Is this possible?

[Panpan]

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

[cainam]

Originally Posted by Doug Nelson

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'.

[Gary Richardson]

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.

[yelhsaneerg]

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

[Heretic]

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

[cricket1961]

Originally Posted by Gary Richardson

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

[Markzebra]

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

[pixelzombie]

Originally Posted by cainam

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 Richardson]

Originally Posted by cricket1961

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.

[Flora]

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

[MatthewMarshall]

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

[Ant]

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.