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I am a newbie in photoshop photo edits. I have seen this effect somewhere many times, but I cannot identify it precisely. It looks like High Key effect. How can I achieve it in Photoshop?

Thanks.

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7  
I have absolutely no idea what 'effect' you're referring to. Apart from 'high key effect' - can you describe the 'effect' pictured here? – rfusca♦ Jul 18 '12 at 22:17
@OlinLathrop how can a (dark) background be annoying? – Ria Jul 19 '12 at 6:22
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Closed to avoid wildly guessing what the OP is asking. If the OP clarifies, I'll reopen. – rfusca♦ Jul 19 '12 at 13:20
1  
Be wary of confusing mentating with wild guessing - the spice is strong down here :-). – Russell McMahon Jul 19 '12 at 13:24
I don't think that there's any kind of special effects at all – akram Jul 19 '12 at 14:44
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closed as not constructive by rfusca♦ Jul 19 '12 at 13:20

As it currently stands, this question is not a good fit for our Q&A format. We expect answers to be supported by facts, references, or specific expertise, but this question will likely solicit debate, arguments, polling, or extended discussion. If you feel that this question can be improved and possibly reopened, see the FAQ for guidance.

1 Answer

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Note: If you don't think that the subject image has been "processed" then I suggest you look at the histograms by color for the central region and note the very sharp Green and Blue truncation and then compare this with a range of other images. I'd be genuinely interested in seeing ANY image which showed a two channel truncation and one channel "full spectrum" out-of-camera. The "processing" that appears to have been done is quick and simple to do - but very 'unnatural' and 'unusual'.

Short:

Blue and Green "channels" appear to have been truncated to remove highlights.
Red is unaffected.

One way this might be achieved is using eg Photoshop or any other program which offers the ability to adjust levels in low-range, mid-range and high-range and simply zeroing the settings in the high-range for green and blue.

Longer:

They have avoided saturating highlights with a more than usual amount of headroom in the blue and green channels.

In the histograms below "whole image" is the whole image (!) and

"Middle" is a rectangle containing as much non background area from manual on left to CD on right as possible while containing minimal background [ "<- 1000 words"]

enter image description here

The very sharp cutoff of the luminosity curve is unusual. This is seen in the green and blue channels but the red (shown below) is unaffected. They appear to have truncated the response curves rather than compressing them by shifting them left.

enter image description here

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Are you sure that this is a processing effect and not just the pattern given by the colors in the image, possibly with a coarse levels adjustment? – mattdm Jul 19 '12 at 3:50
@mattdm - Nothing is sure but death and taxes :-) - BUT the utterly sharp top end cutoff in B & G and not in red is completely unlike anything I have ever seen out of camera. That said, my suggested means of achieving it = setting the green and blue level to zero in the highlights - which can be accomplished in eg Photoshop in seconds, is about equal to your "coarse levels adjustment" suggestion, so we are about agreed :-). – Russell McMahon Jul 19 '12 at 7:58
I agree with @mattdm, doesn't seem like much has been done to this. Just a shot taken with bounced flash IMO with a bit of levels/curves or even just raw contrast boost. – ElendilTheTall Jul 19 '12 at 8:15
@ElendilTheTall - I agree with Matt too, as long as "a bit of" can be haggled over. As I noted, the effort required in eg Photoshop is small. Select highlights and zero or much reduce the green and blue channels. But the effect could not be achieved by software that does not allow either low/mid/high range separate adjustments and/or per colour curve shaping. I say this because the cutoff is very sharp in green and blue at a certain maximum amplitude. – Russell McMahon Jul 19 '12 at 11:20
But... there's no bright blue or green in the scene, so that's what I'd expect to see in those channels. – mattdm Jul 19 '12 at 13:22
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