Make - Volume 12 - Seeing Red (Page 56)

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Seeing

Red

Shifting the spectrum can transform a landscape and create dramatic artistic effects. By Charles Platt

Back in the day when monochrome prints dominated art photography, big names such as Ansel Adams created dramatic effects by using colored filters with black-and-white film. A red filter, in particular, blocks light from the blue sky while freely transmitting the mellow colors of rocks and dry grass. This combination results in an almost black sky while the bleached foreground seems to leap out at the viewer.

Today we can achieve the same results much more easily with Photoshop. The software is expensive, but older versions still work. The images in this how-to were created with version 6, available legitimately for around $50 on eBay. Newer versions make it easier to simulate filtering, but doing it the old way will give you a clearer idea of how it works, and will put you in a better position to control the process.

1. ACCENTUATE THE COLORS Begin with a photograph that has a rich range of colors. From the Menu bar in Photoshop choose Image ⇒ Adjust ⇒ Hue, Saturation and push the Saturation slider to + 10 or + 15.

4. TWEAK THE CONTRAST The image needs more contrast, so, from the Menu bar, choose Image ⇒ Adjust ⇒ Auto Levels, and you’re done.

^WHAT ^IF ^YOU ^WANT ^A 2. ^CREATE ^A ⁵^. ^DIFFERENT ^COLOR ^FILTER?RED LAYER Undo twice to get back to the layer you created From the Menu bar, choose Layer ⇒ New Fill Layer during Step 2. If the Layers palette is not visible on ⇒ Solid Color and in the dialog box that opens, pull your screen, choose Window ⇒ Show Layers from down the Mode menu and choose the Multiply the Menu bar. option (to make the red filter transparent). Click OK, In the Layers palette, double-click the red thumbnail and then when the color picker window pops up, in the layer directly above the thumbnail of your photo. select maximum red. You can do this by looking for The color picker pops up. Now you can enter different the data entry fields labeled R, G, and B. Enter 255 values for R, G, and B, or click on a color in the picker for R and 0 (zero) for G and B. Photoshop creates a window. This will be your new filter color. red layer, showing you how Ansel Adams might have Repeat Steps 3 and 4 above. seen his subject through the viewfinder of his film Photoshop 6 introduced a Channel Mixer option, camera. Remember, you’re going to make every- which makes this whole process easier, although thing monochrome in the next step. Bright red will harder to visualize. Start with your color photo as become white, and mid-red will become gray. before. Choose Image ⇒ Adjust ⇒ Channel Mixer from the Menu bar. Click the Monochrome checkbox at the bottom corner of the dialog box and move the sliders to and fro for instant black-and-white output, as if you were applying filters of any imaginable color.

Would Ansel Adams have approved? Probably not. If it had been this easy, everyone would have been doing it!

3. CONVERT TO GRAYSCALE From the Menu bar, choose Image ⇒ Mode ⇒ Grayscale, click Flatten in the Layers dialog box that appears, and you’ll see the result: a black-and-white image.

56 Make: Volume 12