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Time Magazine - Person of the Year portrait effect


XBY

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I came across two images of Time Magazine's 2012 person of the year portraits, one of them (Obama) you can find on the official site and another of runner up Tim Cook from Apple.

Both share the same kind of filter effect to make the image look interesting. I would like to reproduce this effect in either Lightroom or Photoshop but am at a loss of how to. I assume it is a combination of saturation, colorization and contrast but all settings I have played with gave very poor results.

Appreciate some help on what filters/settings were used to create this effect.

Thanks,
XBY

P.S. If there is a similar thread available I apologize and would appreciate a link to that one.
 
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This is called HDR effect, you can easily fake it in photoshop using HDR toning under image adjustment menu but then again this can be achieved without that effect. Here's a good tutorial 'bout it... Don't forget to play with saturation and brightness on your side..

Hope this helps.
 
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XBY

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Now that you mentioned it I should have thought of that earlier...thanks a lot!
 

Tom Mann

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BTW, XBY, it would really have helped if you would have posted BOTH links, not just the link to the 2nd image. I did a search and couldn't find the 'shopped version of the prez that you mentioned.

Perhaps you are thinking of this one:
http://www.time.com/time/covers/0,16641,20061023,00.html

...but I couldn't be sure, so I took my goal to be to make the image cited below look like the Tim Cook image that you did cite.

WRT an HDR / tonemapping approach, there are other simpler approaches that will give you a look that is very similar to the image you cited. For example, I started with this image of the prez:
http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/def...o_image/President_Official_Portrait_HiRes.jpg

First, I cut out the subject and replaced the background. I then sharpened it a bit, applied a bleach bypass effect (I used the one in Nik Color Efx Pro), some curves to set the contrast and black levels, and then a bit of red toning to come up with my approximation (attached below) to the Tim Cook image (also attached below).

The match isn't perfect, but hopefully the procedure will point you in a fruitful direction. If the lighting had been a better match, if my starting image had been actually sharp and didn't have a relatively high JPG compression (...I can't believe the White House calls that a Hi Rez image ??? -- take a look !), and if I had actually spent a decent amount of time on this demo, I'm sure the effect could easily have been made closer.

HTH,

Tom M
 

Attachments

  • President_Official_Portrait_HiRes-tjm01-acr-ps03a_cropped-01.jpg
    President_Official_Portrait_HiRes-tjm01-acr-ps03a_cropped-01.jpg
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  • 2012poy_cook_story-effect.jpg
    2012poy_cook_story-effect.jpg
    50.5 KB · Views: 25

Tom Mann

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Completely by accident, I just ran into the Time Mag cover photo ( http://www.time.com/time/covers/0,16641,20121231,00.html ) for the upcoming Dec 31, 2012 -- Jan 7, 2013 double issue.

Might this be the one you are talking about? As I said earlier, it's kinda hard to read people's minds - a link would have been extremely helpful in answering your question.

Tom M
 

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