Withered thistle

[mistress_elaine]

In which I go all Warhol on your arses and ask how you like the experience...

Last night I made this and posted it to bestshot, a delightful new photo community which all the serious photographers among you should check out.

Comments

i don't like big fonts, sorry

[shizunde]

this is a tip i read in a comment somewhere -- very useful and simple, and i'm following it.
so,
when i want to make a picture monochrome, i turn it to greyscale, then back to rgb, and then use the curves and change one or two channels. i love it because it's simple, and you can get nice plays of 2 tones, and you don't loose any resolution or contrast. this is how i did this one

the idea is not not desaturating until the end, but turning it to greyscale - because desaturation & hue changes make them loose a lot of quality, it adds a lot of grain, sometimes the pixelating becomes very obvious and the picture looks rough.

for example, let's imagine i was already happy with this picture.
you can make it "golden" sepia or soft blue
you can go wild on green and pink (with only one channel)
or you can give it drugz (twisting curves like a madman)

if you view them as a slide show you see how there's very little loss of quality, and you can keep its softness and a good amount of detail. this way i get the main base pretty straightforwad. then i leave the channel mixer, hue, contrast, and brightness to the end, to polish it really.

[mistress_elaine]

OK, this is interesting. And confusing. Tell me, do you turn your pictures into Greyscale and then back to RGB immediately, or are there any steps in between (Levels, etc.)? Because going from RGB to Greyscale and back to RGB without doing anything in between (as you seem to describe it here) doesn't seem to make sense to me.

Also, does setting the Channel Mixer to monochrome (as I usually do, and did in this picture) technically qualify as desaturating? I suppose it does, since you still get to work with the RGB channels, which you don't in Greyscale. And if so, is loss of quality or obvious pixellation after this kind of desaturation a fact? I can't say I've ever noticed it, but then I'm not the most observant person when it comes to these things. For the record, the grain in this particular image stems from the fact that I took the photo in front of a grainy wall and then blew up a small part of it. It was there right from the start, and has nothing to do with any post-processing techniques.

Anyhow, I'm going to give your technique a try, and I'll let you know how it works for me. Thanks for sharing your secrets with me!

[shizunde]

all i know about ps is by trial-error-trial. i just installed and started it - as i do with most things. so, my ways of doing things tend to be "alternative".
well, this guy explained the basis of that, about light, and stuff (?? and i don't even dare guess it now)
no, there's nothing between greyscale & rgb. the point is that you don't loose a quality that you may want later. the difference is subtle, but it is there: greyscale is richer & sharper than desaturated. it is more obvious if you are playing with extremes:
in this picture i did two (extreme) changes in the blue channel, exactly the same values:



it's very subtle at the start, but it can be important as you keep working with it, 'cause that difference keeps adding and adding in every step, or if you decide to go for a closer crop...

for example, i don't use the channel mixer much (rather never). but i like a lot the effects you can get with the "colour balance" tool, especially if you unclick the "preserve luminosity" thing. since you can alter the values of all 3 channels differently for shadows/midtones/highlights, you can get very sharp plays of colour. and then, with a bit of contrast/brightness it's ok.

i get the impression that the hue/saturation is espectacular but very limited, i try to keep it to a minimum...

i try and experiment a lot (like in the picture i did with yours: i learned a new tool).