MIDLANDS RPS DIGITAL IMAGING GROUP
Techniques & Technical Info
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Photo
Pastel
by David Eaves ARPS |
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The following
technique, which I demonstrated at the Feb 3rd meeting, gives a soft image
with the feel of a pastel drawing.
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| Choose your image (I find that landscapes with trees show the effect well) and do the usual Photoshop adjustments to optimise tone, colour, sharpness etc. . |
| Make a duplicate layer, desaturate the top layer and use the find edges filter to produce a line drawing. Reducing the opacity of this layer then adds interesting lines to the image but this effect is often regarded as somewhat overdone |
| A more subtle effect is obtained by duplicating the original image to give a third layer which is then blurred (gaussian blur filter). I generally lighten this layer using levels and then adjust the opacity of both this and the 'find edges' layer until the combined image looks OK. Opacity settings of around 30% give a soft image which still contains detail together with a hint of a drawn line around contrasty objects |
| After flattening the layers, make final adjustments using levels and, if desired, hue/saturation, to enhance the pastel feel |
| More experienced users of Photoshop will employ adjustment layers to carry out these effects so they are easily reversible, and will save the image before flattening so that modifications are possible later |
| Selective detail may be brought through the layers by using the eraser at low opacity or preferably (since it is reversible) by painting at low opacity on a layer mask |
| I generally finish off by vignetting so the edges fade to white. Make a rectangular selection close to the edges, invert and apply a large feather (eg, 150 pixels). Fill with white 2 or 3 times and then deselect |
| Finally, add a line border around the whole image by expanding the canvas using a suitable background colour, maybe picked from the darker parts of the image |