Storm A Brewin

[Naicidrac]

Well it is graduation time and I took some senior pictures for a family member this weekend. I hope he likes my style. I just wanted to see what you guys thought of the cartoonesqe style.

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[Olympus8MP]

Normally, I don't like high intensity HDR-ish shots, but I like this one! He really stands out from the background, and DOF is great!

 

[GrfxGuru]

Not my kinda thing however this works very well given the subject matter I think. I think this is something that works on some subjects and not others and this one is a winner

Regards,
Peter Witham

 

[Naicidrac]

Thanks for the comments even though you guys don't normally like this kind of thing. I have found with this technique and with any photography it all has to do with light, ha. That is what photography is, just light interpreted through glass onto a (film/sensor). I used two light sources for this image. I have also found that wrinkles in clothing look really cool to me also. I have always been a contrast junkie in any type of art. Thanks again guys.

 

[Olympus8MP]

My thing is that HDR's (assuming this is an HDR) should either be very subtle, and hard to tell its HDR, or like this and very cartoon-y, making it obvious its an HDR. I do like, however, that there are minimal "halo" effects here!

 

[Naicidrac]

I am right with you Olympus. I too have have two ways I work with images. I either make a picture look better, but real or way out of the ballpark. Sometimes I like to put together three images to bring out details in shadows and in highlights without the cartoon effect. Just controlling the tonal range and local contrast. For the past month or so I have enjoyed making images look cartoonesque. However, just for the record this is not an HDR image. This is just one image and no tonemapping, local adaptaion or anything like that was used. I do know what you mean about the look. All of these type of images have a surreal look to them and look like what we know to be HDRs.

 

[Lackoffunding]

If this isnt HDR, then how did you do this, if you dont mind me asking.

 

[Lars Leber]

Did you use the Lucisart filter for this one?

 

[Olympus8MP]

Wow, if that isn't HDR, it makes it that much cooler! Another one of those shots that leaves me thinking "How'd he do that?"

 

[Naicidrac]

Thanks for the intrest. All I used was PS CS2. I have been working with thes effect for about two months now. Kind of hard to go into details because there is so many steps but I can give the jist of it. I have made some actions because I use certain things so much and it saves a ton of time. The most important thing is to start with a good image and by that I mean good light. I have a speedlight flash set to the subjects left and that is what is illuminating the left side of his body. The rest is done in PS. Tweaking local contrast, shadow/highlights, levels, curves, de-saturate. I also do a ton of skin retouching to get it super smooth. I use a gaussian blur to make a dark sketch under the image and then play with the opacity to get it to come through. That is pretty much the jist of it, a lot of tweaking in PS.