The Portrait | Grain and Texture

Just a quick update of my son portraits from my busy schedule covering Thomas and Uber Cup Finals 2010 here in Kuala Lumpur. Even though the pose is still the same like I always do but I like to captured my son expression, the pose may be the same but the expression will never look the same.

About the processing of the top photograph, I like to “Fade” my picture a bit before adding texture. The way I did it is by using three layers, on top of the colored picture or the middle layer is black and white picture of the same image and I reduce the opacity so I can get a subtle color from the lower image and on the very top layer is a texture and as usual I use Soft Light blending option to get the effect like what you saw here. That’s it, very simple.

About the picture below, what I did is, I change the picture into black and white, duplicate the black and white image then add Filter – Texture – Grain – Enlarge Grain. After I get the “Grain” that I want, I blend it with the lower black and white image with Soft Light blending option to get this film like grain effect and after that I add a texture layer and also blend it with Soft Light blending option and the tips about using blending option is to play with the “Opacity”, I rarely use 100% opacity, usually something between 60-70% of opacity. When I was done and satisfied with the look, just Flatten it.

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