Grey Clouds

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Hiya everyone,

I am a newbie to photography- having just got hold of my own Nikon D40 Slr just 2 weeks ago! And I just love this board- is so informative... however I couldn't find the answer to this query I have on the forum so thought I should try posting it up.

Below is a picture of a band, what I like is the distinctive grey tones the photo has and I was wondering how I could emulate that... are filters used? Lighting? I have seen better images of a similar nature but can't seem to find them now... but basically I want to know how I can take photos that just emphasis the darkness of the background, yet make the subject kind of 'pop' out.
Thanks for your time- I know I should enrol in classes to learn photography in detail....

[Japaslavian]

There's seriously dozens of ways to achieve something like that.
They way I would do it, is to duplicate your main layer and set its blend mode to multiply. The make a hue/saturation adjustment layer and apply it to only the multuplied layer. This is done by moving your cursor to the line in between the adjustment layer and the multiplied one and clicking while holding Option (alt on a pc) That should indent the hue/saturation layer a little bit. Set that hue/saturation layer to saturation -100. Finally, make a mask on the multiplied layer and mask out the people using a brush anywhere from 30-70% (going to depend on the the photo) to pop them back out from the background.

For example:
Original


Shop'd


Not the best example, but you get the idea.
You can always drop down the saturation of the main layer too if you want less color. IF you want to make the people stand out more, you can make your brush at 100% for the mask, or make a curves layers to brighten everything up, and make out the background.

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is this technique not something that can be done whilst shooting? with filters or anything? or does it have to be photoshopped in afterwards?

[OsmosisStudios]

Its done in post processing. If you saw the original, you wouldnt be so impressed.

There are,as mentionned, dozens of ways. I think the simplest would be to just use the HUE/SATURATION tool and drop the saturation by about 75%