How to get the print film look in PS?


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BurgaFlippinMan

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Jun 20, 2004
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Can any kind sould please teach me how to PS a neg look for digital pics? Thanks.
 

erm...i actually didint mean the negative look, but the look of prints made from negs. :)
 

BurgaFlippinMan said:
erm...i actually didint mean the negative look, but the look of prints made from negs. :)
err.. define wat u're thinking when u say prints made from negs..
 

The english language had been murdered here.....if you need help you have to be more discriptive about what you want, What is the problem, what result you are hopping to archieve and after that...read it back to yourself to see if you understand what you just wrote. That way...the right indivduals with the answer could pitch in to advice.

Even I thought it was to do an inversion to create a negative effect like a 35mm negative film.
 

BurgaFlippinMan said:
Ok, sorry for my hopeless description.

What I meant was something like this...you know..a more filmy look...less digital/slide-ish...

http://www.pbase.com/luminous
dude, there's actually no difference except for more 'natural' looking grains when using film.
 

BurgaFlippinMan,

I can see the look and feel you're after. "The print film look" is flatter abd fuller especially in the highlight end which you could achieve by manipulating the level or curve control in PS.
 

The photos in the link show a very good grasps of lighting, composition, use of lens and fstops to achieve effects, and most probably super control on PS work.

Example look at the little boy in Shine - very good use of a traditional technice of wide open with the 85/1.8, good use of side lighting with some kinda of fiill, good choice of using a high iso on a D70 to create noise in shadows/out of focus areas - may some ps work here too. There is some PS work on the eyes - not normal with large strip flash or reflector to have square or triangular eye pupils. There is a lot of PS work going into this.

While it most probably possible to make digital capture look like film capture - it is never 100% the same - the 2 media are different and one cannot give you the look of the other.
 

insomia said:
The photos in the link show a very good grasps of lighting, composition, use of lens and fstops to achieve effects, and most probably super control on PS work.

Example look at the little boy in Shine - very good use of a traditional technice of wide open with the 85/1.8, good use of side lighting with some kinda of fiill, good choice of using a high iso on a D70 to create noise in shadows/out of focus areas - may some ps work here too. There is some PS work on the eyes - not normal with large strip flash or reflector to have square or triangular eye pupils. There is a lot of PS work going into this.

While it most probably possible to make digital capture look like film capture - it is never 100% the same - the 2 media are different and one cannot give you the look of the other.
nor is any 1 kinda film the same as another too.. so... wat's the point here? heh.
 

BurgaFlippinMan said:
Ok, sorry for my hopeless description.

What I meant was something like this...you know..a more filmy look...less digital/slide-ish...

http://www.pbase.com/luminous


No problem bro... I think I get "roughly" what you mean. I went to this site to take alook at what, maybe, you were trying to produce in your own photography. Pictures produced in that particular site uses digital cameras to shoot. From a D70 to a P&S. So what gives you the "feel" or "look" that prompted you to sense it to look like negative film if I may add?

The photographer is pretty good with the Photoshop or some digital graphic manipulation as seen in almost all his shots. Which mean he has spend a long time if not years doing this as a hobby or as a professional. I can't really see what "negative" effect that would be unless you are talking about film grain.

In fact alot of the stuff that photographer did in his shots, he used some Photoshop's plug-in effect(s) to finalise the look. Most of the black & white stuff he did was done using effect plug-in similar to "high pass" adjustment. Other effects he could be using in the other pictures are like colourising and texture filters...etc Some of these effect plug-in comes with Photoshop but alot of the better or specialised ones, you have to buy. Some of those effects can not be teached as they are done using more then just one or more special filters or digital painting. This photographer has been experimenting quite a bit and has come up with a way of going about it in a style he loves. ( this guy is a great admirer of Henri Cartier-Bresson for goodness sake! heheh) And it's also about having a good idea on creative, photography composition, play of colours and a great passion for it. I am impressed with the way the photographer does his creation. And of course it helps to have interesting models to shoot and familair with. You have to also know that mostly likely he has taken tons of picture to harvest this "winner" shots.

I also don't see any grain or anything close to the "negative' type film shot here that you mentioned or hopping you could archieve yourself....all I see are well composed shots, very engaging use of lens/angle, way the photos were shot to create certain effects and yes of course photoshop was definitely used to great effect to produce the end results.

If you really want to learn how the photopher uses photoshop, that would be hard for anyone here to explain it to you every effect used and how it was used and most importantly ...what it was used to deliver the "story" in the shot. To get to the heart of using Photoshop (or the fine art of photography) you need to do what most of us do. In my case it is part of my work thus I have to spend years doing( and still do as more options come with each new upgrade of technology and s/ws), spent alot of money buying books for reference on photography, art direction, digital art how to books...etc, might even have to attend classes, view more work and then try to imitate the effect yourself and of course .....practice and practice..etc. And after some time you start to come up with your own special effects for your own pictures to call your own.

