Quick Cold Grunge Look

Adjustment layer your way to a trendy effect

Sept. 27, 2007

Wow. I had no idea that the effect I applied to that picture of Shawn shooting with that big honkin' lens at the US Open would cause so much email! You can see it by taking a peek at over at the Page Curl tutorial.

The effect of which I speak is really popular these days and as it turns out, it's super easy to create. The look is rather overexposed, sort of green, with other color rather muted (how's that for a techie description!).

Aside from being trendy, it's a great way to turn a sub-par photo into something unique. So if the composition is good, don't toss the photo as nine times out of ten, there is a way to save it by turning into a black and white image, a duotone (think sepia), or something else equally creative and artsy.

To illustrate, we'll use this photo I took of Shawn over the weekend up in Lake George:

Go grayscale

Step 1: Click the half black/half white circle at the top of the Layers palette and choose Black & White (NOTE: If you're using CS2 or prior, chose Channel Mixer and click the Monochrome button at the bottom left of the resulting dialog). Adjust the various color sliders until you get some nice contast going on.

Step 2: Lower the Opacity of the adjustment layer to about 70% or so in order for some of the original color to show through.

Here's what the photo looks like now:

Overexpose

Step 3: Click the half black/half white circle once again and choose Exposure.

Step 4: In the resulting dialog, pump up the Exposure, lower the Offset and increase the Gamma. There are no magic settings here, so just experiment until you get the desired look.

That's absolutely all I did, and the beauty of using adjustment layers was that I was able to experiment with the settings without destroying the original image. If I didn't like the effect, I could just trash both adjustment layers.

That being said, it might be nice to add a vignette to frame the image. Let's go ahead and do that now.

Adding a vignette

Step 6: Click to select the Background layer and duplicate it by pressing Command + J (PC: Ctrl + J).

Step 7: Hop up to the Filter menu and choose Distort > Lens Correction. In the resulting HUGE dialog, turn off the Grid checkbox at the bottom, then grab the Vignette slider and pull it all the way left. Drag the Midpoint slider and drag it about halfway left, as shown below:

Step 8: If necessary, lower the Opacity of the newly vignetted layer to about 80%, as shown below.

Here's the finished product:

Told ya it was quick! This effect is also fantastic for hiding skin imperfections, not that I'm saying my husband has any, of course :)

Check back next week for more creative goodness, and if you're in the Houston area, by all means come by the Woodland Mall Apple Store on Friday, Sept. 28 at 4:00-5:00 pm to catch my digital photography workshop, and visit MacFest the following Saturday. I'll be joining Bob LeVitus, Andy Ihnatjko and Chris Breen for a funfilled day of learning and general Mac geekiness. Check the TGR Travel Schedule for details, and I hope to see you there!