Re: Books on street photography

K
Posted By
kaispowertools
Jun 13, 2004
Views
334
Replies
5
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Closed
"D.R." …
"Adrian" wrote in message
<SNIP>

Dude! Your black and white is superb!!!! "two women tepatitlan" and "man on 11th street" are fantastic. How did you get these shots to look so tonally awesome? I would love to learn how to take shots like these….

D.R.

Thank you for your comments and I hope I can satisfactorily answer your questions. "Two Women Tepatitlan" was taken in 1980 on Kodak Plus-X film developed in Kodak D-76. The b&w negative was scanned, levels set manually in Photoshop, and a "perimeter burn" done on a lasso selection with a 150 pixel feather. 150 pixels is my usual STARTING point because I like the gentle gradations it gives on a burn. The burn is usual done in curves, then I invert the selection and use curves to bring up mid-tones and subdue highlights.

http://www.amenfoto.com/gallery/mexico_1/two_women_tepatitla n.html

"Man on 11th Street" was taken 2 years ago and was captured as a color digital file. The method for translating to bw was through Channel Mixer in the Image pull down menu in Photoshop. Toning was done as described above by feathered burn and inverted selection and using curves fine-tuning midtones and highlights.

http://www.amenfoto.com/gallery/11th_street/man_on_11th_stre et.html

Hope this helps. Any further questions, feel free to follow-up.

thanks,

Adrian

http://www.amenfoto.com

"A Picture’s Worth a Thousand Nerds."

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N
newsgroup
Jun 14, 2004
Adrian,

I’ve been poking around your site and am impressed, but especially curious about #18 of 28 on the "tweaked_metalix" section. I have done this style of effect in many forms, including text which is interesting, but have never come across a result like yours. Care to share how you created such a pattern?

~Doc
D
DR
Jun 14, 2004
"~Doc" wrote in message
Adrian,

I’ve been poking around your site and am impressed, but especially
curious
about #18 of 28 on the "tweaked_metalix" section. I have done this
style of
effect in many forms, including text which is interesting, but have
never
come across a result like yours. Care to share how you created such
a
pattern?

~Doc

For convenience of those reading this thread….
http://www.amenfoto.com/gallery/tweaked_metallix/amenfoto_po rtrait.html

A very clever artist and photographer IMHO.

D.R.
K
kaispowertools
Jun 15, 2004
"D.R." …
"~Doc" wrote in message
Adrian,

I’ve been poking around your site and am impressed, but especially
curious
about #18 of 28 on the "tweaked_metalix" section. I have done this
style of
effect in many forms, including text which is interesting, but have
never
come across a result like yours. Care to share how you created such
a
pattern?

~Doc

For convenience of those reading this thread….
http://www.amenfoto.com/gallery/tweaked_metallix/amenfoto_po rtrait.html
A very clever artist and photographer IMHO.

D.R.

Thank you both for your comments. I’d be happy to share the technique, which is really very simple, but I hope I can find the right words to explain clearly. The photograph is a portrait of me and was processed in the very well known KPT 5 Shapeshifter filter plug-in for Photoshop (You can get ALL the KPT filter suites from Corel for $99.00 or on ebay for $69.00+/-. Or you might be able to find KPT 5 on ebay for $9.99).

The first thing I did was create a high contrast black and white image by using the "Stamp" filter (a very useful tool for creating alpha channel masks. Make certain that black is the foreground color and white the background).

You’ll need to understand the concept of greyscale height maps. Once again, very simple. Just remember that pure white will create the highest elevation and black the lowest. Despite the fact you’ll be working in the 2-D Photoshop program, Shapeshifter responds with 3-D properties of reflectance, refraction, additive and subtractive lighting, etc.

This is sort of confusing, but hope you can follow along. The actual finished image has a white background and the elevation is a metallic-type ridged texture.

