Technique 36. Gritty Extreme-Contrast EffectVersion 1

Technique #36. Gritty Extreme-Contrast EffectVersion 1

This seems to be a pretty trendy effecttaking a photo and giving it a very "gritty" look with lots of contrast. We'll be able to produce a range of possibilities without having to actually alter the Background layer.

key concepts:

filters

blend modes

This is our starting image.

Step One.	Press Command-J (PC: Control-J) to duplicate the Background layer.
Step Two.	From the Filter menu, choose Other>High Pass. In the dialog, move the slider or enter a value in the Radius field, aiming to create an image that has only a slight gray look to it. Compare the two settings shown here. A value of 4 pixels still has a lot of gray in the image. This will not create the high-contrast look we want (but after changing the blend mode to Hard Light as we will in the next step, this setting in the High Pass filter does a nicer job sharpening the photo). Using a setting of 32 pixels introduces some areas of higher contrast and has a little less gray in it.
Step Three.	Change the blend mode of the top (filtered) layer to Hard Light (Overlay will provide similar but slightly different results, depending on the photo). If you want an even more intense effect, press Command-J (PC: Control-J) to duplicate the filtered layer. This will double-up the effect of the filter.
Step Four.	Add a new layer at the top of the layer stack by clicking on the Create a New Layer icon at the bottom of the Layers palette, and fill it with 50% gray (the Edit>Fill command has 50% Gray as a built-in choice). Change the blend mode of this layer to Hard Light.
Step Five.	From the Filter menu, choose Noise>Add Noise, and in the filter dialog, change the Amount to somewhere in the 510% range (as always, this will vary with the resolution of your image and the look of the image itself). In the dialog's preview window, you'll see the noise being added to the gray layer, but if you look at the document, you'll see how the filter is affecting the photo. Variations In this example, I duplicated the Background layer and then used the Unsharp Mask filter with very high settings. Then I duplicated that layer and used the High Pass filter and Hard Light blend mode as described earlier. Variation 1 Here, I added a Hue/Saturation adjustment layer at the top of the layer stack (by clicking on the Create New Adjustment Layer icon at the bottom of the Layers palette and choosing Hue/Saturation) and dropped the Saturation slider to -45 to remove some of the color. Variation 2