Please help…trying to find a way to achieve "burned edge" look of film.

C
Posted By
corysmith
Aug 11, 2004
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215
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There’s got to be a filter, or maybe an illustrator brush or something. I’m trying to achieve that look when you burn an image in the darkroom and the outer edges have that black, imperfect "burned-in" look to them. I’ve seen it a million times on the surrounds of photos and am trying to figure out a way to do it simply. Any help is greatly appreciated.

Oh yeah, I’m running PS CS on a 12" powerbook, MacOS 10.2.8, 640MB RAM.

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CB
charles_badland
Aug 11, 2004
Are you talking about the “filed-out negative carrier” technique? That was pretty popular for a while. (Where the negative carrier is literally filed out with a metal file to allow the clear film around the negative image to print black.)
If so: I’d probably make a high res scan an actual filed-out negative carrier, then manipulate it in PS so the hole is black. To learn how to border it around an image, see Jullieanne Kost’s pdf “Adding Edge Effects’ at <http://www.adobeevangelists.com/>
cb
AS
Ann_Shelbourne
Aug 11, 2004
If you mean the effect that you get by dodging the center of a print while "burning-in" the edges with extra exposure, the easiest way to to do this in Photoshop is with a Soft Light Layer.

Fill a Soft Light Layer with 50% grey.
Then use a Clear-to-Black circular Gradient; or use the Brush (51% black or more darkens and white lightens).
C
corysmith
Aug 11, 2004
Charles- I think that may be what I’m looking for, but not sure..the "filed-out" part of your reply isn’t something I’m understanding…sorry for my stupidity.

This is roughly what I’m talking about:

<http://www.salzanophoto.com/stock/stock10.htm>

Or, if you have it around, it’s the 2001 CA Photography annual, #42, on page 156. The top photo, photo #1, by James Salzano. It looks like a border, but a natural one…like it wasn’t created, but actually left behind by however he printed the photo.
AS
Ann_Shelbourne
Aug 11, 2004
Cory:
What you are seeing is a scan of the complete piece of medium-format film—right to the edges.

To reproduce that, scan a similar piece of film; mask it to leave just the edges; and composite it with your images in Photoshop.
CB
charles_badland
Aug 11, 2004
Cory-
Yes, a filed-out negative carrier was used for that picture. The diffraction of the enlarger light along the edge of the carrier makes that “roughness” you mention.

All you have to do is get a black square (or rectangular) image with that roughness on the edge and plop your photo on top.

How to get that black image…?

Well I would get an old metal negative carrier (used to hold a negative in an enlarger) from ebay or somewhere, rough-up the inside with a metal file and try scanning it with the lid open. Then inverse tones and increase the contrast in PS.
May work, may not. I’m sure there are other ways to do this as well.

As Ann says, a Frame Effect program might have this.
J
jonf
Aug 11, 2004
There’s an application called PhotoGraphic Edges by Auto FX Software which creates this and a whole lot of other effects. It’s a tad pricy for what it does, but it quickly and easily gives a variety of edge effects to scans in virtually any dimension and most resolutions. The version I used to use wasn’t much more sophisticated than what you’d get by scanning an edge and putting it together yourself, but if you use these effects a lot it saves a lot of work.

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