I inverted the image so that the base was black and the designated elevation was white. Save. Then, invert BACK so white is the base again. Do NOT save. However, go to Image> Duplicate and make a copy of the image. Make sure, like the saved original, that the base is black and bevel white. Use magic wand to make selection in all white areas. Next, (assuming you have it) use KPT 3 Gradient Designer in shapeburst mode and non-color ridges to make a hard-edge "gradient" (just realize that "gradient" means the transition between tones: usually – as in conventional thinking – the transition is "GRADual," which is what most people think of in GRADient. But KPT 3 allows the transition to be hard edge black to white if that’s what you choose – it’s all editible). You will have ridges that follow the shape of the selection. Save it.

Next, go back to original base image. You have a choice of making the bevels "selection-based," but even that’s not necessary in Shapeshifter because the saved image (thus, the reason why it’s inverted) creates the bevels based on the tones according to the concept of height maps. Open Shapeshifter filter and in main shape pallet, import the original shape that you saved. Adjust bevel width and height with slider controls. I know this may sound complicated, but it’s really very simple.

Next, click on the Alpha channel pallet, in which you will import the image with the KPT 3 Gradient Designer ridges on it. You can control height and intensity of the ridge overlay by slider controls. The texture within the ridges are applied in the "Noise" pallet, which in this example is nothing more than an imported custom tiled checkerboard pattern that serves as an alpha channel mask as well. It’s just a different control, but you still can designate scale and depth.

The metallics come from the "environments" (sphere) control. In the software presets are a great number of metallic environments, but the one I use most is "Dull Chrome."

Finally, use the 3-D lighting controls to model the image.

Ok, so maybe it isn’t as simple as I first mentioned. It’s simple to me because I do it so often. Bottom line, alpha channel masks (or just plain masks) can be a very powerful tool in creating textures and patterns, particularly with KPT 5 Shapeshifter.

At the very least, this (ahem) tutorial can help dispell the widespread myth that Photoshop plug-ins are not useful tools for creativity (ok, agreed, MOST aren’t useful, but I don’t use any others anyway…).

Give it a try and if any questions, feel free to ask.

By-the-way, the following images were made in the same manner as described above:

http://www.amenfoto.com/gallery/tweaked_metallix/amen_pewter _shapes_1.html

http://www.amenfoto.com/gallery/tweaked_metallix/metallic_te xt_box.html

thanks,

Adrian

http://www.amenfoto.com

"A Picture’s Worth a Thousand Nerds."
K
kaispowertools
Jun 15, 2004
I said it was simple and I just complicated the heck out of it. Here’s a much more graphic example.

You’re making cookies. The dough is rolled out. You have 3 cookie cutters, but they all have exactly the same primary shape.

Cookie cutter one is ONLY the primary shape.

Cookie cutter two has the exact same primary shape, but inside the shape are concentric patterns.

Cookie cutter three has the exact same primary shape, but inside the shape are tiny squares that add texture to the concentric patterns.

Your masks are your cookie cutters. It’s that simple.

Adrian

http://www.amenfoto.com

"D.R." …
"~Doc" wrote in message
Adrian,

I’ve been poking around your site and am impressed, but especially
curious
about #18 of 28 on the "tweaked_metalix" section. I have done this
style of
effect in many forms, including text which is interesting, but have
never
come across a result like yours. Care to share how you created such
a
pattern?

~Doc

For convenience of those reading this thread….
http://www.amenfoto.com/gallery/tweaked_metallix/amenfoto_po rtrait.html
A very clever artist and photographer IMHO.

D.R.
N
newsgroup
Jun 15, 2004
"Adrian" wrote in message
I said it was simple and I just complicated the heck out of it. Here’s a much more graphic example.

You’re making cookies. The dough is rolled out. You have 3 cookie cutters, but they all have exactly the same primary shape.
Cookie cutter one is ONLY the primary shape.

Cookie cutter two has the exact same primary shape, but inside the shape are concentric patterns.

Cookie cutter three has the exact same primary shape, but inside the shape are tiny squares that add texture to the concentric patterns.
Your masks are your cookie cutters. It’s that simple.

Adrian

Adrian,

Thanks for taking the time to explain it. I don’t have the same plug-ins but am working around it, for example select / stroke / contract and repeat for cookie cutter two and blend modes for the checker pattern in cookie three. I’m getting close but after a few hours I ran out of time, will try more later. Oh, and thanks again for explaining again. =)

~Doc

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