For me..grain or no grain is no big deal to me. If I shot it on digital why try to fake it to look like I use a SLR...if so I should not have sold my film based camera equipment at all heh. In the end, at elast for me it is the creative. The camera or film is just a tool...to me anyway. A tool I use in combination with other creative tools to create an end result.
 

-lighting
-camera skill
-PS skill
 

thks for your replies guys. maybe the word i was looking for was 'tangible' or something like that. you know, the way you just feel like you could reach out to that picture on the screen and expect to feel something with your fingers.

i know that guy is really good at PS, but staring at his pics trying to dissect his workflow has revealed nothing to me except that he is a bit heavy on sharpening at times. :p What I was hoping for was that maybe somebody here knows a similiar way to achieve that certain look he had. :)
 

BurgaFlippinMan said:
thks for your replies guys. maybe the word i was looking for was 'tangible' or something like that. you know, the way you just feel like you could reach out to that picture on the screen and expect to feel something with your fingers.

i know that guy is really good at PS, but staring at his pics trying to dissect his workflow has revealed nothing to me except that he is a bit heavy on sharpening at times. :p What I was hoping for was that maybe somebody here knows a similiar way to achieve that certain look he had. :)

Well what you feel or see in his pictures is beyond technique. It is so good that you are engaged more about the stories in them...so much so you are not interested in what lens was used, whate PS he did.etc. That is good talent work first and technique second. Reading his bio and also how he interact with those who commented on his work. This guy is not your average photographer hobbist. He is an artist. He has so many galleries online. I spend the good of late night just looking at his work. He has a style that is really his own. I am sure if you or me were to play around wiht photoshop longer enough you should be able to figure it out. The $64 question is can you adapt the PS to shots as good as the way he shot them? I am not saying you are not good enough or anyone is. What I am saying is he is shooting the way he express himself for himself. And I notice he does his best work when he understands his subjects very well which as from what I see are mostly of his friends and his family. But then again I am not looking at it as a photographic purist. I am looking at it as a mixed media person. His over sharping is use to good effect in my view. Just like people would use bokeh or blurring of various points of a picture ot draw attention, sharpening can have that same effect. I can imitate most of his PS style but I still not that good a portrait photographer as he is. Very inspiring works. Thanks for the link.
 

BurgaFlippinMan,

You're right about the look and feel of images generated from print negatives. It has a trendy look about it and the colours are more subdue and not as raw as slides or digitals. The tonal reproduction curves from print negatives, slides or digital are different from each other

Such look and feel are popular with the US and European photographers. You tend to see such effect if you look at the works in Getty Images. I have been wondering for a while at the ways to achieve such results. I even have an PM discussion with a professional photographer who has posted some of his works here. He mentioned something about setting parameters in his Phase 1 in raw conversion of digital files. There may be something we could do with the raw conversion with our DSLR application to bring results closer to such look before we work it further with PS.

Good luck!
 

sammy888 said:
The english language had been murdered here.....if you need help you have to be more discriptive about what you want, What is the problem, what result you are hopping to archieve and after that...read it back to yourself to see if you understand what you just wrote. That way...the right indivduals with the answer could pitch in to advice.

Even I thought it was to do an inversion to create a negative effect like a 35mm negative film.

Oh Sammy888!!! 'The english language had been etc...' Lets see... should be 'English language has'.. ;) .... descriptive.... hoping..... achieve....

'what you wrote' AAAArgh ... terrible English... and it's 'pitch in to advise'.... LOL ;) :D

Sorry... I've finally turned into a pedant!! Hope you'll forgive me

Stroma
 

stroma said:
Oh Sammy888!!! 'The english language had been etc...' Lets see... should be 'English language has'.. ;) .... descriptive.... hoping..... achieve....

'what you wrote' AAAArgh ... terrible English... and it's 'pitch in to advise'.... LOL ;) :D

Sorry... I've finally turned into a pedant!! Hope you'll forgive me

Stroma

Aiyah!..... we must remember dat, "One person's murdered Inglish, is another person's Queen Inglish" lah. :sweatsm:
 

stroma said:
Oh Sammy888!!! 'The english language had been etc...' Lets see... should be 'English language has'.. ;) .... descriptive.... hoping..... achieve....

'what you wrote' AAAArgh ... terrible English... and it's 'pitch in to advise'.... LOL ;) :D

Sorry... I've finally turned into a pedant!! Hope you'll forgive me

Stroma


Yes yes..I deserve that. I rush it out and not check it all...but at least it is understood ..at least give me that consolation.

Want help you should be more descriptive mah...if not where to begin? That was what I meant. But okay..I will take it as good as I dish it out. Okay I murdered the language too. But I am trying...even if I have to write another long winded explanation again.

Pedant?
 

sammy888 said:
Yes yes..I deserve that. I rush it out and not check it all...but at least it is understood ..at least give me that consolation.


Pedant?

Glad you took it in the spirit it was meant LOL :)

Pedant means someone who is pedantic... a nit-picker... so I was poking fun at myself too.... ;)
 

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