The death of Selective Colour and High Key White Background Family Portraits

There are only so many more times I can look at a black and white photograph with a small part of it left in colour before I will break. It is usually something like a flower, a dress or the subject's eyes as the only coloured part of the image whilst the rest is grey scale. 

I understand that learning Photoshop is a very slow and gradual process but it seems that many professional photographers and image editors alike are still ruining perfectly good images by desaturating most of it.Why?

Now this is a perfectly decent macro shot of a ladybird on a leaf. Why on Earth does it need to be made partly black and white? I would bet money that the original with the vivid green against the red wings of the bug looks much better. Why oh why oh why must people do this?

While I'm in the subject of colourless backgrounds, when are we going to see the death of the already 20 years old plain, boring, white background studio shots of families? It's not new, it's been done before and it shows no talent. 

No no no no no no. Enough please.

Simple Cross Process Using Adjustment Layers

Before

After

 

 

I have seen many ways to cross process a digital image, some better than others, but this is my version which I think accurately replicates a cross processed film image. Cross processing is the method in which photographic film is intentionally processed in a chemical solution intended for a different type of film. There are many different effects of cross processing and the effects of this technique will differ from image to image.

This tutorial is intended as a guide and minor changes will be needed for different types of images. I have purposefully used a high colour, high contrast image for this guide to best show the effects of this technique.

1. Open your desired image in Photoshop. I am using CS5 so if the screens you see are different to the ones below, please get in touch and I will provide the method for early version of photoshop.
2. Create a new adjustment layer. Click Layer > New Adjustment Layer > Curves. Name the layer (E.g. X Process) and click OK.
3. 
4. We now need to adjust the contrast of each of the Red, Green and Blue layers in turn. Click the RGB drop-down and select the Red layer.
5.  
6. Using the mouse, click onto the red line and create a curve as seen in the diagram above. What this dies is lowers the red channel in the highlights of the image (the bottom left of the line are shadows and the upper right of the line are highlights). This will allow the other channels to power through.
7. Now select the Green channel.
8.  
9. Only a small but important change is required on this channel. Click on the middle of the line and drag it upwards. This will put a very small increase into the mid-tones of the green channel. 
10. Now select the Blue channel.
11.  
12. Two adjustments are needed to this channel, pull the upper mid-tones down while keeping the  mid-tones locked on the curve line. Notice how the shadows are slightly boosted by this action. 
13. Finally we need to increase the overall contract of the image. Select the RGB channel from the drop down.
14.  
15. What we do here is apply what is called an "S" curve. This increases the depth of the shadows and the richness of the highlights, which is the same as increasing the contrast. 
16. Your image should now be almost complete. Slight adjustments to each channel may be required to suit the image and your tastes.

Removing shiny skin, greasy face and forehead

1. Open the image which has shiny skin. We are only going to reduce the sheen, not eliminate it completely or the image will look unnatural. We have to keep the overall luminance and contrast to match the rest of the image.
2. 
3. Create a new layer (Shift+Ctrl+N) on PC or (Shift+Command+N) on Mac and give an appropriate name. This is where we will perform our grease reduction as so not to modify the original image.
4. 
5. Reduce the opacity of this layer to 51%. This can be changed later on depending on how much of an effect is required.
6. Press B to select the Brush tool. Set the size of this brush so it is roughly a quarter of the height of the shiny spot. E.g. you would have to brush across 4 times to completely cover the area. You can experiment with this but I have found this method to work for me.
   
7. We are now going to sample an area of forehead very close to where the top of the shine is. Hold down the Alt (PC) or Option (Mac) key and your cursor turns into a dropper tool. Click the area of the skin next to the shine. Your selected colour will have changed to this skin colour.
8. Click and drag a line across the top of the shiny area. you should now have something like this.
9. 
10. Hold the Alt/Option key again and sample an area of skin on the next line down.
11. Repeat this until the entire area is covered. You should now have something like this.
12. 
13. I increased the opacity of the layer to 62% which seemed to work ideal for this image.