I've been reading this forum for months now and I just love the expert retouching tips you are able to find here. Unfortunately I haven't found a post or article describing and explaining the following effect :

Photo - Example #1 (http://forum.gerardhenninger.com/RP/images/silver.jpg)
Photo - Example #2 (http://forum.gerardhenninger.com/RP/images/silver2.jpg)

I have seen some posters in here achieve the effect but I haven't found a way to recreate this effect myself. I am talking about the skin-tone, the desaturated colors, the painterly effect.

I am trying to get this look with the following photo I shot (400kb):

Photo - Lisette (http://forum.gerardhenninger.com/RP/images/lisette.jpg)
Anyone here who can tell me how to do this in Photoshop?

Thanks in advance.

your sample link don't work

Is this sort of the look you're looking for???

Or this? Happy picture guessing? :)

Or perhaps a light retouch! She has such wonderful skin.

I have uploaded to imageshack as it quite a large file. I hope this is what you are looking for...:)

http://img364.imageshack.us/my.php?image=rtp89dn.jpg

I did this with the following steps...

1. Cropped to get rid of the blur at the bottom of the pic.
2. Desaturated by -39.
3. Gamma corrected to enahnced skin colour and get rid of most of the red.
4. Shadow/Midtone/Highlight changed to -30/0/50.
5. Clarify at strength 5.
6. Shadow/Midtone/Highlight changed to -30/-40/0.
7. Shadow/Midtone/Highlight changed to -30/0/0.
8. Desaturated by -20.
9 Dodged and burned following all original shadows and highlights. (I may have overdone the burning to match the example you posted...I did it to match my own taste...;))
10. Sharpened more.

Smaller version below...(unfortunately more pixelated)...see larger link above...

Nice one Ziaphra!!!

Based on your sample of the desired result:

- applied blue and green channels using soft light and hue blending modes
- high pass sharpening
- gaussian blurred layer selectively applied using a black mask and soft white brush
- right side of the image lightened using an adjusted duplicated layer masked and applied with graduated white from right to left.
- soft shadows created using a desaturated layer darkened and blurred, masked and selectively applied using black mask and white brush.
- reds brought back slightly with a selective colour layer.

Shadow & Highlight to balance the image
blue channel set to luminosity
green channel set to multiply
tweak curves/ selective colour on original to get desired tone

Wow, after trying to get the look myself (and failing a couple of times) I went to bed to get a nap. Just woke up and I see that you guys/gals already edited it a couple of times. Love you!

I updated the start post with two examples. I don't know why the original link died.

I found a couple of links on DPReview and the effect seems to be called silver lighting. I think Verywierd's edit comes very close. Still want it to be more painted/drawn, if you know what I mean. It's still a bit too realistic.

Has anyone ever used this effect for a photo they shot themself? Just curious if I am the onlyone trying to master this effect

one photo, so many options

Wow NancyJ, I like that last version very much...
Great work!

For the last one -
Set the red channel to luminosity
Merge layers and take a copy of the green channel and set it aside for later
Completely smooth the skin
Take the green channel from earlier and set the blend mode to multiply - use shadow&highlight or curves to balance up
to finish, copy that green layer again and set the blend mode to soft light and run a high pass filter on and tweak to desired effect.

Here is another.maybe not what you are looking for, but I was having fun playing, the second is a little retouching and a little drama.
~Nancy~

______________________________
www.iphotofx.com

Thanks Nancy!

I used your technique and created the following (with some additional things I wanted to try).

Still not really the effect I am looking for, it's still too blurry, but I hope I am getting close.

BTW, I used a different photo just to see if it was a universal technique.

thanks again Nancy, learning alot today.

Thank you...:)

Nice one Ziaphra!!!

I might as well jump in.

-Shadow/highlight--mostly turning down the highlights and only slightly turning up the shadows. Adjust tone width and radius to taste, but I left them at the defaults of 50 and 30.
-Desaturated all hues *except* blue using an HSL adjustment layer.
-USM 1 pix radius and about 50 strength
-USM 50 pix radius and 20 strength
-lens blur using a radial gradient for the map. Sort of imitates the narrow DOF in one of the examples.
-color balance to add a tiny bit of yellow and green--just to mimick the samples.

Bart

Excellent work all of you. Everyone here is so talented. I like Nancy's first one in the series of four. I like Verywierd's too and I love Bart's. Bart you have that sharpening spot on. I see you used two passes at different radius. I will give that a try. Here is my version.

