light and clear look to pics

2-ton · **Posted:** Sat Jul 30, 2011 2:28 pm **(#1)**

GIMP Version: 2.6.11
Operating System: Mac OS
OS Version: OSX
GIMP Experience: Basic Level

There is a campaign about called noh8, and they use photos to spread their message. No politics here, I merely love the look of the pics and just wondered if there would be a way to take any photo and give it more of the NoH8 look...yes, the photos are created mostly by taking a great picture in the first place ... which I can't do with my little point and shoot, so I though maybe someone would have some pointers on post processing. I tried myself but failed to get as close as I wanted.

Rod · **Joined:** May 16, 2010 **Posts:** 16168

Just make some fake duct tape for the mouth and add a no h8 tattoo i guess.

The clean white bg is a big part of it.

2-ton · **Posted:** Sat Jul 30, 2011 2:32 pm **(#3)**

Actually, I didn't want the logo nor the duct tape on the pics...just wanted to get pics of the people to have that look that the photographer gets with his lighting and lenses. The white background is a good start!

Rod · **Joined:** May 16, 2010 **Posts:** 16168

I believe it is mostly the effects of a nice camera with a white bg and subtle shadowing.
A very soft bg with a very detailed fg.

Notice they are all wearing white too.That adds to the effect.

ofnuts · **Joined:** Oct 25, 2010 **Posts:** 4812

This specific effect is called "high key". I'll let you google for it to find explanations/tutorials

molly · **Joined:** Apr 07, 2010 **Posts:** 14182

This looks like a straight forward one to try 2-ton. Soft Glow filter is under filter>artistic>softglow
tutorial

Before

After

Rod · **Joined:** May 16, 2010 **Posts:** 16168

So just get rid of the dark shadows?

saulgoode · **Posted:** Sat Jul 30, 2011 8:43 pm **(#8)**

The following was made by:
Duplicating the layer.
Opening the Colors->Levels dialog and clicking on the white point eyedropper.
With the white point eyedropper, clicking on one of the darker patches of skin. Close the dialog.
Layers->Mask->Add Layer Mask with the Initialized to Grayscale Copy of Layer.
Opening the Colors->Levels dialog and adjusting the gamma to taste (note that this adjustment is made to the mask, not the layer).

Attachment:

whitepoint.jpg [ 24.6 KiB | Viewed 2218 times ]

molly · **Joined:** Apr 07, 2010 **Posts:** 14182

That looks good Saul. I will try that method too....
Saul's method

Rod · **Joined:** May 16, 2010 **Posts:** 16168

Nice Saul!

2-ton · **Posted:** Sun Jul 31, 2011 8:40 pm **(#11)**

Thanks, looks like soft glow work pretty good. Also might try adding some other stuff like levels and such...and maybe sharpen after the lighting is right.

paynekj · **Posted:** Mon Aug 01, 2011 3:19 am **(#12)**

My one attempt at getting a high-key picture was on DPChallenge:

It started out like this:

then according to my notes:
Processed using Gimp 2.6.7
rotated to portrait
converted to mono using the channel mixer
curves to get the blacks black
re-sized
sharpened
hue adjustment to make it slightly blue

Rod · **Joined:** May 16, 2010 **Posts:** 16168

I like that extra blue tone.It really makes the image seem cleaner.

2-ton · **Posted:** Mon Aug 01, 2011 8:12 pm **(#14)**

Hmmm, using the original pic to add just a tad of color might just make it perfect. Love the look of the Gimped one! So clean and light looking.

RobA · **Joined:** Jul 14, 2010 **Posts:** 697

How about just duplicating the image, making it greyscale, and changing the layer mode to screen:

Attachment:

screen.jpg [ 15.32 KiB | Viewed 1480 times ]

Duplicate the screen layer and adjust the opacity if you want it more pronounced.

-Rob A>

2-ton · **Posted:** Wed Aug 03, 2011 9:13 pm **(#16)**

Nice method!