L B Olson wrote:
On Mon, 12 Jul 2004 23:00:33 -0400, "Deco_time" wrote:
[cut]
http://www.bgp.com/main.html
A friend has asked me to do a picture of him and his wife in just that way for his website. I’m a coder, definitely not an artist :S
Straight sepia looks great, but the dark washes out. You can see how Graham’s blacks stay black, yet the high contrast looks very good and not unnatural. Still looking for the right combo of things.
You’re nearly there I think.
If you lost some contrast either use curves or levels to get it back in. Open the levels dialog (Ctrl-L) and move the left slider to the right to darken the blacks until you like what you see.
An easy way of finding the darkest spots and turning them into absolute black is this:
(assuming you have the yellowed photo in one layer) Select the layer Choose Image-Adjustments- Treshold. With preview selected you see just blacks and whites.
Move the slider to the left until you have only a few tiny but easily clickable spots of black left (don’t make them too small, 5×5 or bigger is fine). Shift-click on that point. Cancel the tool. Now open the Levels or Curves and click on the leftost eyedropper (blackpoint selector). Click on the spot where the circular and crosshair target is. Now you have complete black and the widest range from there.
By the way, another easy way of colorizing b/w shots (I also prefer to make b/w out of colour using the channel mixer rather than Grayscale) is simply by adding a layer on top of the pic, fill it with the tint you like and adjust the layer’s opacity slider until you like the effect. Most of the times Multiply as a screen mode works best for me.
HTH
Pjotr