Paintshop Pro in Dartmouth, Novs Scotia

[raven4ns]

Hello,
Is there anyone on this forum from Dartmouth, Nova Scotia that uses PSP? If there is would you please contact me, I would like to speak to you regarding PSP. Thank you.

[Cassel]

Not in Dartmouth, but I am in NB.

[raven4ns]

Thank you for your reply. I was hoping to find someone close so that I might look over their shoulder and watch how they use PSP. Hopefully they could show me how to get a purple selenium tone to my images using PSP. At the moment I am considering paying the monthly fee to Adobe and using PS for my editing. Not completing what I wanted to do with PSP leaves a bad taste in my mouth but using PS will hasten my progress as I have some experience with duotones.
What I enjoy doing is shooting, maybe if I was more learned about post processing it too would be enjoyable. Thank you again for saying hi. Best wishes in your shooting and post processing.

[Muriel]

Good Afternoon from an expat Newfoundlander living in British Columbia!

Is this what you are looking for? If so, I began with a white daisy with a yellow center. Make the daisy a selection. I added a new layer and flooded it with the purple colour. Move the layer underneath and reduce the opacity.

[raven4ns]

Hi Muriel,
Thank you for your reply. The process that I am looking for is called selenium toning. It's a duotone method to add color to a b&w image. The b&w picture ends up with a subtle purple tone similar in nature to the way Ansel Adams presented his images. Thank you again for your thoughtful reply.

[raven4ns]

What part of the ROCK are you from? I spent 10 years in Gander and St.John's as an air traffic controller. Great province and wonderful people.

[Dijenga]

You may want to look at this article: http://gcmandrake.blogspot.com/2007/12/ ... p-cs3.html

Apparently it is accomplished by "Gradient Mapping" and choosing the right colors for the map. Levifiction created (with some help from another member) a script for gradient mapping which you can get here: viewtopic.php?f=104&t=63889

What I do is load a duotone map into the foreground color (they are among the gradients, click the down arrow where it says "all" and select "duotones"), run the script (without a gradient loaded, you will get an error). It will create a mask layer with the gradient map applied.

The resulting view of your image will look very strange, but fear not, it worked correctly. Choose that map layer, select "Soft Light" for the blend mode, and you now have what you were asking about.

You may need to adjust opacity of that layer if the effect is too pronounced for your use, or even create a duplicate of the mask depending on the effect you are going for.

There is a nice subtle purple duotone included in PSP's duotones that I tried and it gave the same result as the image in the article noted at the top of my post.

[raven4ns]

Thank you, Dijenga, for your response. I will reread your suggestion and see if I can make it work. Thank you again for your thoughtfulness, it is very much appreciated.

[Muriel]

Hey, Raveb4ns!

I tried to send you a message, but was informed that you don't exist. I do not believe that for a moment.

I was born on Da Rock, just a little north of Gander. Spent 21 years there. Lived in St. John's and Corner Brook. Went to Prince of Wales College in St. John's and Amalgamated Regional High School in Corner Brook

M!

[Kathy_9]

I tried to send you a message, but was informed that you don't exist.

Try clicking on the PM button to the right of one of raven4ns's posts.

click for larger view

pm.png (20.84 KiB) Viewed 4476 times

[Muriel]

Thank-you for posting this, Kathy_9!

Muriel!

[JoeB]

Hi Muriel,
Thank you for your reply. The process that I am looking for is called selenium toning. It's a duotone method to add color to a b&w image. The b&w picture ends up with a subtle purple tone similar in nature to the way Ansel Adams presented his images. Thank you again for your thoughtful reply.

I'm afraid that's not quite accurate. You have to remember that Ansel Adams was developing his B&W prints the traditional way - i.e., real prints - negatives - exposed/developed using chemicals, not software. He discovered - by accident - that the diluted selenium toning he was using seemed to add a very subtle bit of purple (not discernable as purple to anyone viewing the printed image) and thought it brought out a bit more depth in his B&W results. It was an accident in that he was using the diluted selenium solution because he thought it helped preserve the life of his silver halide prints. Whether or not there was actually a very slight purple tone imparted to the print by his diluted selenium developing chemical solution would have been - in those days - likely just a matter of perception. Unless, of course, anyone can show - from analysis available - that there actually is a slight purple toning to his photographs.

In the end, what Ansel Adams achieved - besides taking great photos of exceptionally interesting scenes that suited his developing methods - was to develop them with a combination of high detail and high B&W contrast. And he did it using his obviously extensive knowledge of the very technical chemistry needed to develop silver halide to present his images in his special style. And his chemical solution would have had specific affects on different parts of the B&W image - i.e., it would affect bright/white differently from gradations and from deeper blacks.

You are using software. You can't simply apply some software filters that will have the same affect on all those different areas that a chemical solution used to fix a negative file into a positive could achieve. You can only come close, at best. That, at least, IMHO.

[LeviFiction]

So this is just one of the videos I found on the "Ansel Adams" effect. But I chose it because of two things: 1) He stresses the importance of what the "Ansel Adams" effect is and is not and 2) He uses a method that can be directly used in PSP with little to absolutely no differences.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IGwLqoL38-o

In fact let me show you how I made my own version of the image following his instructions practically verbatim.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/174pE-W ... bAr0C/view

[raven4ns]

Thank you, JoeB and LeviFiction for your help and kindness it is certainly appreciated. I'm hopeful that I can simulate a selenium tone to my B&W images that imparts the look I am after. The process of working on the 3 areas ie. blacks, midtones and highlights seems like a logical approach. Using a purple tone will give me the density for the blacks and increase the richness of the midtones. The highlights will be reduced to an off-white reducing their impact on the image to some degree.
Whether this is a viable approach or not is yet to be determined, if not then it is back to the drawing board. I wished my skill level was a lot higher than what it is but for now I will continue towards my goal of a selenium toned print that imparts my vision for the images. Thank you again everyone for your help and kindness.

[raven4ns]

LeviFiction, I looked at your video and I must say the opening shot was very good. A lot of what you did I didn't understand but the results speak for themselves. On the grass highlights, what would have happened if you had turned them slightly off-white instead of doing what you did? Would it be even more complicated to do that? I will need to look at that several times to see exactly how you accomplished it. With the channel mixer, how did you know what numbers to choose for the 3 colours, was that from experience? I must say I liked that image a great deal, especially the contrast. Thank you for going to all that trouble for those of us who enjoy B&W images.