Trying to achieve a particular tone/feel in my images

bohngy · #1 10-09-2007, 10:54 AM

Hi all, I'm a long (ish) time reader of this forum... and have picked up some great info' from you guys, so thanks for that!

my question is specifically concerning a common approach to tonality of fashion images. I'm a photographer myself and have been hunting for the "missing element" in my images for a while.. and think this might help me grately.

So here's the kind of thing I'm looking towards, again I'm talking about the tone/colour/contrast etc.
http://bwgreyscale.com/edits09/deser...o_bwtblb05.JPG
http://bwgreyscale.com/edits09/altobordo_bwdbgg15.JPG
http://bwgreyscale.com/edits09/playtime_bwrbrd03.JPG
http://bwgreyscale.com/edits09/luckystar_bwglebjf08.JPG

strangely enough all these images have a loose tie, in the sense that the tonality of the images have a similar, muted/partially desaturated appearance.

In Photoshop I have added grain, used warming filters and partial desaturation. But achieving these types of colours is not down to a simple partial desaturation. I'm sure a selective colour correction is employed somewhere, but this is where I get lost.

How can I mute the colours like my example images? because I know from my own work that these colours do no come out of the camera, regardless of digital capture type or film stock.

thanks in advance, Ben

LonK · #2 10-09-2007, 12:43 PM

For the most part, they all look like they're about 1 stop underexposed to me -- not necessarily desaturated. This can be verified by examining the histograms too. Have you tried that?

bohngy · #3 10-09-2007, 01:28 PM

Thanks for the suggestion lonnie, but i'm sure it's a certain set of colour adjustments done in Photoshop.... I say this because I have been lucky enough to work for some big fashion photographers.. and I know the way they like to expose their images.... What I've never been able to see is what happens after the shutter goes click! If anything images are deliberately overexposed (ever so slightly), though not so much with digital.

thanks, Ben

LonK · #4 10-09-2007, 01:42 PM

Without seeing a source and being able to compare, it's certainly hard to say.

Here's something to try. Dup the base image and apply a gentle contrast mask. Desaturate completely. Then use a luminosity blend mode.

bohngy · #5 10-09-2007, 02:45 PM

Hi Lonnie, what do you mean by a GENTLE contrast mask? I've done this a few times, (dup, desat, invert and then set to overlay) but setting the layer mode to luminosity muddied the skintones or caused solarisation of colours.. I've also found contrast masking on people to be rather troublesome on high contrast edges, leading to halo effects.

anyone else have any clues? many thanks

LonK · #6 10-09-2007, 03:59 PM

bohngy, I may have misled you slightly since I'm not using Photoshop and my translation was lacking. By GENTLE, I mean apply a somewhat minimal contrast mask to the image (a slight gaussian blurred inverted desaturation, with about 20% overlay blend opacity). Using a duplicate of that combined result, fully desaturate and luminosity blend with the original again. (Opacity may need some additional adjustment.) Does that work for you? I attached an example.

bohngy · #7 10-10-2007, 03:00 AM

Thanks for your efforts Lonnie, but it's still not quite it. It's almost as if the image is desaturated by some other method than the hue/desaturation tool.
The contrast mask flattened the contrast somewhat (I see what you were getting at) but it made the colours pop more, not less. A subsequant desaturation of the flattened image didn't yield the right feel.

I know this is horribly objective, so I apologise for that, but thanks for trying to help out.

Are there any fashion retouchers here who could lend a hand?

CMS · #8 10-10-2007, 03:09 AM

I'm in for this!!! I'm photographer also.

duwayne · #9 10-10-2007, 05:04 AM

Sorry Lonnie, I had to use your image because I didn't have a suitable one of my own.

I looked to me like the desaturation was non-linear. Lights were desaturated more than the dark colors. Sooo... I duplicated the background layer, switch to LAB, selected the L channel, switched back to RGB and pasted the L channel as a layer mask on the dup'ed background layer. Then ran Image->Adjustments->Desaturate and set the opacity to 60%. I then added a layer on top (check "Use Previous Layer To Create Clipping Mask")and filled with 255, 225, 255, blending mode Normal. You can run Hue/Saturation adjustment on this layer moving Hue and Sat to taste.

cricket1961 · #10 10-10-2007, 06:45 AM

I had to use your image also Lonnie. Hope you don't mind.
Ben it would have helped to have an image of yours to try this on as style might be different from Lonnies shot.

I did a selective color adjustment layer set to saturation blend mode and pulled all the colors blacks down to -100 and left white, neutral, and blacks alone.
Then I made a luminosity mask (opt-com-~) and using default colors, made a gradient map adjustment layer set to saturation blend mode.
Both adjustment layers were at 100%, but use your own settings.
Selective color was on absolute.
Contrast I leave up to you and your taste.

Chris

Michel B · #11 10-10-2007, 07:34 AM

I also took the liberty to use Lonnie's image.
Used a hue/sat adjustment layer to lessen saturation. Added a saturation mask to target already saturated parts (mask created from the HSL/HSB filter) then mixed a black and white layer to tweak shadows and adjusted with levels.

edgework · #12 10-10-2007, 10:17 AM

Just shooting in the dark here. The idea was to bring all the saturation to the same level, not just desaturate this range or that range. Made a saturation mask and pulled the desat slider all the way to the left, pulling back the most saturated areas. Slight contrast curve as well.

http://edgework.tripod.com/samples/bohngy_desat2.jpg

EDIT: should have read the whole thread before getting clever. Michael B had the same idea. Kudos. I'll leave mine up anyway.

bohngy · #13 10-10-2007, 10:29 AM

Now we have a thread! thanks all... right I'm going to try these techniques with some images that have a bit of colour pop to them... hopefully the correct desaturation will give them the elusive feel i'm after.

If any of you could/would repeat your examples on my images I'd be very grateful to see how these come out. I've attached a couple.. they're really nothing special, other than the colour being quite strong. they're straight out of the camera.. no monkeying about... yet.

thanks all, Benj

http://www.benlawrencephoto.co.uk/exampleblm.jpg
http://www.benlawrencephoto.co.uk/exampleblm2.jpg

edgework · #14 10-10-2007, 11:21 AM

Nice shots.

http://edgework.tripod.com/samples/twoGirls.jpg

cricket1961 · #15 10-10-2007, 11:58 AM

Here is mine. Decreased the opacity of the gradient map to 50% though.

Chris