10.13. Monochrome Effects You may have already noticed that when you see the rare black and white advertising photo, your attention is drawn to it immediately. In an oversaturated world that has become typical of digital photography, a simple monochromatic statement stands out more than ever. Well, black and white isn't the only monochrome technique. Some of the others are even more rare and attention- getting. 10.13.1. Infrared One of the most charming effects you can get is infrared. Wedding photographers love it because a couple in traditional wedding garb running through a grassy hillside or forest look as though they've floated into a living dream. Their skin tones are absolutely smooth and all the vegetation is a snowy white. Moreover, although there are special filters for it, you can make an Action of this routine that will automatically convert any image you shoot to infrared. And because the Action uses adjustment layers, you can go back after the fact and readjust the effect as you like it. In Figure 10-37, you see the color photo from with the infrared on the right was made. Figure 10-37. The original image (left) and the monochrome infrared result (right). You'll get the most dramatic results from a digital color image with highly saturated tones. You might even try the Velvia effect I suggested earlier in this chapter, as I did for the image on the left in Figure 10-37. Here's how to turn that image into the infrared result you see on the right: 1. Select all your layers and copy and merg e the copies into a single layer at the top of the layers stack (Cmd/Ctrl-Opt/Alt-E). 2. Duplicate the merged layer by selecting it in the Layers palette and then pressing Cmd/Ctrl-J. 3. Change the Blend Mode of the Infrared layer to Overlay. 4. Name the duplicated Merged layer "infrared." 5. Go to the Channels palette and choose the Green channel. Use the Gaussian Blur filter with the Uniform box checked, to blur the green channel by someplace between 10 and 20 pixels. You'll decide the amount of blur to use based on the resolution of the image and your subjective feel for how "glowy" you want this infrared interpretation to look. This process is very destructive of the Green layer, but you can always duplicate the merged layers layer and try again. Wouldn't it be nice if we had a Blur adjustment layer? Ditto for Smart Sharpen. 6. Now use the Channel Mixer to make it look like infrared. Choose Channel Mixer from the adjustment layer palette. When the Channel Mixer dialog appears, check the Monochrome box, darken the Red an d Blue channels, and then drag the slider for the Green channel all the way to the right. You can see the Channel mixer as it should be set and the result of how it made the original image look in Figure 10-38. Figure 10-38. The Channel Mixer settings used for the infrared effect. 7. Now if you compare the original image to the finished one, you can see that this one is a bit dark. All you have to do to change that is to lower the Opacity of the Infrared layer until you like what you see. 10.13.2. Duotones Duotones look like enriched monochrome images because the highlights are printed in one color and the shadows in another. Photoshop lets you choose either colors from a standard color book or colors from the color wheel, so the possible interpretations are literally infinite. There's also a separate Curves control for each of the colors and adjusting these can have considerable influence on how much each color contributes to the final mix. In Figure 10-39, you see an original color reportage portrait and the final result of turning it into a duotone. Figure 10-39. The image on the right is made from a mix of a light yellow for the highlights and one of the Pantone blacks. NOTE The process here is to make a duotone for a special effect look, but you will convert it back to an RGB image for printing purposes. Duotones (and more) are also used to mix spot colors that are being used for printing the rest of the page and the exacting mechanics for doing this are outside the scope of this book. Consult with your offset print shop. Here is the six-step program for making duotones: 1. Duplicate your image and keep the original open. Otherwise, the process you're about to undertake will obliterate your layer structure. 2. Convert your duplicate image to monochrome by using the Channel Mixer. There's no point in using it as an adjustment layer because the duotone processing will automatically flatten the image anyway. 3. When you've got the best-looking black and white you can get, choose Image Mode Grayscale and then immediately choose Image Mode Duotone. You'll see the dialog in Figure 10-40. Be sure the Preview box is checked. You definitely want to be able to choose your colors and curves interactively by being able to see an instant preview. Figure 10-40. The Duotone Options dialog box. 4. The most full range duotones are said to use the lighter shade of color on top and the darker shade on the bottom of the dialog. So change the default Black for the first color to whatever the light color you want to choose should be. You do that by clicking in the color swatch. The color picker will appear instantly. Pick the color and shade you want to use and click OK. Do the same for the second color swatch. When you like the result of the two colors you picked, you're very close to done. 5. Click the Curve box to the left of the color swatch. It's just a square with a diagonal line across it. You'll want to do this for each of the two