How-to make photos look like these...

marygrace

Can someone teach me how to create blown out conversions that make color photos look like these? None of the b/w actions I've investigated/created have even come close. I've been wracking my brain and now it's officially hurting.

Thanks so much!

gus

Their all asleep in here marygrace so i will have a shot at it....im sitting up contemplating the benefits of air-cond.

To my inexperienced eye i would suggest they look a bit duo-tone, maybe you could search the net for a duo-tone plug in & give it a burl.

Gus

Michiel de Brieder

[edit]
man do I feel like a fool I wasn't really paying attention and went from gus' post... silly me... Oh well, as for the question on creating strong highlights. You can do a curve adjustment to pump the highlights, unmask where you don't want to, that's it I'll leave the rest also here, because it might be of use
[/edit]
Excellent tutorial here:
http://retouchpro.com/tutorials/?m=show&id=118
I've made this photo with that tutorial:

If I can get the .atn from photoshop I can upload the action for it to an ftp server.. just have to figure out how
To adjust it to get a result that looks lik your examples you might want to include a greenish tint instead of a brown, I think that'll do the trick!
Hope this helped
[edit]
here's the atn you can adjust the colors of the solid color layers. I'd suggest a greenish tint. In the action there's also a slight curves adjustment, which you can either drop or tweak to your liking. To add a little extra pop to the image I've included a selective color layer for the blacks. Let me know if you need more info for working with the action
http://www.digital-eye.nl/photoshop_atn/Duotoning.atn
[/edit]

wxwax

Marygrace, I've only made one overexposed image. I think the trick is to make different versions of the photo, with different exposures, then layer them, and use masks to show the bits you want to show. Does that make sense?

cletus

marygrace wrote:

Can someone teach me how to create blown out conversions that make color photos look like these? None of the b/w actions I've investigated/created have even come close. I've been wracking my brain and now it's officially hurting.

Thanks so much!

Just guessing, but I would think you could get that look by using the B&W conversion technique of your choice and then using a Curves adjustment. The idea would be to try and keep farily normal contrast in the darker areas, but pushing the lighter areas towards white. Maybe something like this:

Sam

marygrace wrote:

Can someone teach me how to create blown out conversions that make color photos look like these? None of the b/w actions I've investigated/created have even come close. I've been wracking my brain and now it's officially hurting.

Thanks so much!

Marygrace,

I just played with a portait of mine for about 10 seconds and it seems that using channel mixer will work.

Sam

marygrace

you people are amazing. have i ever said that yet? amazing, amazing people who like to help a gal out...thanks so much! now i'm going to go and work at it...

THANKS!!

marygrace

Yup, I got it. Looks like channel mixer's the key...Thanks!

bham

I also get the same effect with nik filter duplex and chose the color grey.

Or you can some of the effect just increasing the contrast.