September 27, 2005
Well--
--they must have gotten it fixed. I wonder what keeps messing up with it?
No matter. SO, as I was saying, I've gotten to play with the Photoshop toy for a bit this afternoon. I found one site called Planet Photoshop (it's actually here on Earth) that has some fairly good tutorials (although they all seem to presuppose a relatively high level of competence). I found one that sort of intrigued me, a somewhat goofy one on how to color black-and-white photos. I know how much the artsy sorts hate such things, but I think it's kinda neat, and I've done some colored pencil tinting that turned out looking pretty cool. SO, I figured I'd give it a try, using one of my favorite B&W photos, this one of Loretta Young--
Rrrowl. Anyway, that's that, and this was a first pass at putting some colors on there--
This took about an hour--mainly trying to figure out what buttons and stuff you're supposed to click on. The actual process of putting the color in wasn't so difficult. The thing that's a bit off, at least to my eye, are that the shadows and highlights only read as lighter or darker hues of the same color, which winds up looking awfully dull. In actual light, reflections can have a touch of complementary color in them, which tends to make the colors appear more vibrant. Another thing that I mentioned down in the coments below is that I have a bad eye for just picking the right color. I've always relied on the name on the pencil or marker to get me in the ballpark, and trying to figure out skin tones and stuff based on those multi-million hue grids is difficult for me.
Anyway, learning about such things is rather entertaining.
Oops--well, my comments won't allow photos, so here we go:
Here's sepia toned Loretta:
Annd here's colorized sepia toned Loretta:
The biggest problem was figuring out how to turn the photo into sepia. And I finally figured out that the bathing suit is a one-piece--the top and bottom are made together, but I thought until I was reworking it again that it was a top and a pair of pants. Anyway...
Posted by Terry Oglesby at September 27, 2005 03:26 PMMoreso when you've got Loretta Young to practice on. Not to put to fine a point on it, but was it a bit chilly when that photo was taken.
And yes, there is everything crude intended in that pun there.
Posted by: skinnydan at September 27, 2005 03:51 PMCareful, now, or you'll have the Hayes Commission busting in here.
Posted by: Terry Oglesby at September 27, 2005 04:01 PMWhen I colorize I like to only do one or two elements. In the picture you chose I would do the ocean and her shirt and maybe her lipstick.
To give Ms. Loretta a warmer tone you could try turning the picture to sepia toned and mess around with the overall tone before colorizing.
Posted by: Sarah G. at September 27, 2005 04:10 PMGood idea, Sarah--I tried posting the results here in the comments but it won't let me do pictures. The revised picture is in the extended entry.
Posted by: Terry Oglesby at September 28, 2005 09:52 AMTurned out pretty well, I'd say.
Posted by: Jordana at September 28, 2005 11:50 AMYeah--it's better than the first one, but I still have that color thing to figure out. Figuring out the way to do sepia was itself a nice thing to know. It's not at all apparent in the instructions.
Posted by: Terry Oglesby at September 28, 2005 12:02 PMVery nice!
You also gave her some lovely golden highlights.
I thought I did, but as I said, they could just as easily have turned out to be yellow-green for all of my color-picking ability.
Posted by: Terry Oglesby at September 28, 2005 02:41 PM