Farmer David

[Anita Bower]

I was playing around with a snapshot of my husband, practicing some of the lessons learned in Photoshop Artistry Grunge, and came up with this. I know I used a texture filter and a texture, but don't remember how I came up with the browns. It seems every time I learn a new tool, I forget the one I learned yesterday.

[Dennis Bishop]

I like this. You did a good job with the grunge, and I like how the image is staged. The three verticals -- the doorway, the sidelights, and your husband -- is a nice progression and works well with the vertical format of the image. There's often a tendency to leave lots of room in front of a person, animal, or bird, but his being close to the edge he's facing (and also being close to the bottom) makes it feel like he's going to walk right out of the image to greet us. I think that's very effective.

There is a number of ways to achieve a monotone or duotone in Photoshop without using any plugins. A Hue/Saturation adjustment layer will do it if Colorize is checked. The default, there, is a brown. It's not easy to make adjustments in the hue from there, but both saturation and lightness have a wide range on their sliders. The other way I know of within Photoshop is to change the image to Grayscale in Image>Mode. Doing that allows you to use Image>Duotone, which gives the opportunity to choose from one to four colors. This way, you get to work from the Color Picker, which makes adjustments in color fairly easy. There are probably other ways in Photoshop, too. I'd suggest waiting until close to the end of processing to do the changes. With the Google/Nik suite being available at no cost, I'd be inclined to get that if you already haven't and do colorizing changes in Silver Efex.

[Anita Bower]

I like this. You did a good job with the grunge, and I like how the image is staged. The three verticals -- the doorway, the sidelights, and your husband -- is a nice progression and works well with the vertical format of the image. There's often a tendency to leave lots of room in front of a person, animal, or bird, but his being close to the edge he's facing (and also being close to the bottom) makes it feel like he's going to walk right out of the image to greet us. I think that's very effective.

There is a number of ways to achieve a monotone or duotone in Photoshop without using any plugins. A Hue/Saturation adjustment layer will do it if Colorize is checked. The default, there, is a brown. It's not easy to make adjustments in the hue from there, but both saturation and lightness have a wide range on their sliders. The other way I know of within Photoshop is to change the image to Grayscale in Image>Mode. Doing that allows you to use Image>Duotone, which gives the opportunity to choose from one to four colors. This way, you get to work from the Color Picker, which makes adjustments in color fairly easy. There are probably other ways in Photoshop, too. I'd suggest waiting until close to the end of processing to do the changes. With the Google/Nik suite being available at no cost, I'd be inclined to get that if you already haven't and do colorizing changes in Silver Efex.

Thanks for thoughtful comments. I do have Nik collection and always forget about the Silver Efex because I almost never do B&W. Thanks for reminding me!

[Judy Howle]

Very nice job on the conversion and textures!

[Anita Bower]

thanks, Judy.

[Diane Miller]

He looks like a very good sport!! And I love the look from the cat!!!

Excellent antique grunge treatment. There are several ways to get a toned look like this in PS -- no need to convert to B/W. SEP will do it, but you can also make a B/W adjustment layer above your layer stack and choose B/W. Double-click the default tan square to change the color, and play with the sliders to change the way the various underlying colors are interpreted as tonal values.

Then you can turn the layer on or off to have the image both ways.

[Anita Bower]

He looks like a very good sport!! And I love the look from the cat!!!

Excellent antique grunge treatment. There are several ways to get a toned look like this in PS -- no need to convert to B/W. SEP will do it, but you can also make a B/W adjustment layer above your layer stack and choose B/W. Double-click the default tan square to change the color, and play with the sliders to change the way the various underlying colors are interpreted as tonal values.

Then you can turn the layer on or off to have the image both ways.

Thanks, Diane. My husband is a good sport! Your suggestion for how to change tones is one I just learned. Thanks.