer via copy (Ctrl+J). (If recording the actions, this would be a good place to stop recording.) The new layer will look something like this.
From this point, you could go in a number of creative directions. In this case I’ve merely created a new layer between Background layer and Layer 1, filled it with a medium flesh color and have used a layer mask to allow parts of the hair to show through from the Background layer. I’ve also used a layer mask on Layer 1 to get rid of “blemishes” in the large transparent areas.
The initial result is on the left. Going just a bit further to enhance the effect, I’ve applied a blending mode of Hard Light to Layer 1 and lightened the middle layer.
This is a very basic example. The possibilities and variations are endless. In some of my work using this technique, I’ve created multiple channel selections using various settings and multiple layers with complex combinations of blending modes. It’s fun to experiment because the effects can be quite surprising. But it all starts with isolating the image’s edges and adjusting them to create a good channel selections to work with.
Here is one I did from a photo of Marilyn Monroe that achieved a nice effect of Conté crayon on textured paper. I think I am attracted to the effect in part because it is reminiscent of some of the artwork I did as an art student experimenting with Xerox photocopiers, which had a tendency to only recognize and reproduce the edges of images.
I would encourage you to experiment with using various channels and filter settings. You will also want to use Levels to adjust the contrast in the new selection channels you’ve created. ~ Rob Landeros 4/29/2008