Who knows how to turn a black pair of leather gloves into white gloves, believably?

i would probably start by selecting the gloves and inverting it. then use channel mixer to lighten it a bit and to add little color so it doesn't look like a grayscale. easier said than done of course. especially with super high res files.

I know I don't, at least not with the quality you'd be looking for. The problem is that, unless the shot is overexposed, the shadow detail would be insufficient to become believable midtone detail once shifted up the curve.

Yeah Doug. I figure you are right. The shot has detail, even in the blackest blacks, but it is still truly black. I did some quick tries to no avail. Jack, yeah, it will be 2' tall in the end so it's got to be perfect. I tried inverting it first and had no luck. I believe we will just get some gloves and shoot them in the same pose and compose.

yes it is possible, especially if it's in RGB.....desaturate the gloves, then use curves to make a move to your desired tone and cast....this could also be possible to do using a gradient map after seeing the advice from cricket regarding huge color moves...

only problem i keep running into is, with all the mthods mentioned, is basically getting those natural looking highlights back in. it looks very flat and fake if you don't have those. They don't look so great trying to brush them in, you really need a natural selection to get a believable mask.

but separating and somehow inverting the shadow highlight detail of the leather doesn't seem too bad.

anyone else having any luck with this?

yes it is possible, especially if it's in RGB.....desaturate the gloves, then use curves to make a move to your desired tone and cast....this could also be possible to do using a gradient map after seeing the advice from cricket regarding huge color moves...

talk is cheap. Show me. Remember, this will be 2' x 4' at least. (not these gloves, just an example)

http://www.johnhelmer.com/products/full/277.jpg

ant, i've been practicing on that same example, you cruising google images for that?!?

yup. the same.

Ant

Is that meant for me?

Chris

Chris, I don't follow....

I guess no? Not sure what you are referring to.

Ant

Is that meant for me?

Chris

Obvious problems illustrated here and in the next post. Real white gloves.

Chris, I don't follow....

I guess no? Not sure what you are referring to.

The comment that the talk is cheap. Show me.

Any way, it has been a while since I had to do this. ANd it is a total b**ch to do correctly.

Chris

suggested methods thus far. example.

The comment that the talk is cheap. Show me.

Any way, it has been a while since I had to do this. ANd it is a total b**ch to do correctly.

Chris

No. Not directed at you, you just got here. I'm sure we are just going to shoot it, but I'm mostly just curious as it poses an interesting challenge - not sure it's interesting enough to invest the time though. Pretty much "anything" is possible with a large enough budget and far out enough deadline but..

this is pretty frustrating, i can't wait to see what you come uo with.

it's gonna be very hard at 2' .

Here is my shot. Needs some hard lines but right now don't have the time. Probably be better if it was higher quality.

Thanks for the challenge though Ant.

CHris

this is pretty frustrating, i can't wait to see what you come uo with.

it's gonna be very hard at 2' .

Nice effort. A little whiter and its pretty good.

Chris

Could spend some time and make it look right but could be a done quite nicely with a high res image. As long as you can isolate the highlights and shadows the underlying color is changable.

That's actually not too bad! Fascinating exercize.

Very nice attempts. Chris's is closest. Still think we'll shoot it instead though. Thanks for the replies and tries. See ya all Tuesday.

here's my 5 minute effort...

Ant,
My attempt at the gloves.
Ray

My attempt.

That's pretty good, Mark. What steps did you use?

i'm liking cainam's.

Here's my attempt - I wanted to hold the contrast in the shadow of the original "black" gloves.

I think a reshoot is in order, because while it is possible to turn black gloves into white, I think doing it "right" would take longer than reshooting it.

no matter which version i look at, i still see a solarized effect...

I tried to use match colors, but its a lot of work & the result...so so.
It is better to get white gloves.

Mark

Looks good. Looks like you put in quite a bit of time and effort with some retouching also.

Since I did not explain the steps I took, I'll do it now.

I duped the background and blurred it using box blur.. THen I inverted it and left it set to normal.

I duped the back ground again, moved it above the blurred layer and hit it hard with a curves layer and lowered theopacity down to 80%. I then made a blank layer under that and merged it down so it was 100% opacity again. THe layer, not the pixels.
Then I did a curves move above everything. A big one that flattened the image.
Then another curve layer above to make sure it had a white look.
About 2 to 3 minutes of effort which is mostly never enough to get good results.