colors. Start your experimentation by clicking in the center of the curve and dragging it up or down to make that color brighter or darker in the overall interpretation of the image. When you're happy with this, you're done with the duotone part. Just click OK. 6. Convert your image back to RGB, then copy it to the clipboard (Cmd/Ctrl- C) and select the original image and paste the duotone in as the top layer. Done de done done. 10.13.3. Sepia (or Any Other Color) The sepia tone image you'd use for hand-tinting would be a bit weak and flat on its ownat least, for most subject matter. That's not a problem though. You can use the Monotone Option in the Duotone dialog to create a monotone in sepia or any other color. Pick the color from the color wheel. If you want a full range of tones, you'll want a dark shade of that color. It can also be a good idea to use the Levels adjustment layer on the result, so you can really get down to the blacks you want. In Figure 10-41, shows the result of converting the color photo taken by Paddy O'Connor from color to a blue monotone. Be sure to convert the image back to RGB before printing. Figure 10-41. A dark blue was chosen from the Color Picker as the color for the 10.14. Sharpening The very last thing you want to do in your workflow is sharpening. In fact, you will likely want to do two different kinds of sharpening at the very end: effects sharpening and detail sharpening. Of course, you you've already done some sharpening to correct the resampling to bring your camera's Bayer Pattern color matrix back to assigning a specific 8- or 16-bit shade of color to each pixel in the imageinitial sharpening. Hopefully, you were very careful not to overdo that sharpening. If you did, there will be some jagged and/or haloed edges. That's not a pretty sight. In fact, it can be downright disgusting. You don't want to do any sharpening between then and now, either. Otherwise you'll have some of your processes softening the image and others sharpening it and you'll never be able to find the most reasonable compromise. So why do we want to do two types of sharpening now? Well, one of them isn't really sharpening. It's just a very dynamic illusion of sharpeningeffe cts sharpening. The other is real image sharpening, but done in such a way that only important edges are sharpened and so that edge artifacts are either minimized or eliminated. 10.14.1. Effects Sharpening Effects sharpening uses the combination of a few Photoshop manipulations to make small and similarly colored detailssuch as strands of hair or leaves of grass in a landscapepop (see Figure 10-42). I'm sure you've seen prints that make people's jaws drop because of what seems to be a small detail rendered with exquisite sharpness. Chances are excellent that what you really saw was an image made by someone who understands effects sharpening. Figure 10-42. On the right, effects sharpening using the Overlay Blend Mode and High Pass sharpening. The end result makes it seem that you could feel the texture if you rubbed your fingers across it. Here's the super-simple routine for doing effects sharpening: 1. Start by not looking for any sharpening filters. Usually, you want to sharpen only the parts of the image that have the most detail so those areas will draw more attention. Start by putting a feathered selection around those areas you want to "super sharpen." In Figure 10-42, those areas were the tree branch and the weeds protruding from the lake. 2. Press Cmd/Ctrl-J to lift the feathered selection to a new layer. 3. Make sure the new layer is still selected and then choose Overlay as its Blend Mode. The colors inside the selection will suddenly look eerily oversaturated and too contrasty, but don't worry about it. 4. Double-click the Zoom tool to enlarge your image to 100 percent. Choose Filter Other High Pass. The High Pass dialog will appear, as seen in Figure 10-43. Figure 10-43. The High Pass filter dialog. 5. Be sure to check the Preview button because you want to adjust the Radius slider according to what you judge to be the best effect in the image window. When you like what you see (and there are no halos) click OK. 10.14.2. Using Smart Sharpen Until Photoshop CS2 came along, with the new Smart Sharpen filter, I had beco me addicted to using a couple of third-party filters for preprint sharpening. Frankly, I still prefer them in some images. However, Smart Sharpen is such an improvement over the Unsharp Mask filter that I often find it's quicker and easier to use it than the competition. Before you do any overall sharpening of an image, make sure you convert your Background layer to an ordinary layer, select all the existing layers, and then press Cmd/Ctrl-Opt/Alt-E to merge them all and send the merged result to the top layer. You can see the resultant layer stack in Figure 10-44, along with the image that resulted. Figure 10-44. Overall sharpening using the Smart Sharpen filter. . color and the shadows in another. Photoshop lets you choose either colors from a standard color book or colors from the color wheel, so the possible interpretations are literally infinite. There's. printing the rest of the page and the exacting mechanics for doing this are outside the scope of this book. Consult with your offset print shop. Here is the six-step program for making duotones: 1 interpretation of the image. When you're happy with this, you're done with the duotone part. Just click OK. 6. Convert your image back to RGB, then copy it to the clipboard (Cmd/Ctrl- C)