Mike (693) 2004-11-16 03:46:33

There are several ways to remove colour casts in Photoshop, my personal preference is to use the levels tool (image/adjustments/levels), it's more user friendly than trying to alter an image with the color balance tool.

When you access the levels tool it's initially set to RGB for overall levels, but you can opt to work on individual channels by changing to either red, green or blue.

To remove the blue cast here change the levels to blue, then move the middle slider to the right until the overall cast disappears, you can also adjust the outer sliders to get exactly the look to the image that you want.

You can alter the red and the green channels too, to achieve more subtle changes, I adjusted the red channel to warm the tones of the brickwork and the autumn leaves.

Mike (693) 2004-11-15 06:11:34

My second workshop on this (I don't think I need to point out the difference!), like yesterday's it's been colourised, but whereas yesterday I'd called it tinting an image, this is the full blown version.

Technique is exactly the same as yesterday's Nam picture, but using much bolder colours to give a much more natural look.

It's great fun hand colouring an image, but very time consuming, I've probably missed quite a few bits if it's looked at very carefully, but it does give an idea what can be done if anyone ever wants to colour an old monochrome image.

Mike (693) 2004-11-15 03:56:31

Quite a challenge this one, and quite a few steps involved, first stage for me was to remove some of the graininess, so a quick run through with NeatImage, though before I did that I doubled the size of the image to give the program more to work on.

Loaded the output from NeatImage back into Photoshop, resized it back down to the original.

Converted it to LAB mode and selected the lightness channel, there's quite a bit of hidden detail in the image, so I used levels to bring this out, the downside will be that parts of the image now become too bright, this isn't a problem though, solved by using the history brush to paint back the parts that had become too bright, back to how they were before applying levels.

Converted back to RGB and desaturated.

The right hand side of the image is pretty over exposed, so just to tone it down slightly I created a black to white gradiant fill on a seperate layer, loaded this in as an alpha channel mask and used it to darken slightly the right hand side of the image.

Finally used the USM to sharpen the image, converted to greyscale and saved.

Mike (693) 2004-11-14 04:03:01

I've got to be honest, I actually like the washed out sky in this image, it 'fits' with the history of it, which is very strong.

My workshop take is very different, giving the image a hand tint, and it's much easier to achieve than you might at first think. It's all done on a seperate layer to the actual original, so...

Layer/New Layer, setting the mode to color and the opacity to about 25% (you can adjust this to taste.)

To stay with the feel of the image I gave the new layer a gradiant fill of cold blue to an aqua green, top to bottom, (with the properties set to color this tints the underlying image without actually altering the original layer.)

It was then just a matter of hand tinting the foreground refugee, this time using a normal brush, and painting on the top layer with various different colours.

Hand tinting can be a very satisfying way of restoring old images, it's been popular for many years using traditional paints, it's so much easier now with digital images, any mistakes are easy to rectify and you can be as creative as you like.

Mike (693) 2004-09-16 06:26:51

Just a levels adjustment, selecting only the blue channel to tone down the bluish haze.

Mike (693) 2004-09-14 18:10:01

Here's what I did to remove the line:

Duplicated the layer, so we now have two copies of the same image.

On the top copy I used the magic wand to completely mask the sky area, I then inverted the mask, then selected the move icon (top, right on the tool bar), and nudged the lower part of the image up by two pixels (tap the keyboard up arrow twice here), this removed the fine line where the two halves met.

Finally applied a slight blur along the divide (this is optional, try it and see if you prefer a cleaner line, or a slightly diffused one).

Because I had a layer underneath, the two pixels that were displaced by the nudge weren't lost, the underlying layer covered them very neatly.

Flatten and save.

Mike (693) 2004-09-13 02:26:40

Adding a glow to an image (Photoshop)

Duplicate your original image onto a new layer.

On this layer (which has to be on top of the original) apply the threshold filter (image/adjustments/threshold), the layer will turn pure black and white and you'll be able to fine tune the black to white ratio as required, the white areas will be the glow effect on the final image.

Set the layer properties to screen, this allows everything that is black on the mask to pass through unaltered.

Apply a gaussian blur, quite a heavy amount, to the mask layer.

Adjust the opacity of the layer, low opacity gives just a hint of glow, high opacity gives a much stronger glow.

Optionally, you can tint the glow with adjustments/hue/saturation, this suits some images, try it and see if you prefer the look of the image, if not just go for a white glow.

Finally flatten the image and save under a different name.

Mike (693) 2004-09-07 03:38:25

before the aging process....

Mike (693) 2004-09-06 03:02:57

White skies can be a real problem in the UK, there are lots of ways to overcome it in Photoshop, using a sky from another image is probably the first thing that photographers try, there are plenty of examples on TE, the big downside with the method though is it gives itself away by the white line that always occurs using that method, (where the replaced sky meets the original image there is a fine line of white pixels between them.)
Another method is adding a gradiant blue tint to the whitened area, downside with this is it looks far too smooth.
I used a third method here, a black/white layer mask is overlaid on top of the existing image, the white area covering the sky and extending slightly past it, this is blurred and loaded in as a channel mask.
Then I use selective colour to alter the white to a typical blue sky, this varies depending on the actual image, some look better with a pale blue, others with deep rich tones, only the sky is altered because of the mask.
I then create a third layer, and use the clouds filter, mode to screen, here I've allowed it to extend past the sky and onto the trees, giving them a slight misty look.
I then flattened the image and used the quick mask tool to seperate the nearest brickwork from the rest of the image, altering the curves to tone down the highlights on the brickwork, this brought back the texture of the bricks.

Final stage, alter the whole image using curves to bring up the contrast of the final image.

Mike (693) 2004-09-02 18:24:43

This thumbnail caught my eye, a lovely picture, with a lot of thought going into the presentation, it's how I look at photography too.

I also think taking a great shot is only the start of it, and like to try different effects to see what I can come up with, so, inspired by your picture I wondered what it would look like with some dreamy lighting effects, the end result is not to be thought of as better, just different!

It's not too difficult to achieve effects like this with Photoshop, and you don't need to buy expensive plug-in's either, just a little creativity.

Here's what I did:

Duplicated the original image, the original image was then modified using an alpha channel mask which was a basic, gaussian blurred black and white layer, the white was a cone shape, starting top left (the narrow end), broadening out as it reaches bottom right. This is loaded in and used to modify the levels of the original image to give the shadow effect.

The duplicated channel was then used to create the dreamy lighting of the pottery, the pottery was cut out using whatever method is preferred and the background discarded. Then the threshold filter was used to turn this cut out section into a stark black and white image, which was then set to screen mode, after that it was blurred by quite an amount and the opacity set to about 25%, finally I gave this blurred layer a slight yellow hue to give a warm dreamy look to the final image.