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Jack'll do · November 29, 2014

Nice detail well captured Tony. What's the story behind this?

TonyCooper · November 29, 2014

Thank, Jack. The original scene was three sections on a wall in
an antique store, but there were several other distracting objects
on the wall. I cropped to the two, and used a layer mask to
give the two a black background,

My philosophy is if there isn't a picture, make one out of what's there.

AlexShark · November 29, 2014

Tony, interesting "product shot" if I may call it. Good 3D lighting.

It is over sharpened past all reason, to my taste. Two simple techniques come to mind that dramatically increase contrast/presence without making every pimple stand out:

1. Duplicate
2a. Top layer Hard Light blending + High Pass at radius between 25 and 250 depending on the resolution and to taste -- very harsh result
or
2b. Top layer Soft Light blending + Gaussian blur at radius higher than 25, drop opacity to below 50% -- soft romantic look with high contrast and still quite "in the face."

TonyCooper · November 29, 2014

Thanks for the look, Alex, but what you see as over-sharpening
is exactly what I went for in post. It's the result of two passes
of the High Pass Filter. The first at 4.0 radius and the layer
set to Vivid Light blending mode. Then, merge visible, and
run the High Pass Filter at 6.9 and the layer set to Color
blending mode and that top layer reduced in opacity to 40%.
Sometimes I'll add Noise at 3%, but I didn't here.

AlexShark · November 29, 2014

TonyCooper wrote: »

Thanks for the look, Alex, but what you see as over-sharpening
is exactly what I went for in post. It's the result of two passes
of the High Pass Filter. The first at 4.0 radius and the layer
set to Vivid Light blending mode. Then, merge visible, and
run the High Pass Filter at 6.9 and the layer set to Color
blending mode and that top layer reduced in opacity to 40%.
Sometimes I'll add Noise at 3%, but I didn't here.

Got it! Interesting technique, I should try that.
When I want to give it THE GRIT I usually go with Emboss 125%, radius 3 (following the natural lighting direction), then blend it as Hard (100%) or Linear (50%) light. If it's haloing too much, it sometimes helps to invert the layer (or to add 180 degrees to Emboss).

But High Pass with ridiculously high radius can be invaluable. At 25-75 radius it gives this ultra-modern look (alas, some muddy colors too, depending on the original). At 150+ it starts kicking in with some serious contrast stuff. In B&W it can give stunning results of Tri-X being pushed a couple of stops. Love the feel.

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