Mouse over the images to see the originals.
Nikon D60, Nikkor 55-200mm f/4.0-5.6 @ 135mm, 1/400 sec, f/5.0, ISO 800 -- EXIF
Windy
I had last Wednesday off, but it was cold and windy and I didn't want to go out. It was so cold that it hailed for a few seconds. It usually doesn't get that cold here in Amami. So instead of going out, I sat in my wife's shop and snapped shots of people walking by. The originals weren't that great so I tried to think of something to do to them to make them seem a little more artistic. I cruised around the interwebs looking for ideas and I came across a few photos that isolated the subject by turning all the colors besides the subject to black and white. I thought this would be something cool to try.
After importing my photos to Lightroom 2, I selected the Edit In feature and brought them into Photoshop CS3. I then made a duplicate of the background. I selected the background copy and used the Desaturate feature to make it black and white. Next, I adjusted the Contrast and Brightness to the desired effect I wanted. After that, I made an opacity mask of the background copy and commenced to hide the subject revealing the color image underneath. Once I finished, I saved it and returned to Lightroom 2 to do a few more tweeks upping the blacks and giving them some vignettes. I thought they turned out pretty nice compared to the originals.
I wanted to show the originals also but I didn't want to just stick the originals into the post so I decided to do a little html work and make some mouse-over images. I hope you like them.
3 comments:
Very nice! The effect is often cliche (especially with flowers at a wedding, or the like), but it's fun to play with. It'd be interesting to see some different effects such as keeping a bit of color in the non-main areas, or having the main areas be very subdued color instead of the vivid you have now. (I don't know that these would be better or more interesting... just different... and so perhaps worth a look.)
After I finished messing with these photos and I was making this post, the same thing went through my mind. Instead of having just the subject in color, have everything but the subject in color. I have a few ideas from that and they went on my list of things I want to try.
I'm glad you liked the photos.
Earnie
Nice work Earnest! cliche or not, it still really sets off the subject in a way that a simple blur may not. Keep up the great work and experiments!
-Gary in GR
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Keep the language clean please. I have family that see this. Tell us what part of the world you're in.