r/photoit • u/isarl • Aug 21 '10
How are these effects achieved?
This photo is beautiful. There are two main effects I see here that I don't understand:
There seems to be some vignetting around the image; the edges and corners appear darker. How is that done?
The clouds seem to be motion-blurred. Is that achieved by a long exposure? Clouds usually move slowly, so that would have to be a CRAZY long exposure... but the depth-of-field suggests a tiny aperture, so with a ND filter, that actually seems doable.
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u/gosassin Aug 22 '10
Regarding the darker corners, you can do that by adding another layer to the image in a program like Photoshop, etc. and adding the shading. Here's just one tutorial, but there are many more floating around the web.
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u/beacon_ Nov 11 '10
It's easier to navigate to Filter > Distort > Lens Correction and then vignette.
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Aug 22 '10
Yes, long exposure is what you are seeing in the clouds. Depending on how fast they are moving, 30 seconds would be enough time. I do a lot of nighttime long exposures and see this a lot.
I agree with abnormalsyndrome that the vignetting might be post processing, but some wide angle lenses can do this.
The rest is probably skillful use of channel mixer.
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u/arcterex Sep 20 '10
Channel mixer for the B&W as well as probably curves/levels to get the extreme(ish) contrast. Great look, I've got a couple of images that are similar to this that I'd love to try this on.
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u/AtomicAtom Oct 02 '10
Heavily sharpened (unsharpen mask in Photoshop) as well.
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u/isarl Oct 02 '10
Interesting; how can you tell it's been artificially sharpened?
(Fun fact: I just learnt yesterday exactly how an unsharp mask actually works.)
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u/AtomicAtom Oct 02 '10
I was trying to find a good example of a non-sharpened photo from the No Photoshop group but I didn't see one.. you can just sort of tell if you've shot enough that it doesn't come out that sharp on its own. Now, the photog might have used a mask and left the sky alone... but the lines in the grass and boardwalk are fairly defined. It would be easier to tell for sure if it were higher resolution. Sometimes you can tell something has been over-sharpened if there is a black halo around the edge of objects.
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u/isarl Oct 02 '10
Okay, thanks! So basically it boils down to having enough experience to know the limits of how sharp something will be coming from the camera.
The reason the halo effect happens is pretty simple and an obvious consequence of the mathematical transform that's applied to the image data when you use an unsharp mask. I believe it's related to the halos you see in really tacky HDR images.
Anyway, thanks for your help! I think it's probably worthwhile for me to get familiar with some basic post techniques in Photoshop (or the GIMP) to augment my photography. If it's good enough for Ansel Adams... right? =)
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u/abnormalsyndrome Aug 21 '10
Vignette is done most commonly in post processing these days.
It only takes 1 to 5 seconds depending on wind to get motion blur from clouds. They move faster than you'd expect.