What I did not take the time to do was to add in the definition of the shadows and hard lines which is needed for it to look realistic. Right now mine is a little soft looking.

But there is no need to invert a black image to get to white as it will make weird shadows and highlites and cause a posterization effect as Pixelzombie noted. Although it would probably be less with a higher res image.

Chris

I tried increasing brightness and lowering contrast. I also shifted and attenuated colors because your black gloves are dark brown.
There are still too many problems for this to pass when full-size.
Pierre

That's pretty good, Mark. What steps did you use?


Basically there are two things I did.

1. Make a layer for the highlights and midtones.
To do this I used 'brightness/contrast and levels.
When I compare it to Chris' way of doing this, my way may not be the pro-way, but the results look pretty much the same.
At a certain point I used usm to enhance contrast.
I did not invert anything, and I don't see any posterized effect.

2. Make a layer for the shadows, and brush them in through the layermask.
Adding the shadows I did in two steps. That's where the 'illustrator' takes over from the 'retoucher'.



I don't think there is an easy or fast way to turn black gloves into white gloves, and reshooting will always be the better option.
But to answer Ant's question: 'Y, I believe it is possible'.

Nice challenge Ant.

As you suspected no one has produced a believable image, though there have been some very good efforts, I've not seen one that would stand a large blow up.

My own attempts produced nothing of any particular note, it was comparable to some already posted, and not as good as others. The inverted shadows just didn't cut it and looked wrong somehow.

not bad on the gloves...they just look more silver than white...good luck with this

dark to light is always the hardest, we do it a lots at my work. Best advice, reprocess, LAB, and luck.

Nice challenge Ant.

As you suspected no one has produced a believable image, though there have been some very good efforts, I've not seen one that would stand a large blow up.

My own attempts produced nothing of any particular note, it was comparable to some already posted, and not as good as others. The inverted shadows just didn't cut it and looked wrong somehow.

Gary

While the image Ant posted was just a representative of what he was looking for, given the right hi res image. This is done quite a bit when the photographer does not have the time or foresight to shoot a pair of white gloves instead. Or sometimes a manufacturer drops the black line of gloves and wants whites gloves but there is no time to shoot again.
Given the proper amount of time and attention it is pulled off properly and at pretty much any size.
Cainans looks pretty good because he took a lot of time and effort to make it that way by adding in retouching instead of just seeing if it can be made white as Ant asked.

Chris

Yes I think Cainam did a pretty good job of that, its convincing enough as a sample to prove its possible.

Basically there are two things I did.


I did not invert anything, and I don't see any posterized effect.



solarized is what i had originally mentioned, it's a different type of look than posterized...

Gary

While the image Ant posted was just a representative of what he was looking for, given the right hi res image. This is done quite a bit when the photographer does not have the time or foresight to shoot a pair of white gloves instead. Or sometimes a manufacturer drops the black line of gloves and wants whites gloves but there is no time to shoot again.
Given the proper amount of time and attention it is pulled off properly and at pretty much any size.
Cainans looks pretty good because he took a lot of time and effort to make it that way by adding in retouching instead of just seeing if it can be made white as Ant asked.

Chris

That's as maybe Chris, but no one here IMO has posted an image that I would consider using, none of them are convincing, certainly not if blown up.

I'm quite willing to accept that it can be accomplished, and indeed that it is regularly done, but I haven't seen any example so far that would IMO be suitable for use.

This is not to decry any of the attempts, or to suggest that I could do better (I've already admitted my own failure), just to say that I remain to be convinced.

Yep, I also think that it can get very close but it will not look like the real thing..

Also white leather gloves are usually made with very fine leather and are aimed to Ladies' hands... (as the ones posted by Ant)

The example we all worked on is a pair of strong man's gloves which, in my opinion, will not easily look convincing in white...

Anyway ...a nice challenge

I think there should be a rule that you guys cant use inverse to get the white look. :) thats why alot of these look silver instead of white. I had this same nightmare of a project. 5 hours later i had an image that no one could tell was fake. so i hope since that add was used nationaly.... :) Hay try making gloves from scratch, that is when it realy gets hard. :) I wish i had time to play with this image but sadly i must do boring retouches. maybe later in the week

In the end, I did it in post rather than reshooting. Took approximately 2 hours. The gloves were rubber, like those used by a hairdresser not wanting to dye their skin. I used a combination of Cainam and Chris's workflow and with some tweaking and whatnot it came out very nice and took much less time than I had anticipated.