Wide's World
Solar Power
by
Widearea
Basic Image Solarization
Last week at Wide's World we looked at a basic manipulation where two image layers, both positive and negative, were essentially blended togther to create an interesting visual effect. This week we will look at the process of solarization, where the partial reversal of an image from positive to negative is achieved to render yet another interesting visual effect. Again, experimentation is key in discovering a variety of possibilities. We will look at the basic manipulation using our image editor.
Tools
from the toolbar
You will need the eyedropper tool for a portion of this
exercise. By selecting this tool and clicking in your image area, you will
notice that it makes the foreground swatch in the toolbar change to the color
clicked on by the eyedropper. This is very useful for picking a color from an
image's actual range of color.
Solarizing
Images
This effect was discovered accidentally when film was briefly
exposed to light during development. We will see how we can alter our adult
content using this simple manipulation for a varied range of applications.
1.
Select File -> Open and locate an image from your local drive, etc.
with which to apply the effect.
2. Select Image -> Mode and choose
Grayscale from the submenu.
3. Select Image -> Adjust and choose
Curves... from the submenu or select CTRL/COMMAND + M to bring up the
curves control window.
By clicking
the arrows below the curve graph (circled in red above), make sure the bar goes
from white to black, reading from left to right. Clicking the arrows in the bar
causes it to invert.
4. Select the pencil tool in the curves control window
(indicated in red square in figure above) and try drawing a curve yourself. If
the preview radio button is selected you will see what happens in your image's
document window. To make straight lines just click on a defining point, hold the
shift key and click to another point. Another method is to simply click to
define points on the default curve and move them around. Below is the curve
applied for the example used. In this example we tried a fairly simple curve
adjustment. If you experiment with curves you will see how different curves will
affect the outcome.
