Jason Mayoff » black and white

A summertime trip to Ottawa

Jason — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 01:25:00 +0000

This was taken on a trip to Ottawa over the summer. Actually this breathtaking view of Canada’s parliament buildings in Ottawa was taken from across the river at the Museum of Civilization in Gatineau, QC. The outside of the museum is chock full of amazing pictures like this one. This is another entry in Carmi Levy’s Thematic Photographic: Travel. Here’s how it works.

Selective colour sewing machine

Jason — Sun, 20 Sep 2009 00:14:00 +0000

I played around with this for quite a while, before the simple solution struck me. I was trying all kinds of ways to remove the color info from everywhere but the flowery decorations on the sewing machine. Selecting the flowers, or everything but the flowers was not giving me the results I wanted and it was tedious work. Then I decided to try a completely different tack. As you’ll see, I removed all the color info and then painted it back in using a layer mask. This is also a single exposure HDR image. I think the only real sign of that (the HDR-ness) is in the sky and maybe a little more detail in the shadows (eg: the spinning handle/wheel)

Make the jump to see how I did it

In Lightroom, I created two virtual copies of the image. On one, I decreased the exposure by 3 stops, on the other I increased it by 3 stops.
I imported them into Photomatix 3 and processed using tone mapping, nothing too dramatic.
I then imported the image into Photoshop
As always, convert image to LAB color and sharpen only the Lightness layer using Unsharp Mask. Then return to RGB color mode. (PS action here)
Brightness/Contrast layer to increase brightness and contrast (worked better than levels for some reason)
Used separate hue/saturation layers to boost the colors: green, yellow, red.
Used a hue/saturation layer to remove the blues. There were no blues in the flowers, so it didn’t matter there, but it did help later when trying to remove the color from everything else, since the black of the sewing machine had a bit of a blue tinge.
Used a hue/saturation layer (let’s call it b/w) to remove all color (slide saturation all the way to the left)
Then I painted the color back into the flowery decorations. I did this by painting with black on the b/w layer mask. First I did a rough, largish brush paint over the entire flowered area, then I zoomed in and painted out any bluish tinge left behind after the hue/saturation layer two steps ago that removed most of the blues. I did this by painting with white on the b/w layer mask on any bits of blue I saw.
I also cropped slightly, tightening up the right side of the image.

See the picture on Flickr
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The couple

Jason — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 16:38:00 +0000

This is my wife’s old school friend and her husband. My wife and I have been asked to shoot a wedding next year and so this photoshopping was inspired by that. I softened skin (maybe a little too much?), brightened eyes and teeth and black and whited the photo, topping it off with a slight brown/bronzish tint. Also, I did not sharpen with my normal process, but tried something a little different. Please note this picture does not do either before or after justice. Click for larger version of after picture.

Make the jump to see how I did it

Duplicate background layer and run high-pass filter with a radius of 10 pixels. Set new layer to hard light blend mode and drop the opacity down to somewhere around 20% or 30%. I just eyeballed it.
Ran the Coffeeshop powder room action to soften the woman’s skin, define man/woman’s eyes, whiten man/woman’s teeth (slight).
Made a copy of soften skin layer, blacked the mask, and then softened man’s skin. I then dropped opacity of the new layer quite a bit. I only wanted a slight softening on his skin.
Used Black and White adjustment layer. I was going to use the tint feature, but I wasn’t getting what I wanted, so instead I….
Created a new layer. Filled it with #94715c and then dropped opacity to 34%. I wanted only a slight tint.
Brightness/Contrast adjustment layer with eyeballs selected to brighten them slightly

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Cutest little baby face

Jason — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 05:26:00 +0000

This has to be about the most photogenic baby there is. He’s the son of a friend of mine. I’ve taken many pictures of him, but this time I wanted to be sure to bring out his big, blue eyes. The best way, I figured would be to make sure everything else was colorless. I also wanted to soften the slight splotchiness of his baby skin.

Make the jump to see how I did it

Here’s how I did it:

As always, convert image to LAB color and sharpen only the Lightness layer using Unsharp Mask. Then return to RGB color mode. (PS action here)
Add Levels Adjustment layer (midtone = 1.05, highlight=204) to increase contrast/brightness
Run the Coffee Cup’s Powder room action to soften the skin, define the eyes and brighten whites of the eyes.
Hue/Saturation layer to remove color (Move saturation slider all the way to the left)
Zoomed in and painted with black (round, medium-soft brush) on the Hue/Saturation layer to prevent the black and white effect from affecting the eyes, thereby keeping them and only them in color.

Final product on Flickr

Naber

Jason — Wed, 09 Sep 2009 16:51:00 +0000

This image presented a bit of a challenge. I took it at 800 ISO for some reason, rather than exposing it for a longer time. It was an 8s exposure, but I probably could have gotten a brighter, less grainy image at ISO 100 or 200 for 30-60s. In the end, though, I like the slight graininess the higher ISO gave. (I mean, I meant to do that! Yeah.)

When shooting I was thinking I’d convert it to black and white, but that was all I had in mind. I really like the way it turned out.

Make the jump to see how I did it

Here’s how I did it:

As always, convert image to LAB color and sharpen only the Lightness layer using Unsharp Mask. Then return to RGB color mode. (PS action here)
Add this texture as a layer, stretched it to fit the entire frame and set the layer to overlay
Convert to black and white using Black and White Adjustment layer and make sure the Black and White layer is above the texture layer in the Layers Pallette (so it affects the texture, too.)
Add Levels layer (Midtone Input Level = .78, Highlight Input Level = 128)

Final product on Flickr
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Like what I do? Want me to Photoshop your pictures? Starving artist rates (at least until I’m no longer starving.)