Hey folks, newbie here.

[Gaffman]

Greetings and salutations!

Just signed up a few minutes ago, looking forward to talking all things photography with my fellow Australians :) Those overseas sites are full of whinging buggers anyway.

Little bit about me: ummm, i'm a 22 year old bloke living in Brisbane, QLD. I work as an in house designer for a car accessory company... I don't have a great deal of experience/knowledge in photography but i'm here and happy to learn more. I do know a fair bit about photoshop, been a user for about 8 years, professionally for the last 4 or so. If anyone has any questions about this software i'm glad to help where i can.

Looking forward to joining in on the discussions around the place and meeting you all.

Cheers,
Gaffman (Ryan)

[Atlas]

Hey Ryan,

Welcome, always greta to get another Brisvegas person on the board. I am new to most of it, sure could use your help in PS, what a package !!

Look forward to seeing some of your images :)

[alexander]

Howdy Ryan and welcome. Get ready cause I'll be sending some Q's your way on Photoshop.

Alex.

Might as well ask my first..... How do you turn an ordinary portrait shot into something Low key???

[Gaffman]

Low key? I've never heard of someone going for a low key portrait. Most of the time people want those heavenly high key effects. I'll have a quick look into that effect and get back to you :)

-edit: Low key... makes sense now. All these photographic terms new to me :)

[alexander]

Low key? I've never heard of someone going for a low key portrait. Most of the time people want those heavenly high key effects. I'll have a quick look into that effect and get back to you

-edit: Low key... makes sense now. All these photographic terms new to me :)

:D I saw one once (before and after) and the photog just snapped a shot of an old fella sitting in his kitchen, with all the kitchen clutter around him. When he finished, it was nice and dark with the the old fella in some soft lighting. It looked great. Anyways what ever you do don't rush yourself for me, I'll be around here a long time and it will be great to share and compare.
Thanks for your time.:)
Alex.

[Gaffman]

I found this dodgy picture of one of my mates at work in the warehouse.

Warehouse Boy (http://www.photo.net.au/members/d/4339-1/LowKey.jpg)

He was trying to put on a cool guy face, but his bright orange safety vest and uncle tobys lunch bag wasn't fooling anybody :) Maybe the low key effect could help. Alexander, let me know if this is the kind of look you had in mind. Better still, if you want i can have a go at an image of yours if you like. This method is pretty quick and nasty, but we might be able to come up with something better.

[alexander]

Pretty damn close.:cool: Compared to the other one I saw, it just needs the background completely black. I don't have anything in particular I want doing at the moment but have some plans to get some shots of the parents soon. Hopefully there will be something in there that will suit. There is something about the elderly and low key that works for me.
Any chance of posting some brief steps you took??
Alex.:)

[Gaffman]

Certainly. These were done in CS2, i think they should work version 6 and above, but if it doesn't lemme know.

1. With your image open hold Ctrl + Alt + ~. This selects all the highlights in the image. Then hold Ctrl + Shift + I. To invert the selection. Now we have all the shadows.

2. Hit Ctrl + C, then Ctrl + V to make a copy of the shadows on a new layer. Set the layer blending mode to "Difference". This is in the drop down box at the top of the layers palette. Already this darkens the image while preserving only the brightest highlights.

3. If you've lost too much colour in the image, duplicate your shadows layer and change this new layers' blend mode to "Overlay". You can control how much of that colour you want by reducing the opacity of this top layer.

4. Depending on your image you might wish to do some general levels adjustment to change the contrast. Be sure to use an adjustment layer for this (Layer -> New Adjustment Layer -> Levels) to affect all layers below it.

Thats about it. I notice on my own attempts that the final image has a lot of "grit" in it, or just looks plain dirty. Might have to look into that.

Have fun :)

[alexander]

Thanks your a superstar. One last Q. I found ~, it's one button left of 1 but I had to hit shift to get it. So how do I hit Ctrl + Alt + ~ with no shift in there, or is it just that button that needs to be used. (I hope thats clear).

Alex.

[Gaffman]

oh yeah, it must just be that key. so yeah Ctrl + Alt + `.

see that doesn't look as cool as a ~. I'm not even sure what ` is. :D

[alexander]

I'll post it in the challenge section. What is `.

Alex.:)