Wide's World

Keep on Growin'

by

Widearea

Porno-Graphix

Positive and Negative

This week's session of Wide's World is a rather easy manipulation to perform, but the results can be pretty cool, and the idea behind this little image effect can be applied to any situation where quality of mood counts. Since life will always have good times and bad times, this little image trick would seem to reflect that quite perfectly. By taking an image's positive and blending it with its negative, a surprisingly nice visual can be rendered.

Yin and yang in action
We have selected, for our experiment this week, a quality glamour image of that asian housewife in stockings you may dream of intermittently throughout the day. Feel free to experiment with your favorite licensed content images and remember to have fun!
1. Select File -> Open and locate an image from your local drive, etc. with which to apply the effect.

This is the image positive.
2. Select Image -> Adjust and choose Invert from the submenu or select CTRL/COMMAND+I to invert the image.

That gives you the image negative.

3. Select Layer -> Duplicate Layer... and hit ENTER/OK when the dialog pops up, or drag the layer to the duplicate layer icon in the layer palette window's lower right corner, next to the trash can icon.
4. With the copied layer selected/active, repeat step 2 to invert the new layer, restoring it to its original state.
5. Double-click the copied background layer near the thumbnail preview of it in the layer palette window, bringing up the Layer Options dialog.

Choose the Gray options in the pulldown menu for Blend if, and choose Luminosity from the Mode pulldown menu.
6. Move the slider triangles for the slider corresponding to This Layer (the top layer with the positive image) to define which part of the brightness range you want to control the positive image. Hold down the OPTION/ALT(?) key to separate the two slider triangles to specify a range of brightness to control with nice transitions. This is where your eye and your willingness to play around will come in, so you can achieve a nice effect for your application.

Hit OK/ENTER when the composite image is complete.
7. Should you desire, you can adjust the image levels, color balance, brightness and contrast in the Image -> Adjust menu for more control.
8. Save your work and do with it what you will. Here's the image we wound up with. Mmmm!

Thanks as always for stopping through Wide's World. We hope you find our whacky excursions useful in some form when you get down and dirty with your adult websites. As always, be sure that you have a specific application for making image effects, and that you are always mindful of your bandwidth when going crazy with intense image fun. Until next time, Happy Webmastering!

Reference/Useful Links

Yin Yang Fire - Polarity explored up the Yin Yang.
Peachpit Press - Quality How-To books.