Photoshop for Digital Photographers

You can simple process gritty effect via Adobe Photoshop. Anyway, you may not know how cool gritty effect is, please see the photo below. You also can apply this effect to create many things such as birthday cards for your friends, greeting cards, etc.

1. Open a photo and create a new layer.

2. Fill 50% grey into the new layer. You will see all 50% grey over your photo.

3. Change a mode of the new layer from Normal to Overlay.

4. Add noise into a photo (Filter>Noise>Add Noise).

5. Amount of noise depending on how much noise you like (I use 40% for this case.) and ensure that you check the Monochromatic box.

6. Go back to “Background” layer. Image>Adjustments>Hue/Saturation or press Ctrl+U in order to adjust saturation of “Background” layer. Reduce saturation to -35

7. Double click on “Background” layer to change “Background” layer to a normal layer. Then you will see pop up and just simply click OK. Your “Background” layer is changed to “Layer0”.

8. Drag “Layer0” over a new layer icon for a couple times therefore you will see “layer 0 copy” and “layer 0 copy2″ on top.

9. Desaturate both “layer 0 copy” and “layer 0 copy2″ (Image>Adjustments>Desaturate or press Shift + Ctrl + U).

10. Invert the top layer by pressing Ctrl + I

11. Change a layer mode from Normal to Color Dodge. After changing mode, you will see white.

12. Apply Gaussian Blur (Filter>Blur> Gaussian Blur) and adjust radius until you are satisfied with it (I use radius of 6 for this case). After finishing this step, your photos will look like pencil drawing.

13. Select layer “Layer 0 copy” and “Layer 0 copy2”, right click and select “Merge Layers” so you will have only one layer, “Layer 0 copy2”, on the topmost.

14. Move “Layer 0 copy2” to the bottommost.

15. Select “Layer 0” and change a layer mode from Normal to Hard Light. Also reduce opacity to 70% (you can change opacity value until you feel comfortable with an overall result).

16.Create a layer mask by pressing “Layer Mask” icon on a layer pallet.

17. Select gradient tool (no.2), select gradient mode (no.1) and select black as foreground and white as background (no.3).

18. Ensure that you are in layer mask and drag gradient tool up. You may do trial and error until you are OK with the gradient effect.

19.This step is optional. Duplicate “Layer1” and adjust layer opacity until you love how grainy of your photo is.

Hope you will enjoy reading and practicing this Photoshop tutorial.

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Tags: Gritty Effect

This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 18th, 2009 at 1:35 am and is filed under Special Digital Darkroom Process. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.