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How to Achieve This Effect


R

Rich54

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This is a photo by Cecil Beaton that appeared in Vogue Magazine in 1948. It's currently being used in advertisements for a fashion exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum in New York. I'm trying to put my finger on what specifically gives this image it's interesting, painterly quality. I think I see that the dresses are high-contrast and saturated, whereas the skin tones are the opposite. The white walls also appear to be somewhat desaturated, which make the clothes pop. Is there anything else going on here that I'm not seeing? What kinds of Photoshop adjustments would give a normal photo this kind of appearance?

Also, how in the world was this done back in 1948, when Photoshop ran on wood-burning computers?

P.S.
I hope I'm not violating any copyright rules by posting the photo here. Apologies if I am.

Photo.jpg
 
That looks like a filter has been applied to the original. It most certainly did not have that look in 1948 in the magazine I bet. This has been digitally enhanced from the original. This is closer to what the original actually looked like I think.
Beaton photo.JPG

If the image was copyrighted in 1948 it is still in effect. I think they go for like 99 years now.
 
But since you are only using it for educational use to attempt to understand what is happening here, I don't think you're in any trouble with displaying the image.

It is lovely, though I don't think there are separate effects applied. They all havean actual soft, pastel, overall look. The colors pop because all the other elements are so pale by comparison. However, given photography techniques available then and now, they may have burned the colors of the dresses to make them "pop." That is a tool we still have in PS today.

I think Larry is right that it has been subsequently enhanced, just like movies can be done digitally today, restoring them to incredible depth, color, and sound.

You could nowadays do this in photoshop by selecting the colors you want to enhance and adding vibrancy and/or saturation to those elements.

However, our expert in these types of things is Tom Mann,and I hope he will come by and offer his opinion. I wonder if a channels adjustment could also help increase the vibrancy of the depper colors while allowing the pale colors to remain as is. Just a thought. Maybe even a curves adjustment, but now we are out of my league at restorations.
 
Back in the day an artist would hand color the pictures....I have read about this of course......
 
Right. I downloaded it from a site that displayed the photographers work. Most of his work was black and white. Color photos were somewhat of a novelty yet in 1948. I remember seeing very few when I was a child. Most of our photos were made with a Kodak Brownie with 120 black and white roll film.
Edit:
In addition, it has been colorized. Note that the ladies dress in the foreground is blue, where in the original it is green.
dv8_fx said:
The image is enhanced. Larry's image is how it looked in the magazine and it's how it looks in a few sites showcasing the famous photographer's works.
Click to expand...
 
Last edited:
Thanks all. So it's been retouched and colorized, but whoever did that did a teriffic job. Of course the original photo was a great starting point... beautifully lit and composed. Both the original and the retouch look like paintings.
 
Yes, I made sure to mention Cecil Beaton in my original post. Didn't want any confusion that somehow I created this. If only...
 
It is good work but any competent PS person could do the same. I'm sure the Met hired a pro to do it for them unless they have people on staff to do their advertising projects.

Rich54 said:
Thanks all. So it's been retouched and colorized, but whoever did that did a teriffic job. Of course the original photo was a great starting point... beautifully lit and composed. Both the original and the retouch look like paintings.
Click to expand...
 
ibclare said:
Only read about it huh? Likely story. We know how old you are and you have told us how much you have been steeped in photography all your life. :bustagut:
Click to expand...

Just a youngster, with a vivid imagination of many books read......[innocent]
 
IMHO, the large number of subjects, their posing, the oddly disjointed direction of their gazes, the stiffly frozen action of the subjects, the props & set dressing, their makeup, and the unusual lighting contributes enormously to the appearance of a painting with little basis in reality.

When have you last seen a photo where the basic content looked like this. Contrast this to the huge number of classic paintings with these attributes, e.g., http://www.1st-art-gallery.com/thumbnail/99386/1/The-Marriage-Of-The-Virgin-1513.jpg

IMHO, these are much more important factors contributing to the painterly look than mechanistic aspects like contrast, colorizing / degrees of saturation, etc.

T
 
Also note that Wikipedia almost immediately points out that he was also a "painter, interior designer and an Academy Award-winning stage and costume designer for films and the theatre."

Other articles on him point out his "innovative and elaborate staging technique", ...and whose "early portraits reflected continental art movements in his use of mirrors, torn paper, fragments of classical sculpture".

It's no wonder that his photos look different from anything normal mortals like us take, LOL.

T
 
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