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Thursday, June 10, 2010

The Orton Effect for Portraits

I posted a while ago about how I've been obsessively using the Orton Effect action on my portraits lately.
Typically this action is known for enhancing landscapes but I love the dreamy & hazy effect it has and thought I'd give it a whirl on some faces.  Personally, I love it~


Here's another example of how I used it on a portrait recently:


I opened my original image in Photoshop Elements 6 for Mac...

I lightened under her eyes just a bit using the clone tool on Lighten around 20%.
Then I softened the skin using Baby Powder Room action.

Next I cropped the picture to a square focusing on just her portrait.
Then I ran the Orton Action and adjusted the Brightness/Contrast as follows when the pop-up windows came up:

+39 for the first window on Brightness.


-7 for the Brightness on second window.  I have no formula for this, it's just how it looked good to me at the time.


Then I erased most of the effect off her face using the built in layer mask....what this does is just soften her hair and the surroundings and give it just a touch of a 'glow'~


I love the great color of her hair here but it still looked too ordinary to me so I ran the Pioneer Woman 70's action and took the opacity to 50%...



Much Better:)

Here's my final...


So don't be afraid to try typical actions in new ways....never know what you'll end up with!

4 comments:

Donna said...

Lovely! Thanks for sharing this. I love this effect and I cheat a bit by using the Picnik Feature. So easy. I am slowly but surely learning Photoshop though.

Amy Bickel said...

LOVE it! Thanks... just what I needed... another Christy boost!

YAY!
Amy

Greg said...

Look forward to trying this on portraits!

charlotteinkennesaw said...

Christy,
This is absolutely brilliant! I always thought the orton effect would be like HDR and that it would be too surreal. But you did the job very well. Thanks for the info...will try it.

all the best,

charlotte

 
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