What is this Photoshoping style?
March 13, 2006 8:16 AM

Does this style of photoshopping have a name? Any tutorials out there?
posted by srboisvert to Computers & Internet (16 answers total) 2 users marked this as a favorite
There is also another person on flickr who does these kinds of things with pictures of film scenes or something - i remember seeing horses and native indians.
posted by srboisvert at 8:19 AM on March 13, 2006


Looks to me like posterization, which is just one of the default tools in Photoshop.
posted by jjg at 8:21 AM on March 13, 2006


Looks to me like Filter > Noise > Add Noise.
posted by Gator at 8:35 AM on March 13, 2006


No, that's not posterization. It looks more like the photographer is intending to emulate Dragan -- there was a fad for doing this on DPReview.com's retouching forum a while back.
posted by kindall at 8:40 AM on March 13, 2006


I suspect both jjg and Gator are correct.

Filter > Noise > Add Noise will (guess what?) add nose! I would use Noise's monocromatic option, or the noise will be rainbow colored.


Image > Adjustments > Posterize will simplify the colors.

In other words, if you bring up Posterize and enter 4, Photoshop will repaint your fullcolor photo using only four colors. To get the effect in the Flickr photo, I'd bet Posterize was set to 15 or 20.

The image may also have been desaturated (colors toned down).

Image > Adjustments > Hue/Saturation will do the trick. Just bring up that command and slide the saturation slider to the left, until you like the result.

You may want to play with the order in which you apply these three commands. Also, you might want to try applying a slight blur before Posterizing (Filter > Blur > Gaussian Blur).
posted by grumblebee at 8:44 AM on March 13, 2006


Add Noise will (guess what?) add nose!

grumblebee, that's a hilarious unintentional typo. It invokes the possibility of a Photoshop filter called "add nose" that would, naturally, add noses to the photo. Don't like the nose that's on your subject? Just choose "add nose" from the drop-down! Think the model would look better with two noses? Choose "add nose"!

Ah, typos. They're fun.
posted by jdroth at 8:49 AM on March 13, 2006


Gods, but I am tempted to try to flag jdroth's post as "nose."
posted by cgc373 at 8:58 AM on March 13, 2006


i remember seeing horses and native indians

That would be shadowplay and he uses the Wyeth filter from Lucas Art.

I haven't a clue what the other photographer is doing but looks like a gradient is being used as well.
posted by squeak at 8:59 AM on March 13, 2006


add noise, sharpen?
posted by matteo at 9:00 AM on March 13, 2006


Film grain (Ok, it's add noise)+ Sepia tone?
posted by IronLizard at 9:05 AM on March 13, 2006


It makes me think of pictures that are converted to indexed colour mode with 100% dither difusion. I can't zoom in on Flicker pictures, so I'm not positive.
posted by RobotHero at 9:23 AM on March 13, 2006


This is very likely not any single effect but multiple layers of effects mixed together. Is has definitely had some form of color/saturation reduction done to it. It also looks like the ran it through some of the artistic filters (like watercolor and poster edges). But I'm more than reasonably certain that it wasn't arrived at by a single process/filter.
posted by doctor_negative at 10:06 AM on March 13, 2006


Looking at this single image, here's what I see:

- Color saturation reduction, using the Hue/Saturation tool to tone down color saturation, resulting in a washed-out appearance of color purity.

- Noise is indeed added, but the trick is to add it ONLY to the luminosity of the image, NOT the color/chromacity. This is accomplished in a number of ways, the easiest being to click on the "monochromatic" checkbox at the bottom of the Add Noise filter.

- There might be a slight color toning, which could be done with Photoshop's Photo Filter adjustment layer capabilities (set to a warm value such, or orange color at a relatively low density (25-35%), or a solid color layer set to Overlay mode with a very low layer opacity (for versions of Photoshop lacking the Photo Filter adjustment layer option).

In this particular image, I don't see the results of any Posterization, which would usually result in much more pronounced "bands" of discrete color areas.
posted by dbiedny at 10:15 AM on March 13, 2006


Okay, I was able to get a very similar effect by the following steps:

1) At the bottom of the Layers palette, I clicked the "create new fill or adjustment layer" button (the half-black/half-white circle) and chose the Gradient Map adjustment.

2) From the dropdown labeled "Gradient used for Grayscale Mapping," I chose a sepiatone-ish gradient (you can make your own gradient). This will tint your image.

If you look in your Layers Palette, you'll see a new layer at the top of the stack. This layers is a tint "filter" which is combining with your original image to change its color. In the next step, you'll mess with the blend between the tint and the original image.

3) At the top of the Layers palette, I changed the Blend mode from Normal to Soft Light. I liked the way this made the tint look. You might want to experiment with different blend modes and also mess with Opacity.

4) Click the ""create new fill or adjustment layer" button (bottom of Layers) again and choose the Hue/Saturation adjustment. Lower the saturation until you like the look. This will mute the colors.

5) If you're on a PC, use this keyboard shortcut

CTRL+ALT+SHIFT+N (create a new layer)
CTRL+ALT+SHIFT+E (merge the lower layers onto this new layer)

MAC version:

COMMAND+OPTION+SHIFT+N
COMMAND+OPTION+SHIFT+E

6) Make sure this new, merged layer is selected. Then run the Noise filter. Filter > Noise > Add Noise. I checked the Gaussian and Monochrome options. Add whatever amount looks good to you.

7) From the "create new fill or adjustment layer" button, I chose the Levels adjustment. In Levels, there are black, white and gray triangles. There's a second set of triangles, just a black and a white one, below the black-white-gray ones. Don't touch these.

Drag the top-black triangle to the right to make the blacks blacker. Move the top-white triangle to the left to make the whites whiter. If you move both of these triangles, you'll make the image more contrasty (blacker blacks & white whites). Experiment with the how far you drag these triangles.

8) Repeat step 5: CONTROL+ALT+SHIFT+N, CONTROL+ALT+SHIFT+E (MAC: COMMAND+OPTION+SHIFT+N, COMMAND+OPTION+SHIFT+E)

9) Run Filter > Blur > Guassian Blur and blur the image just a small amount -- maybe 4 -- so that the noise looks less sharp.

10) Run Filter > Sharpen > Smart Sharpen (or, if you have an older version of Photoshop, Filter > Sharpen > Unsharp Mask). Play with the amount until you like the results.


Then add nose.
posted by grumblebee at 11:03 AM on March 13, 2006


A shame that after all that work, the photographer didn't bother to use Photoshop's dandy new "Depilate" filter
posted by rob511 at 3:56 PM on March 13, 2006


It looks like halftone and sepia to me.
posted by exacta_perfecta at 10:36 AM on March 14, 2006


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