Should be a simple enough request, but I've hit a roadblock.

[thomas3526]

I'm trying to alter a simple portrait so it looks like the Talking Heads's Remain in Light cover. I can handle the red over the face alright, it's the blue tint I can't seem to nail. I've tried matching colors, replacing colors, altering the hues and using the blending modes but I cannot figure out what I'm missing. Multiply/overlay gets me close in that it makes the whole photo light blue but it doesn't retain the dark blacks of the hair, eyes and other features of the original picture that makes it like the photos on the cover, if that makes sense. Any ideas? Thanks!

 

[ibclare]

Hi thomas, welcome to PSG.

I gave this a shot.

There's always more than one way to do something in Photoshop, but this might achieve the effect you want.



Bottom BG layer is normal but reduced opacity, 40%
Next is the color layer, at 100% color blend mode
Next is BG duplicate, 100% on multiply
Finally a painting layer to color over some of the blue hair, 80%, color mode
A simple alternative to this, basically using same move is to mask the color area and paint out the hair and any other place not wanted blue.

Here's with the mask


This is not likely the method used but what I came up with quickly. Hang out. Others will surely have more ideas.

I imagine people who do posters have better ideas. I hope so, lol.

 

[IamSam]

As Clare stated, there's always more than one way to do things.

I thought the BG was important to this effect, so all I did was to separate my main subject from her background. I then added a new BG layer in blue. I added a Hue & Sat layer that I clipped to my main subjects layer and adjusted it to blue.

I did this literally in three minutes! So the separation looks absolutely terrible!!!

 

[thomas3526]

Wow, those look way better than what I was coming up with. Clare, I was moving to making the color area but thought I'd see if anybody had different ideas first.

I'm at work but will definitely take a crack at this. Thanks to you both, Sam and Clare! I'll definitely hang around here. I didn't post in the new member introductions but I work in a collegiate athletic department and use Photoshop every day. This project is just for fun, though.

 

[ibclare]

Welcome to the forum Thomas. Please post your work, even various attempts if you want. This is a cool cover and I'd be curious how it was done originally. But since we probably won't hear it from the horse's mouth, it would be fun to see how close you - and anybody else wanting to try - can get to the look of it.

 

[ibclare]

Sam's method is infinitely simpler! I must've been tired - that's my story and I'm stickin' to it . . .

However . . . I still think you will need to use a mask to get the results you want. Use the hue/saturation mask and you can use a black brush at varying opacities to put the pure black of your desaturated image back. When you have a png, you can use the brush with abandon (!) around the edges which makes picking out hair to turn black easier.

So, using Sam's method and using the hue/sat mask for the hair:

 

[thomas3526]

OK! So I got to work last night and think I've done as well as I can. Biiiiig thanks to both of you for all of your help. I ended up using the hue and saturation layer and then used the burn tool to sort of grunge it up like the others. I made a ton of little tweaks to areas like the eyes (they stood out the most as different than the other three faces) and nose to take the shine off from the flash from the original photo. I blurred it a bunch as well to get it closer to the cover look.

The only problem is, as I'm sure y'all have experienced, is I think it looks OK, then I come back in an hour and open it back up and want to play with it some more. Anyway, here's what I've got. You two have been an enormous help.

 

[thomas3526]

Goodness, did not make to make those images so darn big. My apologies.

 

[ibclare]

No problem on the big. I'd say you did an awesome job. (and I don't use the word awesome, lol)

As for opening it up later and wanting to do more, join the crowd! Still, at some point you gotta say good enough, maybe even perfect, and move on to the next project. Good job.

 

[thomas3526]

Couldn't have done it with the help of you two!