neolite

I saw a series of works by Darren Levant and was blown away. I assumed they were charcoal drawings but discovered they are actually photographs. Can someone point me to the general techniques used to give this unique look?

Bacardi

I like this as much as you.
Stunning!

I haven't tried this myself, so I suggest we look together.
Before someone offers a solution, let's try to find out what we see.

Why this charcoal effect?
What is it thatmakes us believe it's charcoal?

-monochrome.
-like hand-drawn, yet no lines.
-sharp, yet also soft. huh? well, sharp outlines, but soft transitions in areas
-a remarkable effect of small white dots that ligt up darker areas (like the turban)

what else do you see?

neolite

Erik,

Thanks for working with me on this. Here is more of Darren's work on photo.net. Wait til you see some of his shots. Spectacular!

You can also view the original that I submitted in a much larger format:
http://www.photo.net/photodb/folder?folder_id=296226

Some things I noticed:
The highlighted areas are more pronounced and the overall image has a graininess to it. (maybe a noise filter)

The clothing looks hand-drawn. (Maybe the contrast and levels were adjusted.)

I can't wait to get to the bottom of this one!

nitrobutler

Neolite: After going thru his portfolio, I'm guessing he's using a wacom pen tablet. He also has a talent for burning and dodging his hilites and shadows. He also must have a selection of brushes he has created and saved, because those stokes of blurs if you will are graceful and accurate. My particular favorite is the "Snow dog".

neolite

Thanks Nitro. I agree. The snowdog is my favorite as well. I also like the one where the guy is standing in front of the billboard.

I'd love to see someone try and reproduce the effects. Erik, are you up for the challenge???

Bacardi

"Before someone offers a solution, let's try to find out what we see. "

I wanted to use this to think it out together so that we could share how a problem like this is tackled. Namely by close observation.

I should have written: "please, do not offer a solution yet".

Of course it's clear the halo has been drawn: you can easily see the sharp lines in it.
In another one of his works it's clear that he photographed or scanned fine leather and used that as a texture, masking and blending.
It's also clear that he probably used two files: one for the lights and one for the darks because the histogram is not "normal".
We could have done this all step by step, finding it out by observation.

ahhh...perhaps a next time...

neolite: I think I have a photographs somewhere that could well be used. I'll look for it (it's a pic of autumn leaves) and upload a small version. If you think it's good to work with, I'll send a link to the large version to anyone who writes me a pm.

But everyone who participates must give a full description of how the result was obtained, and in atleast three different stages of finish.

neolite

Sounds like a great idea Erik. I can't wait to see what people come up with.

Being that I'm not as skilled at photoshop as some of you, can I ask that we work on a picture of someone's face so I have some level of comparision against Darren's original works?

I have some pictures I took w/ an 8 megapix camera. I'll be happy to put the pic on my server and let everyone download it from there.

Bacardi

OK by me.
First thing we'll be able to do is to see whether the pic is "fit" for this or not.

Still as happy as before with your Powershot Pro?
It is indeed one of the best compact diital cameras on the market today...
I'm about to buy a digital compact myself but I must say that I have to get used to the viewfinder. I know: people say: buy an slr like the eos300 of the dx70, but they forget that a/ I'd have to buy separate lenses as the zoom that comes with it is not what I want (neither in aperture nor in wide-angle each) and this means a BIG investment and b/ this means once again carrying ten pounds or more of equipment with me (brings me out of balance when doing dangerous things on the cliffs of breizh) and having to change lenses all the time.
No deal. I want a good compact. I think I'll go for the C-8080. Not as much zoom as your Canon, but a very good lens. And I've always used Olympus, first an OM2 then an OM4. Never ever had problems with them.
Besides: I'm shure I can fool all specialists by simply saying I used a DX1 or whatever, while in fact I took the pic with my nephew's Canon A80. I did the same one day with pics I took with my camera. I told the guys I had used a Nikon (can't remember which one, but the top of the bill then) because I knew they despised all other brands as being for amateurs. They accepted me as one of them, admired the pics etc. Never told them the thruth. Hehe.

OK. Back to the subject: May I ask you post smaller versions of a few heads here in this thread? Then we can discuss which one is the best. Prefereably in colour (not manipulated in any way.) as we can start with how to set to black and white.

neolite

Erik,

Here is a group of photos I have taken. I am just going to post the thumbnails @ 25% quality (very small). Each thumbnail will link you to the larger pic on my PC.

There are (4) pics that I scanned from prints. The rest are all from my Canon. The ones that were scanned have the people's names in the filename.

Bacardi

The first condition is that we need good contrast and a really razor-sharp image.

Image 0204 looks to be the most fit -we also need a plain background- but it is not really sharp.
Image 0257 is, but it has a rather noisy background and the friendly face is not really suited for this kind of "charcoaling". Yet when you observe well, you can clearly see why and how the highlights are very well fit: the pores. That's why we need very sharp pics.
Image 0155 seems to be more fit, but isn't sharp-sharp. Neither are 0520 and 0536.
I am convinced our Darren Levant knew what he wanted before he started. That he used a tripod for this portrait, or else chose mode A (aperture priority) and took his pic with a large diaphragm (low f: number to get more light at the expense of depth of field), or simply mode S (shutter priority) set to a high number meaning a very short time, and that he took care to isolate the subject from the background.

How to isolate a subject from the background? Well, in Photoshop we have Channels. When we take the pic, we can already take care to get the background in one channel and the subject in the others. Two things play a major role here: contrast in hue, and contrast in light intensity.

Example: black hair against a black background will be more difficult to isolate. So, for a dark outlined subject, choose a light background colour, and a dark one for, say, blonde hair.
The hue is also important. A dark brown skin and a brown background are to alike. As are milky white skin and an light-orangy background.

One last thing for now: why not sharpen from the start? because sharpening always deletes valueable information. And also because with what we do later on, sharpening may be lost.
In this case, this is not a real drama as we have to use force on the values (highlights and darks).

Right. I suggest we take pic 0204 for this. Why? I looked at the histograms. When you open Levels, you see the histogram for RGB. You can also click on the dropdown list to get the results for R, G and B separately. These are good histograms: righ in tome, nearly from black to white. The blue channel has something remarkable though: the "mountains" are separated by an area of limbo. There is no blue in the central-light area. The man has a very warm-coloured skin.
Also take a look ate the channels in the channels palette. What do you see? Observe. (nothing hidded here, no question behind this). In the blue channel, the face is very dark. In the red one it is very light. It would be easier to select the face from the red, than from the blue channel.

As a contrast, take pic 0363.
Also a fine histogram, but very good to show you a trick.
Go ahead and open it, then press Ctrl+L to look at the levels, admire the histogram (nearly perfect) and drag the dialog beside your pic. Now choose colour (R, G or B) from the dropdown list.

Hold down alt while clicking the black (at the left) or white (at the right) triangle directly below the histogram and drag slowly to th centre. Your pic disappears, and then when dragging further you see small dots appear. As long as you don't see anything, there is no information contained. No pixels have these values.
Go ahead and drag the black and white triangles for all three colours, and leave them where you see more that just a simple first dot. Just enough to see some first lines or so appear.
Now click OK and look at your pic.
Use Ctrl/Cmd+Z to toggle between both states.
This is a simple trick to get rid of colour hues.
Perhaps not perfect, no, but it does the job for everyone except top specialists. Which we are not.

Want to try this on 0204?
Next time, I'll tell you about the disadvanage, and why we do need a good histogram to start from (gaps!!!).