Soft/Dream Effect

whyulittle

Am looking to make a shot kind of dreamy looking - think orton effect.

It's of a church with two towers, one of which I've kind of managed to do with dodge/burn, by accident more than design. There is more detail in the second tower though, with doors, windows, ledges etc and I'd be afraid of messing it up doing it the same way.

EDIT: Using CS3/LR.

Dragan

In Lightroom i have a couple or presets spefically for the "dreamy feeling".

Not too sure where i pulled them from but if you want to PM me an email addy i can send them to you when i get home from work later ( will be quite late though ).

5uspect

Duplicate layer, blur using gaussian blur a good bit until you no longer see detailed features.
Change the blend mode on the blurred duplicate to soft light or overlay.

Dragan

5uspect wrote: »

Duplicate layer, blur using gaussian blur a good bit until you no longer see detailed features.
Change the blend mode on the blurred duplicate to soft light or overlay.

I find a nice way to do this is to colour match with a large paint brush the colours underneath and then blur then hell out of it, leads to a different looking but still interesting affect. Can take time though, your way is better! lol

5uspect

Ooh that a good idea, I suppose you could mess with the saturation of the blurred layer to get a similar effect.

smelltheglove

There is a glamour filter in paint shop that does this if you can get a trial version. I secind the desaturation though, works much better. Is there a tool in your program that would give you a soften or even halo? Works brilliantly.

whyulittle

I'm so bad at PS, I might just wait and see what I get off Dragan for LR.

I've had a go at your way 5uspect. It's basically the same as the tutorial I saw for the orton effect, only your way is better as it doesn't come out as dark (using overlay instead of multiply).

Fajitas!

Dupe layer, gaussian blur, and soft light/overlay is usually the handiest - Convert to an adjustment layer with the box with a circle in at the bottom of the layers palatte. You can paint in or out detail/glow then

whyulittle

Fajitas! wrote: »

Dupe layer, gaussian blur, and soft light/overlay is usually the handiest - Convert to an adjustment layer with the box with a circle in at the bottom of the layers palatte. You can paint in or out detail/glow then

My kind of instructions, thanks.

Anouilh

A clear description of the differences between unsharp mask and blur:

http://en.irfanview-forum.de/vb/showthread.php?p=7848

I find Irfanview is very quick and versatile:

http://flickr.com/photos/77969956@N00/2903207396/

Is this the sort of effect you are looking for?

Dragan

whyulittle wrote: »

I'm so bad at PS, I might just wait and see what I get off Dragan for LR. .

Yeah, meant to have those with you last night but by the time i got home turning on a computer was beyond me. I'll compress and send you the Presets when i get home, so you will have them before 7 tonight.

whyulittle

No worries. I've kept working on my original file, and am pretty happy with it. Send them on though and I'll give it a ago. Cheers.

whyulittle

Anouilh wrote: »

http://flickr.com/photos/77969956@N00/2903207396/

Is this the sort of effect you are looking for?

Basically, yep.

whyulittle

OK, so probably not everyone's cup of tea, but here is what I have.

Dragan

I like it a lot, it looks like a still from a Sin City or The Spirit type film.

kjt

I like her!

Fajitas!

Looks pretty well.

Good stuff!

Sysbase

That's a really cool effect. Thanks for sharing!

whyulittle

Thanks, glad ye like it.

Deliverance XXV

If you happen to have the freeware Paint.net there is a soften portrait plugin you can get (from this site that makes free and useful plugins for paint.net) that you can use to varying degrees of success. You can alter options like softness, brightness and warmth.

Note: Boards don't seem to allow links with "forum" or some other attribute in the address so it's the first site in this google page.


Here are a few photos I processed with it: