great style by jill greenberg

[meditom]

http://www.manipulator.com/

does anybody know how to create this style?
not in detail of course. but perhaps someone knows how to create this kind of hyperrealism.

greetings from germany and sorry for my bad english :-)

[shellby]

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

Actions:
http://www.atncentral.com/download.htm

Website:
http://andrzejdragan.com/

Also take a look at the thread on "Silver Light". All the same concept. You decide how far to take the effect and what colours to add.

[meditom]

thank you shellby. I know these sides and tutorials.
but I think that there is a difference between draganized pictures
and the style of greenberg. I think greenberg deals much more with
local contrast enhancement without changing the colours.

[shellby]

I do love this look and I think that the same concept can be applied. Do you know of Jim Fiscus?

It seems to be all about increased contrast. Rich colours. Fake backgrounds. Sharpening. Dodge and Burn.

On http://www.manipulator.com/ That Lord OF the Rings image is Paint With Light - I think so anyway. Also painting in colours using the paint brush eg) cool blue tones on their skin. Then Dodge and Burn in places to bring out certain features. They have been placed onto a background too.

Have you got any images that we could play with?

[pure]

wow. stunning.


also andrzejdragan.com is wonderful.

how does he achieve so much detail in his portraits and nice unsaturated colors? is it a film shoot?

couldnt find that lord of the rings pic, where did you find it please?

thx

[meditom]

yes fiscus is another great one shellby. I had a try on this

http://www.fotocommunity.de/pc/pc/my...isplay/4836038

http://www.fotocommunity.de/pc/pc/my...isplay/5148965

[pure]

dragan uses digital cameras - Canon 1Ds, Canon 24-70 f/2.8L mainly.

shellby, "painting with light" is there any description in the forum? i tried to search but didnt find so fast....

[shellby]

Try this tutorial: http://www.bechbox.dk/pwl/

Use it to learn the concept and then apply it in your own way.

About Jim Fiscus: http://altpick.com/spot/fiscus/index.php

http://jw-digital.net/blog/archives/...g_the_jim.html

"# make a duplicate of your background layer and place it above the background.
# Convert it to grayscale, using your favorite method.
# Switch the layer to hard-light or soft-light mode
# adjust opacity, add layer masks to taste.
# repeat as necessary to fine tune in various parts of the image.

That's it! Now, I doubt Mr. Fiscus uses just one layer to get his photos the way they are, but that's the basic idea behind it."

Try these threads: http://www.photoshoptechniques.com/main/defaulth.php

http://www.mediengestalter.info/foru...-48635-15.html

www.dpreview.com also discuss this a lot

PWL, Paint With Light, Dragon, Fiscus (try searching for these)

[meditom]

thank you shellby
draganize techniques often go hand in hand with an increase of contrast and
a artificial look. what do you think about these examples.
they look moore natural but still very plastically.

http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/re...ssage=17564705

[shellby]

I like those. I must actually go out and shoot something that I can start working with. I really like this look.

[meditom]

what do you think about his technique?

[shellby]

If you read that post they discuss the DRAGON method once again. Just don't go as far with it. Go over the dragon technique then apply those painting and dodge and burn techniques to your images. You don't have to go as far as he does. Also the start image makes all the difference.

The hip hop music scene seem to like this look.

These magazines: http://www.xxlmag.com/

and: http://www.vibe.com/

[pure]

thats true.
in my opinion, dragans images look still like photography.
if you apply slightly too much of the effect it looks like a painting.

also dragans images live from the fact that he gets "scaring" and emotionally "rich" human faces from the streets and places of eastern europe countries.

nice.

[shellby]

Take a look at http://www.taylorjames.com/

They use these satuarated colours in a lot of the car adverts

[pure]

do you think they simply add saturation by increasing the saturation in "colours/saturation" panel or other difficult ways?

[bart_hickman]

This has that shiny skin look. Don't know if it captures what you were after. I also started with a not-so-great, underexposed, P&S flash photo.

This is large radius USM, some color balancing, and shadow/highlight adjustments.

Bart

[shellby]

For adding contrast in an image the good ol' S Curve works best.

