Polaroid 809 "chocolate" look?

[wallpaperviking]

Hi all, This is my very first post and am not that good at Photoshop, so any thoughts (the simpler the better) would be greatly appreciated!! Basically, I am trying to replicate the look of shooting ( the now defunct ) 8 x 10 Polaroid 809. This size Polaroid is shot by shooting a Polaroid color negative, and then sandwiching it in the Polaroid processor with a 8 x 10 B+W Polaroid positive. I think you need to overexpose by a stop or something like that (by memory). The result is a lovely "chocolate" print, not quite Sepia but something along those lines. The bad part of it was a) 8 x 10 isn't made any more b) It was expensive c) Using this method was twice as expensive as you were using half of two polaroids to make one shot (with the other half wasted). Anyway, enough of the background..... Here are some examples.

So, it is sorta a unique one, not quite Sepia, not quite paper negative turn of the century look....

Key things that I could note were;

* The chocolate color

* The mottled look you get from when the color negative and B+W positive don't quite stick together properly (this was a process that was never meant to work)

* The highlights in the shadows... Most evident in the attachment "Russia Party". Not sure what this is called but it sorta looks like the type of solarisation you get in the darkroom when you expose a print bto light before it is done developing..

So any other thoughts would be greatly appreciated!! As noted before, for a number of reasons, this look is out of my grasp and I would love to be able to replicate it...

Best Regards Andrew

[wallpaperviking]

Hmmmm, So nobody out there has a response?

[MiningArt]

Do you have an example image to work with?

[wallpaperviking]

I have attached 5 images as examples. Are these not coming through? I can see them under my initial post when I log in...

I will attach them again. Thanks for the response.

Actually, when I go to attach them again, it tells me I have already attached them.. So here are some others as well.

Thanks.

[MiningArt]

Before examples.

[wallpaperviking]

Hi, Maybe you are misunderstanding me, there is no "before" image, this is the look it has when it comes out of the Polaroid processor. Thanks, look forward to some thoughts. Cheers Andrew

[MilanS]

You have posted rater small images as an example, so I had to work with what I had. Using "Russia Party" as a reference here is with what I came up with. That one has a slight greenish feel to it, others are more warmer, leaning twords sepia. It's the same process with just some little color tweaking.

I thought this job is for photoshop plug-ins with some manual tweaking.
More specifically these:
http://www.niksoftware.com/silverefexpro/en/entry.php
(for B&W conversion, adding film grain, vignette and the basic look)
http://www.niksoftware.com/colorefexpro/en/entry.php?
(for "Polaroid transfer" type effect)

After that, its just the matter of some masking and tweaking by hand.
This can be achieved by photoshop actions (prerecorded set of events) and presets within the plug-ins themselves, but it would require some serious calculations to came up with the universal action, since every image is different in mood and style.

[dcarr]

I understand that wallpaperviking is trying to achieve that brownish tone to the photos...I took milan's original and desaturated. Then applied a layer style color overlay. For color choice I took sample from one of wallpapervikings photos and lowered opacity to 60%. Then I used linear light blending mode. It's far from done, but if you tweaked and fooled around with other options, you might be able to recreate that look more effectively.

[MilanS]

dcarr, I think you missed the point:

* The mottled look you get from when the color negative and B+W positive don't quite stick together properly (this was a process that was never meant to work)

* The highlights in the shadows... Most evident in the attachment "Russia Party". Not sure what this is called but it sorta looks like the type of solarisation you get in the darkroom when you expose a print bto light before it is done developing..

"I understand that wallpaperviking is trying to achieve that brownish tone to the photos..." that would be simple sepia, but what "wallpaperviking" is trying to achieve is half-polaroid type look. Look at the shadows, there some solarisation effect going on, like the process in the darkroom wasn't finished or as it were a failure.

I used "Russian party" example as a reference, hence the greenish look, but some other have more warmer sepia type look.

[wallpaperviking]

Thanks to both of your for your contributions, much appreciated!! Ideally I was looking for a way to achieve this look purely by working in photoshop and not having to mess around with plug ins but they do have a free trial so worth looking into. Will have a play with both ideas and see if i can't come up with something. Thanks again for your input.

[lovelivehate]

i think this is the effect you were going for...
i used a color picture,
-used black & white effect in photoshop with maximum white setting
-took levels sliders (second ones) i think there called output levels...push them both in until the blacks in the picture are a bit grey and the whites are a bit grey(not too much tho)
-added brownish taupe fill layer blend mode color at about 50% opacity
that is the overall effect, i also used some grunge brushes very lightly in different places, one with orange color, one burn set to higlights, the other dodge set to shadows.

Hope this Helps!!!!!!
-Jesse-

i also saved it in a lower quality to add aged feeling

[jbj]

here's another way to approach it.

- open your original in camera raw - use HSL/Greyscale to convert it to black and white - use split toning to give the darks a green/blue cast and the lights a touch of sepia ( you can also do this in photoshop with adjustment layers )

- make a new empty layer - choose a foreground colour similar to the light areas of your original photos ( ochre/sepia ) choose a background colour that's a lighter desaturated version of your foreground colour - use the filter render clouds ( you could also use a variety of techniques to create this layer including a mixture of photographing textured/painted paper combined with grunge brushes and adjustment layers )

- make a luminance mask by going into channels and command click on the icon in the rgb layer ( CS3 ) - save selection as a channel

- with the mask active go back to your 'clouds' layer and add a layer mask ( this will automatically use the luminance mask to create a mask that will primarily affect the highlights of your picture ) - change the layer blend mode to colour.

you can also adjust the shadows by going back into channels - duplicate the luminance mask channel - invert it - load channel as a selection - go back to layers and apply any adjustment layer you want - eg - curves, hue saturation, gradient map etc ( the adjustment channel will automatically create a mask based on the shadow luminance mask )

(due to their intrinsic structure luminance masks don't need feathering - this makes them a cool masking technique - the basic mask is based on all tones over 128 )

add an overall adjustment layer using colour fill - blending mode normal and low opacity - use a desaturated light brown to give an overall faded look

use adjustment layers to tweak layers as needed.

this should at least put you on the path without the need for plug ins etc. play around with the settings.