Silhouettes

[olya]

I wanted to take a few silhouette photos. I don’t have much experience and expensive equipment. I know that if one wants a silhouette image, the lighting source should be behind the subject. I would appreciate if you will extend on this technique or describe other techniques for shooting silhouettes. And I also have some nice b&w photos which I would like to make silhouettes of. So do you know any ways to do it in Photoshop? I will appreciate any information. Probably you know some good tutorials. Thanks.

 

[Big Mike]

I know that if one wants a silhouette image, the lighting source should be behind the subject.

That's all you really need. The background has to be about three stops (8 times) as bright as the subject. Then make sure that your camera settings are set to expose for the background and not the subject.

In photoshop, there are several ways in which you could create a silhouette. Maybe select the subject and make a fill layer. Maybe just adjust the 'levels' to render the subject dark etc.

 

[Garbz]

To make something black and white in photoshop I highly suggest you click Image -> Adjustments -> Channel Mixer and then click the option for a greyscale output. This allows you to adjust the balance of each colour. For instance 100% red 0% blue 0% green emulates a perfect red filter. Set them all to 33% and you end up with the same effect as desaturating the image would give.