Image effect on header image

[accend]

I am putting a website together for a client, who really wants the feminine touch to it, and the imagery we are using is very nice, but bright and a little corporate I suppose.

The image in question is the main header image of the house.





and its the feel that you get with the images in this site below, that I would like to add to that house image, and wondered if anybody had any tips to achieve this -






Thanks

 

[Tom Mann]

There is a whole cottage industry that has sprung up to emulate looks like these. To start, got to Google Images, and type in, romantic photoshop actions". You'll see what I mean, LOL.

HTH,

Tom M

 

[sstjohn]

The shabby chic site "romantic feel" (nice one Tom M) effect looks as though they used more negative space than the actual image. Looks like some soft bevel/emboss effects mixed with some subtle drop shadow effects. It also appears that the opacity and/or fill was dropped considerably to show the effect more than the actual image. It gives the illusion that it is more of an etched/imprinted image more than rendered by pen and ink. Think about it like this...if you had a metal stamp and you hammered it into paper, what would it look like? The impression left by the stamp would be all that could be seen. Visibility would be inherent to the contrast of light to dark given the depth of the impression and the angle of light cast onto it. In other words, the shadows and negative space make up the image giving it a soft, subtle feel.

 

[Tom Mann]

Hi sstjohn - Wow - did you actually find a site with the name "romantic feel"? If so, could you provide its URL? I would love to see the negative space style that you mentioned.

I hope my accidental omission of the opening quotation mark before the word, "romantic" in the phrase "...type in, _romantic photoshop actions..." didn't mislead you. I intended to provide the OP with links to the huge number of PS actions that are available that do the sorts of things the OP was looking for, not to a site that likes to use other processing techniques.

With respect to the technique you suggested, ie, "...some sort of soft bevel / emboss efx mixed with subtle drop shadow efx...", could you pls. post an example of what you are talking about. When I think about efx like that I usually first reach for either large radius USM or Topaz Detail.

Tom M

 

[sstjohn]

His original post had a link to the shabby chic site. His subject is about the header image. The shabby site has the exact effect in their header image to which I was referring. Man, do you guys just like busting people's chops or what?

 

[Tom Mann]

Ahh, SST ... interesting. Either the OP or one of the other mods must have edited the OP's post before I read it because I never saw any link, and I didn't feel like trying to use Tin Eye to figure out where those images might have came from, so I took the OP at their word that the look of the header image was similar to the look of the images that they did post in this thread, and that's what they were trying to emulate, hence my response about actions that produce a pastel, almost washed out low contrast look.

re: busting chops, I'm not sure why you say that, but we do like to be precise and get to the bottom of things. With respect to me asking for a demo, you've got to admit that using a drop shadow to achieve look of the images the OP did post seems just a bit improbable, LOL. It makes a lot more sense now that I see that what you intended to apply it to was a graphic / text, not a photo.

Cheers,

Tom M

 

[sstjohn]

I'm not sure what happened, but the links disappeared and the post became almost irrelevant. I took it mean they wanted to emulate the flowery type image that was on the shabby site. They also had a link to the site in question being done for the client. There was an image somewhat similar to the shabby, but it was stark and heavily inked (like clip-art). I thought they wanted to reproduce that image effect in respect to the shabby site.