Is this possible?

[Ant]

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

[jacknick]

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.

[Doug Nelson]

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.

[Ant]

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.

[pixelzombie]

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...

[KR1156]

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?

[Ant]

Originally Posted by pixelzombie

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

[KR1156]

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

[Ant]

yup. the same.

[cricket1961]

Ant

Is that meant for me?

Chris

[Ant]

Chris, I don't follow....

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

Originally Posted by cricket1961

Ant

Is that meant for me?

Chris

[Ant]

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

[cricket1961]

Originally Posted by Ant

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

[Ant]

suggested methods thus far. example.

[Ant]

Originally Posted by cricket1961

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..

[KR1156]

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

it's gonna be very hard at 2' .

[cricket1961]

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

[cricket1961]

Originally Posted by KR1156

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

[dvaught]

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.

[Doug Nelson]

That's actually not too bad! Fascinating exercize.

[Ant]

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.

[pixelzombie]

here's my 5 minute effort...

[des151]

Ant,
My attempt at the gloves.
Ray

[cainam]

My attempt.

[Doug Nelson]

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

[jacknick]

i'm liking cainam's.

[JayNads]

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.

[pixelzombie]

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

[chillin]

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

[cricket1961]

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