Another good thing about holidays is all the time you have for doing the stuff you love. While we were in Cornwall recently we spent the mornings lazing around the caravan while the dog slept off the previous day's walking so I got out the lap top and tried to learn a little bit more about Photoshop Elements.
Although I've been working my way through a book on Elements, I needed a bit of inspiration so I decided to get myself some digital photo magazines and try out the video lessons on their free CDs. I bought three magazines (it's probably cheaper to do an evening class!) but here I'm just going to talk about one lesson in Digital Photo magazine - how to process D-SLR RAW photos in black and white to create a gritty looking portrait.
I persuaded my hubby to pose for a portrait - not hard as he loves having his picture taken. This time I set my camera up in the RAW setting. Taking a serious portrait felt quite strange even with someone I know so well - it was difficult getting him to keep a straight face! I tried suggesting bad things for him to think about (the worst was drowning kittens - we are animal lovers honest!) but sadly this just led to more hilarity and not really the gritty look I was after. We did eventually manage to be serious and I ended up with some great pictures to practice with.
Raw files are made up of uncompressed data, which means that you can make powerful adjustments without losing quality. So instead of just converting your colour pictures to mono, which can sometimes produce quite a flat image, you play with the settings to create a much more interesting, high contrast picture that shows more depth and detail. This was my first portrait - both before and after:
I was pretty pleased with the results so a few days later I had another go and I think that the second portrait is my favourite so far:
I'd like to try this out on more portraits and other black and white images as I love the detail it brings out.
If you're interested in the technical stuff here's what I did:
Open your photo in Photoshop Elements and the Adobe Camera RAW interface will open. These are the settings I used but you may want to make some adjustments to suit your own photo. It may sound fiddly but it really takes very little time.
Move the Saturation slider all the way to the left to convert the image to black and white. Then set the Temperature to about 3500 to increase the dark tones in the photo. Increase the exposure slightly to +0.35 then turn Contrast to +60 and Clarity to +100. Set the Blacks to 10 and then slowly move up the Fill Light slider stopping just before you see halos appear on the high contrast areas of the image (zoom in if necessary to check it's OK) - in my case it was around 30. Click on Open Image to take the shot into the main Photoshop Elements interface.
Use the Dodge tool to go over the eyes (setting Range to Highlights and Exposure to 5% and using a 65px brush) - paint over the irises and the whites of the eyes to brighten them. Sharpen the image by going to Enhance-Unsharp Mask and set Amount to 40%, Radius to 20px, Threshold to 0 levels, and click OK. Click Ctrl+J to create a duplicate Background Layer and then go to Filter-Other-High Pass. Adjust Radius to 5px and click OK. Then go to the layers palette and click where it says Normal - choose Soft Light from the drop down menu.
There you have it! If any of you have a go please post your results under Comments - I'd love to see them!
Kiss - 8x10 Origina... 
Eco-Chic Necklace -... 
Palm in the Sky fin... 
Stop Trying To Make... 
3 panel Canvas art ... 
Sign and Line - 11x... 
Canvas Photo, Ancie... 
BLACK and WHITE red... 
CRIMSON PATH fall f... 
Black White Red COW... 
Leaf - fine art b... 
Black White and Red... 
London - The Phone ... 
Irish Red - Origin... 
Ruby red elegant go... 
In A Savannah Garde... 
