Neuance Effect on Photoshop.

I decided to try and edit a photograph in a way which I hadn't before, I saw this effect and tried it out to see if it could enhance the fashion in my photograph. 

I chose something less dramatic than the skull tutorial because although I enjoyed doing that one, I wanted to try something on photoshop which had a slightly more subtle effect to see how I would be able to present this different type of skill.

1. I dragged the photo into photoshop.

2. I then created a new layer and named it vignette, I clicked the brush tool, set the size to around 900 pixels and painted black around the edges to give it a vignette effect.

3. I then changed the blend mode to overlay for that layer.

4. I created a new layer of black and white adjustments, I changed the preset to maximum black and opacity to 60%.

5. I created another new layer of levels adjustments, I set the black input to 20, mid tones in put to 0.83, and a brightness to around 200.

6. I duplicated that last layer, I lightened the whites then duplicated this layer.

7. Zooming in and using the brush tool I brightened the whites here. Then I clicked 'cmd' and then 'I' to invert this.

8. Using the paint brush I highlighted the parts of the photograph with white where they needed brightening, I also put the mid tones up slightly.

9. At this point I merged every layer into one. 

10. New layer and with this I went onto filter, then sharpen and adjusted this to around 190% and the radius between 7-8.

11. I changed the blend mode to lighten and duplicated this layer and changed the new ones blend mode to hard light.

12. I duplicated this layer and put the blending mode to normal and opacity to 65%.

13. To add more sharpness I duplicated that layer again and put the opacity to 100%, then went to filter, other and high pass to sharpen the radius at around 0.1.

14. Then I changed the blending mode to vivid light.

15. I merged the layers by clicking 'cmd', 'options' and then 'shift e'.

16. To save this I copied the document to a new document.

17. On the original I created a new layer (duplicate), on image adjustments I clicked HDR toning and ticked preset to monochromatic artistic.

18. I then adjusted the curves to make it darker by dragging the midpoint down to the right corner.

19. I then duplicated the layer for a final time and put a blur filter on it with pixels around 35, I set the blend mode to soft light.

I used this photograph because it was the best out of the 2 digital photographs that I took (I wanted colour in this photograph and I couldn't achieve this using my darkroom prints. The lighting also contrasts well.

I wouldn't take using this effect any further because I found it quite boring in comparison to fantasy and supernatural elements which I wanted to apply to my work, also the harsh lightings dramatic effect didn't seem appropriate for my theme because it can hide some of the details and colours in the clothing or make-up being advertised because there is too much shadow on them.