these colors ...

[hifigraz]

deleted by hifigraz

[codewarrior00007]

Would be nice to find out! Very nice site I must say.

[dcclark]

If you mean, the sort of muted, dark colors in several of those photos, then you have some options. Of course, a lot comes from experience and having a good lighting setup (or being in a good location with appropriate, moody lighting). But after that...

First, be sure that your camera's saturation settings are at "normal" or lower -- definitely not at "vivid" or whatever the high-saturation settings are called.

Adjust your exposure (exposure compensation is your friend!) to shoot a bit darker than usual. Sometimes even just -1/3 or -2/3 stop compensation is enough. A lot of modern meters tend to shoot for the shadows and make everything brighter than you really need. Don't go overboard -- you still want details in the shadows.

In your favorite post-processing program, you can do a few things. First, apply some curves -- especially pull the curve downward at the dark (left) end. How far to move the curve is a matter of taste and experience, but you should definitely bring it down to make the shadows especially deep.

Then, create a duplicate of your main layer. Using the Channel Mixer (in Photoshop or Gimp, mainly), convert this layer to black and while. Play around with the channels so that you get a lot of details but still plenty of contrast. Now, change the layer opacity to something less than 100% -- how much depends, but try 50% for a start.

If things still aren't quite like you want -- especially if you want to emphasize certain colored areas -- add a mask to the B&W layer, and start painting in (or out) different areas based on what you want. This allows the lower (colored) layer to show through more (or less). Using the airbrush tool on your mask can help make this look natural.

If there are specific colors which you want to enrich (or dull), then you can use another handy trick. Again, duplicate the colored layer, and place the duplicate directly above the colored layer. Change its blending mode to Luminosity (Photoshop) or Value (Gimp). Now edit the Curves for this new layer. Edit the curves for each color channel separately. If you want a color to be emphasized, pull its curve "up". If you want it to be de-emphasied, pull it down. The blending mode ensures that only the change in luminosity (brightness) affects the image -- you won't actually change the color balance at all.

Combining those two tricks can produce some very neat effects. That's a general idea. Have fun experimenting!

[FocalFrenzy]

dcclark.
Thanks so much for explaining how to acheive this effect. I really like this style, but have never been successful in acheiving it in post.

[dcclark]

I should mention that it's possible that David Jackson does something entirely different than what I mentioned above. Appropriate lighting is essential! But, give the post-processing a try -- it will give you interesting results regardless.

[BCampbell]

Good response dcclark. Hard to say if that's what's going on in these but those can be valuable techniques to learn anyway.

hifigraz: if you read the article, there are some hints. Especially where he talks about lighting. I'm going to guess that much of the "feel" of those shots is due to his lighting setups. Read what he says and start from there.

Until I read it, I was actually thinking those could be film shots (which they could be, he does list a 35mm in his gear, but probably not). One thing you might want to look into is cross-processing, using curves. In any case, if you're not familiar with ajusting your levels and/or curves you should definitely start there, it's a really solid foundation for the intermediate techniques dcclark described.

In a nutshell, these are high-contrast, low-saturation images.

[teaking]

I dont think these are cross proceesed they dont seem like a lomo effect or have the yellow colour cast of cross processed effects. I think DC is close with hes crush theory it has a crushed look to it similar to the techniques for the 300 film effect adding the adjustment layers to crush the blacks and emphasise them I think will give you some pretty good results.

[BCampbell]

I guess I wasn't specific enough, I dashed that off pretty quickly.

What I was trying to say is that in addition to the lighting being extremely important, it looks to me like these were processed to emulate the look of certain films. One way to do that is to use curves, similar to a digital cross-processing effect, so that's a good place to start.

I think dcclark's approach would give interesting results too, especially his last note, I really think manipulating curves on each color channel is instrumental here. I could be wrong, though!

Overall, without employing similar lighting, you're not likely to get similar results; it's the key to the high contrast in most of those shots, specifically light falloff. The rest follows from there.

[teaking]

Ahhh BCampbell I get what you mean now, yeah manipulating curves to represent a certain processing effect that could work too I think all ways mentioned would get to the same place. Another way is to create a black layer and then add a greyscale copy of the image in the layer mask and set it to overlay, multiply or another blend mode you prefer, cant remember if you need to invert the mask though lol I think that may be if you add a white layer to push the whites as well. Maybe worth adding a curves layer first to push the highlights and over expose before adding the darkening layers