How do I...

[tbannett]

Hi there, how do I do this effect to a photo?

http://critpath.org/~tracy/gif/how.jpg

The gradient fill in the background I know how to do, but I don't know how to make it the orangy color.

Any help is appreciated.

Thanks!
-Tracy

[tbannett]

Hi there, how do I do this effect to a photo?

http://critpath.org/~tracy/gif/how.jpg

The gradient fill in the background I know how to do, but I don't know how to make it the orangy color.

Any help is appreciated.

Thanks!
-Tracy

[Beth]

There is probably several ways to go about making the photo orangy. I think I would go about this by making an orange duotone in photoshop. Becuase of your ability to manipulate curves and different ink colours you have a great deal of flexibility and control.

Save your image.
Create a greyscale of your image and save that to a different file (an easy way to create good greyscales is to convert your RGB image to Lab mode, go into the channels palette and select the L channel, then change modes to greyscale. Photoshop will ask you if you want to trash the other channel info, select yes and you have a relatively good greyscale)

Adjust the curves or levels on the greyscale to give good contrast and tonal variation (ie. make it look pretty). You could also run auto-levels if you are not sure how to work with curves.

Save the greyscale and then change mode to duotone (mode changes are under the image menu). A dialog comes up with an area to choose ink colour and a curves graph. Be sure that the preview is activated. To change the colour...click on the coloured box and then select your colour (usually a pantone spot colour). Select OK and do the same for your second colour. You may want to try diffent colour combos. maybe a brown and an orange.

You can then change how much the image is affected by these colours by manipulating the curve (again just clik on the graph and the curves dialog box will pop up). You will want the orange colour to be quite prominent with the other colour just for punch in the higher density areas (the darker areas). For the curves for the orange ink, you will want to drag the bottom left corner up. This coresponds to the lighter areas in your image and you will make everything with white to the lighter grey...have an orange tint to them. This move will change the slope of the curve making it flatter. But dont flatten it to much. Just a little so you will have a faint tint of orange in the lightest areas. You may want to select the center part of the curve and drag up or down a little. This again will affect how much orange gets applied to the correspnding grey level (mostly in the midrange here).

Then go to your darker ink colour and drag the center of its curve down. This should give you a curved ramp. You might also want to minimize the amount of the ink in the darker areas. To do this drag the top right hand part of the curve down. You probably dont the second ink to even look like it is there...you just want to punch up the image a little to give it more depth.

When you are happy with your image...clik OK and save. If you want to edit the curves or colours again, you only need to go to mode/duotone again. You may even want to try adding a third ink...like a yellow or an ochre.

To get the duotone info back into the original RGB, you just need to change the mode to RGB. But first off...save the duotone. Select all (control A), copy and paste into your original image. For safety reasons, I would keep this on its own layer and keep the original full colour image on its own layer too (just in case you need to use it for creating masks or selections). Dont save the duotone file (as you just converted it to RGB and dont want to loose the ability to manipulate inks/curves)

THe gradient on the right is done by making a selection of part of the image and applying a gradient to that selection. This is where your full colour image might help. If your lucky, you have good contrast between the background and the foreground. Better contrast will help you if you are going to use the magnetic lasso tool. Check the channels for this layer too. You often find better contrast in one of the channels. This is the reason I like keeping the original full colour layer in the file too.

After you have a selection, clik on the foreground colour on your tool bar and select an orange in thecolour box that pops up. Clk on the background colour and select an orangy yellow. For the gradient type, you will want to select foreground to background option (usually the first or second option). CLik and drag in your image and your off to the races.

This may sound long and involved, but it really isnt. Create the duotone image. Make a selection and apply gradient (with a few technical steps in between)

Best,
Beth

[Mark (theKeeper)]

Wow, nice detailed explanation Beth. That's what i like to see.

Hats off to you!

Mark...

[tbannett]

Thanks so much.
I will try this.

bye,
Tracy