Inishmore coastline

You probably seen recently enough crappy pictures whose authors argued there are “real and true” photographs only because shot on film…
But what if somebody today use technology from nineteen century, coming back to origins of photography?
Igor Vasiliadis uses “wet-plate” or collodion technique.
Results: Stunning!

Igor Vasiliadis

Igor Vasiliadis

Igor Vasiliadis

More photos here.

It was a very windy day… so better close your eyes

She told me she has a terrible hangover…
…  but I’m not sure if i believe her…

One of the world’s most renowned nude photographers. Nothing to surprise you, his portraits are great too.

Andreas H. Bitesnich

Andreas H. Bitesnich

Andreas H. Bitesnich

More photos here.

Everybody loves a digital cameras but sometime you are missing for more organic or traditional look of your photos. This tutorial is about creating an effect in Photoshop which simulate a film grain. Of course some purists will argue you can not simulate real look and feel of film and digital has no soul or whatever. That is a long story and loads of pro and cons.
Here we will concentrate on playing around in Photoshop with pure digital photos.

Ill explain everything step by step so does not matter if you are experienced or beginner.
So let’s start!

Open your image in Photoshop. I recommend use full resolution image so you can achieve very similar effect like myself in this example. My image has dimensions 2336 x 3506 pixels. If you using smaller image just use smaller amount of noise and blur than I suggest.

Create a new layer, click on the New Layer icon in the layers pallet or click Layer – New Layer.
Give that layer a name grain instead of Layer 1, just double click on the layer name in the layers pallet and type new layer name.

Now we are going to set neutral gray colour. You are free to experiment with different grey settings – lighter or darker shade. But remember to keep the same ratio for every colour (like R: 127, G: 127, B: 127) to avoid any colour cast.
For that tutorial set background colour with amount R: 110, G: 110, B: 110 and fill over grain layer.

Go to the layers palette and change blending mode from Normal to Overlay.
You should now see the photo below in the current window. Grain layer will appear as transparent.

To make easier next step enlarge preview of your image to 50% or 100%.
It will give you better view what is going on now. Below is a crop at 100% from picture with no effect applied.

To add noise go to Filter – Noise – Add Noise. Set the amount between 10% and 30%, check mark monochromatic to make the noise black-and-white and distribution Gaussian.
Now you can see how your image look after applying noise, feel free to play around with different amount of noise. And click OK.

We added some amount of noise, but it looks not so pleasing and more like digital noise instead of film grain. So take next step to make that more realistic film grain.
Go to Filter – Blur – Gaussian Blur.
Set the amount between 0.3 to 0.9 but again you are free to experiment and I strongly recommend to play around with several settings to find that which works the best for you. Amount of blur depends of amount of noise you applied in previous step – you will discover that quickly. Click OK.

Now you created a new layer which contains quite realistic film grain.
Here is result with effect applied and without.

Image with grain applied and resized.

The same image no grain applied.

But that is not the end.
We can go further with adjustment of grain layer and change look of grain.
To have more subtle grain, in layers pallet change amount of opacity on grain layer from 100% to 80%. Results are below.

Overlay and Opacity 100%

Overlay and Opacity 80%

To achieve even more subtle effect go to the layers palette and change blending mode from Overlay to Soft Light. And again plat around with opacity of grain layer. See samples below.

Soft Light and Opacity 100%

Soft Light and Opacity 80%

To compare how looks like image with no effect applied.

Grain layer disabled

Now you can adjust different amount of noise and blur choose blending mode and get very different result. If you are patient enough to play around in Photoshop very soon you can find your favourite settings and use it. Usually people stick to one or two favourite settings. I recommend to find some real examples of film grain (samples of film scans, or real old B&W prints in family album) and find similar settings to simulate particular size and shape of grain. You can always buy plugins for Photoshop and have that effect in two clicks or experiment yourself and get the same result. Beside that if you create an action then it is almost automatic and very flexible. And you could tell your friends you are one step closer to be a Photoshop Guru

Street photo shoot a few days ago on rainy day in center of Dublin.

If you reading this post probably you are looking for better or different technique to create a stunning Black and White photos from your color images.
There is plenty of different methods to convert a color photo into B&W, some are better some worse. You can use a channel mixer very popular and gives quite good results. Somebody still using ancient LAB conversion these days. Of course in Photoshop CS3 they introduced a dedicated Black and White conversion tool which is very flexible and simple.

Other techniques are B&W conversion when you are processing RAW file that works good in Adobe Camera Raw and if speed is your aim that works fine.

The problem with some methods is that the resulting image can look flat and lifeless. The image lacks contrast and depth. Other problems are banding and noise.

But if you need something better there is an another method: CALCULATIONS.
It is maybe more time consuming but if you are looking for best possible effect that is the way. What is also very important using calculations you do not lose quality of your photos.
There is a color image wchich wil be converted to B&W using calculations.

Once you opened your color image in Photoshop, then go to the Image – Calculations…

Your image turned black and white instantly, and as you see channel green is blended with green in overlay mode and opacity 80%.
When you choose Result: New Channel, a new channel will be added to your image.

As you see on image below a new channel – Alfa 1 is blended with Alfa 1 in multiply mode and 50% opacity.
As you see results image goes darker with more dense blacks.

Next calculations: blue channel blended with Alfa 2 in multiply mode with 100% opacity.
We have a massive amount of black you can not see any details in shadows.

Again calculations: red channel blended with Alfa 3 in screen mode with 70% opacity.
As you can see there we have back details in shadows and by simple blending two channels quality stays as good as original image.

As you see below there is an image after several calculations. Results of every calculations are saved as new alfa channels. But finally I selected channel Alfa 2 for B&W conversion.

Now you need to convert alfa channel to regular B&W image you can save as jpeg to publish on website or print. Highlight your alfa channel and go to Image – Mode – Grayscale and again Image – Mode – RGB, now you are back in RGB mode with great black and white image.

You can play around with different blending mode and blend different channels: red, green and blue as well as any new alfa channel you will make during that process. Some examples here just illustrate a flexibility of that method and of course quality always remains as original.

A few photos from my photo shoot taken on April 2009. Again long time ago.
Shoot on Dollymount Strand in sunny but windy day. That was very quick shooting. Styling: Anne Hobson, model: Chloe Arnold, make-up: Ciara Hanlon and hair: Glenn Kelly. Some of them were published in Irish Times Magazine. Here are results:

He does not need any recommendations. One of the best.

Peter Lindbergh

Peter Lindbergh

Peter Lindbergh

More photos here.