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backlit photo effect - please help


T

twinkie28

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I've been trying to duplicate the following effect with a photo and cannot figure out how to do it. I do not want to do a silhouette effect (all black). Can I please get some suggestions on how to achieve. Thank you so much in advance!!!:) bob.jpg
 
Make sure your background is white, go to image, adjustments, black and white, mess around with the presets and opacity, then make a black rectangle to cover the person, create a clipping mask (if this doesn't work, rasterize the layer), change layer to overlay, and play around with the opacity. I don't know an exact way to do this, but I'm sure there's a preset somewhere called "silhouette." Try that and show me what you get. Or send me the image and I'll do it for you.
 
The best way to do this is to plan the photo right from the start with this in mind. In other words, Set up a nice simple white background, light the background separately from the subject and about 6 stops brighter than the subject. Doing it this way is vastly easier than trying to do it after the fact, all in Photoshop where you will have to deal with problems such as extracting the subject from the background, avoiding color contamination and lens flare, etc.

T
 
Note: My recommendation for a 6 stop difference was correct. If you want a silhouette, go for around 6 stops. If you want a subject of normal brightness but a high-key background, then use the conventional wisdom to blow the background out by only 2.5 or 3 stops.

T
 
I totally agree with Tom here!

Honky - I tried your technique................didn't work. I may not have done it right.

twinkie - I tried my own version of backlighting. It looks like poo doo and I doubt it can be improved or made to look real! I will post it, if you like the result, I will post an explanation of how I did it. (I did not tweak this image, it needs major work on the foot and shadow)

I went from here.....
BackLight_01.jpg

To here.
BackLight_04.jpg
 
My instructions weren't the best lol. You kinda have to have an idea of what I'm trying to do which is hard considering the way my explanation was worded.
 
Honky-tonk, as the old saying goes, "a picture is worth a 1000 words". Why don't you use Sam's starting image and take us through your process.

Tom
 
Tom Mann said:
Honky-tonk, as the old saying goes, "a picture is worth a 1000 words". Why don't you use Sam's starting image and take us through your process.

Tom
Click to expand...

You will not be able to pull off that effect with that image. The highlights are all coming from a light source behind the photographer, creating shadows where you would need highlights. Like you said, the lighting and intention needs to be there from the outset, or you will end up hand painting most of the image :)
 
Although I strongly advocate "getting it right" at the time of exposure, the problem of obtaining a reasonable simulation of this effect caught my fancy. Starting with Sam's original, this is about the best I could do in about 10 minutes.

After selection of the subject, I darkened her using a combination of an "Exposure" adjustment layer and a vibrance adjustment layer (to keep the colors muted).

Next, I simulated an effect called "Photometric Burnout" or "edge erosion" using Richard Rosenman's Lumiere plugin (http://www.dofpro.com/overview.htm - scroll about 80% down the page or search on "burnout").

The result is tolerable, certainly not anything that I would call "good". If the OP wants the subject even darker, it's trivial to do this once the image is at this stage of processing.

IMHO, the main obstacle to a better result was the low resolution of the original. In strong backlight, the light irregularly glints off of and diffracts around strands of hair and fuzzy edges. Starting with a low rez orig, this just isn't going to happen, so the result looks fake (for this reason, as well as several others).

Cheers,

Tom

BackLight_test-tjm01_acr-ps01a-01.jpg
 
honky-tonk said:
Make sure your background is white, go to image, adjustments, black and white, mess around with the presets and opacity, then make a black rectangle to cover the person, create a clipping mask (if this doesn't work, rasterize the layer), change layer to overlay, and play around with the opacity. I don't know an exact way to do this, but I'm sure there's a preset somewhere called "silhouette." Try that and show me what you get. Or send me the image and I'll do it for you.
Click to expand...
Honky Tonk - thank you so much for your advice. I used threshold under adjustments and I've gotten very close to the effect I want. The key thing I didn't do before is use a white background, but I will keep playing with picture with white background. Thank you again :cheesygrin:
 
Tom Mann said:
Note: My recommendation for a 6 stop difference was correct. If you want a silhouette, go for around 6 stops. If you want a subject of normal brightness but a high-key background, then use the conventional wisdom to blow the background out by only 2.5 or 3 stops.
Tom thank you so much for your photoshoot advice. I contacted the model and will be shooting her tomorrow with your suggestions. Wish me luck!!!
Click to expand...
 
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