Lighting is Everything
A desirable skill in Photoshop is to make an old, tattered photo look like new. Here I take a new photo to make it look old. I wanted it to look as if I’d discovered it in a dusty antique shop.
First I added a layer that I’d made of several different colors applied with paintbrushes (Photoshop paintbrushes) onto a new file. I blurred it (filter>blur) until I liked what I saw.
To make this special layer, I just open File<new to the size I want and begin slapping paint on it in various colors and with various paint brushes. I don’t know what I am doing, but just go with my instinct. I often just delete these and even when I get one I like, it won’t work on every photo. Try, try and try again is the method.
After I applied this filter, it changed the look of the light on the girl’s face. It brightened her face and gave her more ‘importance’ or dominance because it emphasized her large dark eyes.
I changed the overall color by applying a hue/saturation adjustmentt layer and changing the hue to this magenta color. I also desaturated this color. Still wanting more ‘oldness’ I added a layer of stone that I had photographed in Syria. The stone had markings from the elements, the original cuts of the mason and from dirt as well. I fiddled around with this layer making it more contrasty and removing the gold color that was the natural color.
I removed the stone filter from the girls face as the cracks across her face were not attractive. I use a layer mask for this task.
I vignetted the image and declared it finished.
I don’t imagine that many of you will find it attractive, but I do. That is the beauty of not having to please a boss or an editor. I am the final arbiter and what I say goes and I say “I like it.”
Who is this little girl? She is from a lowly tribe in India. A tribe that was formerly called “untouchable”. She had come to the outer gate of our hotel in the Little Rann of Kutch to sell some handicrafts, mainly bangles that she and her mother had made. She was tiny and shy. Her companion was a girl who was a couple of years older and she was truly a beauty. We three photographers gravitated to this confident, beautiful girl and the shy one stood by quietly. I didn’t want to ignore her and I began to take her portrait.
I think her large, luminous eyes brought out by my efforts, give drama to her tiny face with its sweet expression.
You are free to give me your opinion. I’d be interested.