Manuel Pandalis look

[linmar]

Hi,

I recently came across the works of a photographer called Manuel Pandalis and like his "pure" look a lot.

It seems that it a good part of it is done in postprocessing, can someone shed some light on the possible techniques?

Here are some of his pictures:
http://www.manuelpandalis.de/articles/23.html

I tried but am nowhere near ...
http://500px.com/photo/4416115

Thanks,
Markus

[Wolfman]

I think you have the lighting right (natural, window) but you left a little color in yours and you need to give the image some more contrast/sharpness & make pure b&w.

I worked on yours below..... didn't work on her skin.... just contrast, sharpness

7 made b&w.

[SterlingH]

I'm thinking you may need to boost the skintone contrast by creating a new curves adjustment layer, changing the blend mode to luminosity, selecting the green channel, and dragging the bottom left point to the right. Then mask in the skin. For the eyes, you'll have to brighten them as if you had a B&W filter on of a matching colour. So for blue irises, you want to emulate a blue filter by brightening the blues a bunch while maintaining the contrast, then mask it in.

[ShadowLight]

try:
http://illuminations.herokuapp.com/

load your image (in colour)
press the button - "BW pure"

[linmar]

Thanks! I like the look but I don't think its it yet ... I've put some more attempts on http://theothersite.500px.com/portraits/ ....

Btw: those are all high-res (40mpix) images ... if someone is interested in the RAWs for practicing let me know ...

[JonathanHoglund]

You can get this result right in PS. Just use the BW adjustment layer. Don't be afraid to take it too far. Play around until you get a similar result and then fine adjust the settings. What also can increase the effect is using the "Clarity" slider in ACR. That in it self will get you that "micro contrast" in the skin texture. Seems a bit weird using clarity on a portrait shot I know since you usually wouldn't touch it but since the look your after is a rough one. However this isn't gonna work on every image but it's worth a try. Also, this is only the post processing steps. Like all "how is this look achieved" threads it is worth mentioning that lighting the subject well with a good exposure and a good focus is key. Manuel Pandalis is a good photographer and has those elements down. Although I can't stop thinking about Richard Avedon's In the American West series when I see Manuel's Purity shots.

I did a quick experiment on the effect your looking for. The only thing I used was the B&W adjustment, Capture One (to develop the image) and a curve for the eye (you can get most of the way here with just the B&W but a curve was just for final touch). I didn't use Clarity (thought of that later on ).

The test image is downloaded from http://www.digitalphotoshopretouching.com/

[linmar]

Hey Jonathan, well done! This is pretty close! Let me give it a try

[ShadowLight]

algorithm updated.

here's the result

[linmar]

@Shadowlight: tried it, but I don't really believe in 1-button solutions ...

[ShadowLight]

Originally Posted by linmar

@Shadowlight: tried it, but I don't really believe in 1-button solutions ...

interesting argument

for me it does the job

cheers

[linmar]

the result was actually not that bad for a 'one button thingy', it's just that i was looking for more control ...