Here is my take in this one...

Amazing Subject
Hi-Res : http://www.retratista.com.br/fotos/thumbnails.php?album=31

Thanks Nancy!

I used your technique and created the following (with some additional things I wanted to try).

Still not really the effect I am looking for, it's still too blurry, but I hope I am getting close.

BTW, I used a different photo just to see if it was a universal technique.

thanks again Nancy, learning alot today.
Nicely Done, if its too blurry, adjust the sharpening or dont smooth the skin as much.

Channel composing is a very good field for experiment, when you need an unusual appearence of your picture. This one is Red with multiply option and green with soft light, sharp, dodge/burn. Very quick :)

@shellby
YOU'RE GREAT :)
That's what I am looking for, although the eyes might be a bit to white. I love the skin, the sharpness. Perfect!
Willing to share your technique?

@crex
I don't know if that's a public gallery or something, but if you are going to use my photo please add my name. I don't really mind people using my photos as long as I get the credit for taking the shot.
So something like : Photography : Gerard Henninger (link to website) Retouching : <your name>

Hope you understand.

Here's my go at it...

Thanks for the great picture to play with Gerard!

Here's my go at it...

Thanks for the great picture to play with Gerard!

And thanks for your great edit. Now, how did you do that?

BTW, I have more samples of Lisette if anyone wants to try to achieve this effect on a different photo. Just in case you guys/gals get bored with this one.

UPDATE :
It's the Dragan/Jim Ficus effect I am looking for. More the Ficus effect. Been reading posts on other forums and searched this forum again and found out that those photographers/retouchers's style is wat I am looking for.

Tried another time with the new tips I found (see attached image).
What do you think? Oversharpened? To much contrast?
Oh and in real-life I am not that scary :)

I used 2 green channels and 1 blue channel in Luminosity mode. Then I used another Channel Mixer adjustment layer to create a black & white version of the image that I liked. Then I lowered the opacity of that layer to about 45%.

After that it was just some healing, cloning, selective blurring, etc. I also used the High Radius Low Amount technique to sharpen it.

Hope that helps!

Excellent work all of you. Everyone here is so talented. I like Nancy's first one in the series of four. I like Verywierd's too and I love Bart's. Bart you have that sharpening spot on. I see you used two passes at different radius. I will give that a try. Here is my version.

FYI, The small radius USM is for sharpening. The large radius USM is for clarification/local contrast enhancement. It's similar to the clarify filter in Paintshop Pro.

Bart

Color Inverse Blur Overlay and USM. :)

Here (http://img139.imageshack.us/img139/3469/lisette9zx.jpg)'s a result. :)

I used the Blur / Sharpen method outlined here, and discussed in a previous thread:

http://tutorials.smugmug.com/gallery/1169397/1

I also changed the background colour to match the sample image you provided. I coloured her skin using a gold colour with the pain brush set to COLOUR. Whites of eyes done with curves (you could back that off a bit)

Not sure if this is what you're looking for...
here's my take..
ciao!

Giga

I gave your photo a shot and tried to match the look of the reference work. If this is close to what you're looking for let me know and I'll try to post how I did it.

Some more color tweaking.

After looking at Shelby's take, it will be hard to improve upon that!

So, we tried a "less is more" approach. We switched to LAB and did some selective sharpening on the L channel. Then created an "Edge Mask" and used it on a duplicate blurred layer.

Added a Dodge/Burn layer and enhanced the lips and eyes while slightly dodging a few small wrinkles.

Also added a Gradient Map Adjustment layer with tri-tones which uses 302102 as the darktone, B0A38B as the midtone and FFFCEF as the light tone. Played with the sliders to get the breaking points where we wanted them.

This is a great photo by the way.

[img=http://img408.imageshack.us/img408/3342/lisette25bp.th.jpg] (http://img408.imageshack.us/my.php?image=lisette25bp.jpg)

Here's a retouch I did in an earlier thread with a somewhat similar look (refered to as 'silver light' in that thread):

http://www.sendefladen.dk/dpreview/ibookster.jpg

I explain some of the techniques I use here:

http://www.bechbox.dk/pwl/

/megl

(larger version)http://img286.imageshack.us/my.php?image=woman8dj.jpg
Thanks to ImageShack for Free Image Hosting (http://imageshack.us)

There's my effort.