The picture of the boy is getting there. You can acutally also paint colour onto his face using a 5% paint brush. Then use dodge and burn to bring out features. Try placing him onto another background for the surreal look.

[shellby]

Leonardo Vilela - Photographer:

Click here to see his work

[pure]

do you know – when duplicating an imagelayer and set it to blend "soft light" – what happens physically or digitally in the picture as merged result? i mean, sometimes it looks nice, like boosted colors and more contrast, i am only interested in the detail of this effect, like "what means "soft light" speaking technically" and so on?

thx

[singlo]

There are not just one style in the portfolio. A few photos are the classic illustrated look which can be produced by PWL with aggressive USM, Shadow Highlight, diffuse glow and/or high pass filters. This is really nothing new at all. Some effects on the photos are more to do with good lighting, make-up, models than retouching etc...In many cases, the spectacular highlights are popped applying a S-curve to one of the color channels with burn and dodge..there are several threads on this technique in this forum....

[mistermonday]

Pure,
Formula for Soft Light Blend Mode

f(a,b) = 2 * a * b + a2 * (1 - 2 * b) (for b < ½)
(else)
= sqrt(a) * (2 * b - 1) + (2 * a) * (1 - b)

Where a is the base color and b is the blend color
Regards, Murray

[pure]

thanks for that formula. funny.

another question reg. the bechbox instructions:

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

there is something i dont understand:

point 3:

"Step 3: Color control
Here's a great way of controlling color - it can give you a dramatic effect or a very subtle one.

First make a new layer and merge all visible layers into that (Cmd-Option-Shift-E). Name it 'color'.

Now select 'Channels' in the layer palette and go through the Red, Green and Blue channels. Copy the ones you like (sometimes I use all three) to a new layer under 'Layers' and name it accordingly. Place these B&W layers beneath the 'color' layer as shown in the image to the right, where you can see that for this image I chose the green and the blue layer.

Go to the 'color' layer and change the blending mode to Color. Cool eh?

Now it's time to experiment! Change the opacity of the B&W layers to blend them together - maybe even try changing the blending modes. Often I use the opacity slider of the 'color' layer as a saturation control to desaturate, but with this image I didn't do that."


> "Place these B&W layers beneath the 'color' layer as shown in the image to the right, where you can see that for this image I chose the green and the blue layer.

Go to the 'color' layer and change the blending mode to Color. Cool eh?"

... i dont see any effect when placing the 2 or 3 RGB channels as a layer each above the main layer. did he mean to set the RGB greayscale layer also to blend mode "color" or not?

thx

[dannyzzz]

You should also take a look at this guys site. amazing feel. great pre and post production work.

http://www.krovblit.com/

[j kacey]

Anyone else think the key is the lighting?
My Try

[smak]

Originally Posted by meditom

yes fiscus is another great one shellby. I had a try on this

http://www.fotocommunity.de/pc/pc/my...isplay/4836038

http://www.fotocommunity.de/pc/pc/my...isplay/5148965

Beautiful work

[Markzebra]

Fiscus doesn't do his own post, he uses various houses for it.

[fred_nikon]

Hi,

It is not an effect but a light setup.
After taking the pic a litle burn and dodge.
See my first try of my doughter.

Greetings,
Fred

www.shutterpoint.org

[grumblecat]

To backup what Fred said, I've seen Greenberg's lighting setup and it is responsible for most of the look. Off the top of my head I believe the setup is usually something like 7 lights. Mains 45 degrees left and right in front with rim lights 45 degrees back left and right. Ringflash on camera as a fill. hairlight on a boom above and gridded light on the background for the spot behind. I've done some work similar using 5 lights (omitted the hairlight and background light) but looking at it I could tell the others are important.

Also I think most of the sources are pretty hard not soft. Like silver umbrellas up front and plain reflectors as rim lights. That ads to the shiny aspect.

[spydercam]

Anyone else know more about the Dragan style, very interesting thread.

[Janet Petty]

Originally Posted by spydercam

Anyone else know more about the Dragan style, very interesting thread.

There are numerous places on this site that talk about the "Dragan" effect. Do a search and I'm sure you won't be disappointed.

Janet