Some Alternative Post Processing...

Tim Kamppinen

I've been experimenting with some different ways of processing skin textures and so forth. Sort of the surreal-almost-animated look. That's really vague but you can see what I mean when you look at the pics. I know these aren't the most "flattering" shots but I wanted to make something interesting with these, not a living room wall portraits. These are posted in the order that I processed them. The first one took a lot of experimenting and this is the second verision of it. It's more subtle than the first and I think it ended up looking a lot better. The second, I absolutely love. I know it's not everyone's cup of tea, but I love the way it pops off my monitor, especially the eyes. My friend had just got back from a run, which is why he is flushed and sweaty. The third one is, I think, a more successful attempt at the type of thing I was going for in #1. It also helped that the kid had smooth skin to start with so not as much smoothing was required. I'd love to hear comments and critiques of these, so let me know what you think:

#1



#2



#3

thegreenegg

I think this look is rather neat and wouldn't mind a mini-tutorial on how to pull the look off.
I know you like 2 the best, and the eyes really are awesome, but I think it would have benefited from some of the smoothing of the skin that you did in 1 and 3.
These aren't the typical portrait. But yes, they do work as a very unique art piece for those people who would not appreciate the typical portrait and want to represent themselves and new, unusual, and unique ways.
Very creative.
I hope they enjoy them. I love the child one the most. The angle and warpnessed worked the best for him. But 1 is also very good.
Keep it up,
Cheers,
a.

Agnieszka

haha, cool!

marikris

My husband has that Led Zeppelin shirt from #1...it's not that nice color grey anymore though...

I really like #3, specially the funky color and vibe. Are any of these HDR? The second one seem like it, but it could be liberally high passed. That's if you don't mind sharing, that is

Darren Troy C

Really like this procedure! Sure would love that tutorial. What lens was that, as well, if you don't mind?

WingsOfLovePhoto

#3 is pretty cool. Please share

Sventekoz

I think they're pretty funky!

They remind me of George Fulton's work: http://www.georgefulton.com/

Trevlan

Damn Tim. Guess I came too late to the forum. The pictures look as if they are down. Can you repost them?

Darren Troy C

I'm seeing them, Trevlan.

Have to agree w/ Sventekoz....definately similar to a Fulton image! Good Ol' George right here from my neck of the woods. (Columbia, SC)

Trevlan

Idlewild wrote:

I'm seeing them, Trevlan.

Have to agree w/ Sventekoz....definately similar to a Fulton image! Good Ol' George right here from my neck of the woods. (Columbia, SC)

I see what the problem is... The photos are linked from Facebook, damn Citigroup firewall. I'll have to check them when I get home this evening.

manbou

I like this look. #1 looks like a character in a videogame, it has that CGI feel and the weird perspective. Very cool. How'd you do it???

Tim Kamppinen

Thanks for all the comments. The first and third were shot with a Sigma 10-20mm at 10mm on a D40. I rented it this summer for a week and had all kinds of fun with it. I want to get one myself someday, like when I get a job. The second was just a nikon 18-55 kit lens at 18mm and really close up.

The processing was trial and error, but all three used some form of Scott Kelby's "Dave Hill Look" technique in camera raw. If you don't know what that is, then just google "scott kelby dave hill" and you'll find some links to his blog where he explains it. I know lots of people hate it and have zero tolerance for anyone who tries to get a look similar to Dave Hill, which is why I refrained from mentioning it in the original post. The settings he lays out are just guidlines, you often have to adjust them quite a bit, escpecially the exposure slider, to get it looking decent. So what I did was open the file, and first I did some surface blur to smooth the skin, on a duplicate layer. Then I masked it and painted the blur back on to just the skin and clothing, keeping the eyes, lips, hair, etc sharp. (I didn't do this step on the second one as you can probably tell). I then took this smoothed version and ran the kelby process on it. Then I brought it into a photoshop document with the original, unprocessed file. I used a combination of layer masking and lowering the opacity of the entire layer to apply the effect to the areas I wanted it only and at the intensity I wanted it. I think I might have dodged some highlights with a masked curves layer (the dodge and burn tools themselves looked really ugly when I tried that way) on each and then stamped everything to a new layer. Then I duplicated that layer and ran a large radius high pass filter on it and blended it in soft light. This step may not be necessary or desireable, though. It think I did it on the first one but not the third one or second one. I used a highlights/shadows layer in there somewhere for the first and second ones, too. That's pretty much it for the effect, but of course I also did other stuff, like brightening the eyes and darkening the backgrounds with curves layers, and adding a vignette at the end. I think for all three of them I did a gradient map on top of everything and reduced it to like 14% opacity to desaturate slightly. On the second one I masked it off of everything but the face so that the red handkerchief would stay bright.

That's a poor excuse for a "tutorial" so I apologize. It's not down to a science, though. For each of these I just played around with different things until I got what I was looking for or close to it. I also tried different things, like running a shadows/highlights adjustment prior to the camera raw adjustments, etc. It didn't work for these shots but it might be a good thing to try on other photos.

The photos are linked from facebook because I'm on dialup at the moment so I resize before uploading. I don't want to upload a bunch of low res shots to my smugmug site, and I wanted to put these on facebook anyway, so two birds with one stone and that sort of thing. Sorry for anyone with annoying work filters.

Trevlan

Tim my old buddy and pal. I looked up the technique and while I was doing it, the more it resembled HDR treatment. So I produced one shot doing the technique as described, I was please with the results, but not enthralled.

So I put the original photo in my favorite HDR program (Dynamic Photo). After I was happy with the tone mapping, I went back into photoshop, Aligned both photos (Original and HDR) and then I cut out the face part from the HDR version. Unsharp mask 50% at 3 radius (on the original) and this is what came out. Thanks for the inspiration and info.

JeriAmrine

All of the pics are great. They're good subjects for doing this type of processing. Thanks for sharing how you did the processing, both of you! It's so edgy!

JAG

very interesting technique. I like it.

jacobs photographic

Hey Tim,
I've always liked that "Dave Hill" look in certain situations and have found you can achieve it to some degree through a tonal contrast filter in color efex pro by Nik software. Thank for sharing your recipe though.

Jaro

I think photo number 2 is marvelous. I love the gritty texture of the face.