I love the look of their photos and they way they are processed. It's the grain and color that I can't put my finger on. I really wish I knew how they achieved this look. Any ideas???

http://www.theblogisfound.com/

I'll keep an eye on this thread-- I want to be like them when I grow up

Why? Find your own look.

Were you never inspired by another artist?

I have my own look but that's not what the thread topic was about.

I love their work too! It's very different from my personal style, but I find it really beautiful. It would be neat to know some of their post techniques and then play around to see how you could adapt it to yours.

I follow the blog and I think I might have seen that it is the Boutwell's Old School action. Plus some pretty awesome skills!

They look very photojournalistic - I love them!

I joined the Twitter thing...cool! But the images are wonderful - I agree with you!

that's so funny that you said that, I say the exact same thing all of the time!

you can go to their workshop, that could be a good way to do it.

haha! That's okay, we will never grow up with all these irrational goals for ourselves





exactly--- I'm not seriously going to attempt to copy them (plus it wouldn't be possible); I have too much fun playing around with developing my own style, but I certainly use looking at their work, and so much wonderful work here, as a way to push myself, and keep in mind that I can break some rules and do all sorts of different things with my processing and compositions that will add so much to it

definitely do their workshop. TOTALLY WORTH IT!! they rock!

Hi there!

I do love their stuff! They do a lot of actions and textures- check out kubotas action set, and jesh de rox fine art textures.
they are really nice folks, and if you are able to do their workshop- do it!

they teach you to find your own style and how to think outside the box!
if anything those are wonderful things to learn and to take a way!
cheers!

play with these:
TRA:
Warm It Up Kris
Cinnamon Toast
Old School
Bitchin Black and White
Old Skool

JDR Fine art Textures

Well... this thread sparked an interest for me, so I tried a few things with the above mentioned Totally Rad Actions...

Pretty cool... I'm liking it. Still very different from the "blogisfound" images... but still cool.

These are some old portraits I did last year... 'before' (with my standard processing) and then 'after' (with the new TRA's)...

1 - Before


1 - After


2 - Before


2 - After

Shawn- these are very nice portraits, particularly the first. The added texture on the first portrait gives the skin tones a very, very nice quality.

For the second portrait I like the skin tones in the original better. Those tones in the after shot seem a bit too yellow after the TRAs were applied.

Keep up the good work!

Shawn,

My own personal taste, I like how clean her skin looks in the first portrait before the action/processing.

Yeah... I prefer both of the "before" shots too, but it was cool to see what those TRA's are capable of. You can pile on a lot of them without getting that 'over-processed' look.

Would love to do one of their workshops but they don't seem to ever get to Texas.

Maybe if enough of us lobby for it, they'll come on over to the Lone Star state.

I LOVE LOVE LOVE NATE & JACLYN ....AND GRACE AND JASPER!!!!

I follow their blog religiously. I am totally IN if they came to TX!!!!!

To me the only things those actions did was turn the images green!

About a month ago I discovered a new way of making sepia or BW images, and I'm pretty sure it's close to TheImageIsFound technique.

The trick is--
1. Unsaturate the image
2. create a sepia (brown color) layer and set the blending mode to "Hard Light" and its opacity to about 35%
3. Add a curves layer UNDER the Hard Light Color layer, and adjust the curves until u like the image.
4. you can also unsaturate a little if the image is too brown.

Here are my results:

Daniel, that really made the photo pop.

Daniel, can you tell us the 6-digit color code you used to create the Sepia (brown color)? I can't for the life of me get it correct, but I love the vintage B&W look you got there.

It's 755c3d. Let me know how it goes

Here's one using your method. Looks good!

yep! Notice that just like TheImageIsFound look, there are no highlights; The Hard Light layer turns them into midtones

If there is ANY post processing style I want to know how to pull off, its these guys. I live on their blog and I love the looks - the high grains in the backgrounds, the muted highlights (like we are talking about above) and the selective focus. However, most of this focus is prob due to their amazing lenses and that 24mm tilt shift...

Anyone else want to chime in on how they might pull some of this stuff off?

In the example your referencing above, with the lack of highlights due to the Hard Light layer, do you think they are pulling the white point down in levels to make highlights turn grey?

Anyone can learn to do the post-processing but I personally love their whacky-ness and the way they pull it off so well and more importantly the fact that they see & capture things so differently.... that's talent in my books

Daniel- I love what you did with the sepia. I'll have to give it a whirl.

Oh absolutely...

Their apparent personalities radiate off the screen and they seem cool as anything! I actually hope to do a shoot shop someday - but regardless of this, I would still like to learn the post processing techniques. I've been trying to reverse engineer them for a while with no real success

Great tip, Daniel, thanks!

Here's my attempt:

Click to view attachment

Um, it might be that they use the levels to mute the highlights, but I've found that my technique works pretty good too.

Besides the grain, a lot of their pictures are also embossed. Which is done by:
1.duplicate layer
2.Change top layer blending mode to Soft Light
3.With top layer selected, go to Filters/Other/High Pass and choose pixel width you'd like.
4.duplicate top layer if you want more emboss look

Looks great. Try adding a Hue/Saturation layer at the very top and unsaturating the whole thing a little bit. I think the best look is a light sepia, not when it's really brown....

By the way, this is one of the best ways of making an ugly, overexposed, horrible color pictures into beautiful shots.

and lastly, sometimes leaving the color in (don't make the original black and white, but maybe unsaturate just a bit), gets great images too: check these out:

Daniel,

Very cool, I like the emboss tips, thanks!! So this is basically a sharpening to some degree, correct?

Any other techniques they might employ?

Emboss is kind of like sharpening....just don't overdo it, it'll look to fake.

Also try adding local contrast by:

1. select the image layer
2. Filter/sharpen/unsharp mask
3. Amount -15%, radius- 100 pixels, -thresh-0

that kind of helps too

Oooooh, I especially like the look on that first one

Sweet,

In what context would they use the local contrast or emboss your talking about...just as a popper or something at the end to sharpening or finish it off

Typically, I never use Emboss...especially on women/girls, since it makes the skin look rough. What I do use it for is old people, because, well, it make them look even older (you can see all the little wrinkles on them.) If you go to my website, enter the "personal site" and look at the "portraits" gallery, all of the old people were embossed.

Local contrast--i use this one pretty often, but the only downside is that it makes the highlights clip easily (clipping is when the highlight become so bright they "burn out"). This happens often on bright spots, such as wedding dresses or highlights on the skin. So if i do use it, i'm really careful with it. If it does clip my highlights, i duplicate the image, do the local contrast and then erase with an erase tool all the places it clipped.

i hope that helps

awww i found this thread a few days ago and had a go at this recipe. i love it. here is my go:

Tami- that is a fantastic image. I love the grain - what method did you use?

thanks erik, i just tried it again i like this tone better.



the grain is courtesy of kubota zfilms grain. i can't live without it!!!

Wow -- Killer --- that is the best self-portrait I have ever seen.

@Daniel

Nice finding. Thanks!

I made an action for your convenience and a version with a tad more contrast.

Great stuff Daniel. And thanks George for putting that action together. Good thread!!

I love this recipe, I added some warmth and grain to make it my own. Thanks for sharing George, You Rock!!

Thanks George! I played with your action a bit and liked this look, I bumped up the contrast and changed the color fill layer to hard light.
(My first attempt at posting a pic, so I am holding my breath to see if it goes up right without blowing up the entire web...)

Thanks again!

[edit to add] I just played a bit more.
I did what Daniel suggested and added a high pass filter on a duplicate layer and unsaturated the brown a bit with a hue/sat layer. I think I like it more than the first...

Yeah or nay?

I really like this recipe too. Can't open the zip file tho.

Sorry it took me a little long to respond.

I like the action. Works well. I like to unsaturate the sepia though, having it closer to black&white.

Don't forget to use it over color too. This one is a little bit trickier, but same concept. Only, instead of unsaturating all the way, do a little unsaturation on the original layer (or maybe no saturation at all). Here are a couple latest ones that i've done this this effect: