Being a photography student, I'm always trying to learn new things but I would love to learn how images such as these: http://www.pbase.com/manny_librodo/vietnam08 (the first one especially) are processed.

I love the effect and have noticed some of the MFDB members here use techniques to get a similar effect. Is it a case of de-saturating and increasing contrast or is there some other way of achieving this effect.

Chris.

That isn't the Dragan technique, is it?

Looks very similar but after searching since I posted the message it appears I was looking for painting with light, as used by Jill Greenberg amongst others.

Thanks

Chris

Those are really some great pictures. Good luck.

Great photos!

DEsaturating?

It looks very saturated to me.

Apparently it's about creating different layers, one de-saturated, another overly saturated and sometimes another b&w and then masking them in together. Spent the last day trying to figure this technique out but completely stuck

Where did you hear about this? Any source?

Manny is a very nice guy, and offers quite a few photo courses - why not contact him?

His style isn't to my taste, but I can see why people like it

If he did a workshop here I would most definitely attend it but I have already contacted him and unfortunately not had a reply yet.

It's not about someone's style, but to know about a technique, that one can use to sharpen one's own style

Hey Radders if you you run across any info on this technique please post it. It's really very nice.

Hi, one of the best tutorials I found for this technique is at http://www.metacafe.com/watch/735941/draga...oshop_tutorial/ It's not 100% accurate but gets you very close. Also, I found dpreview has some excellent tips on this technique, particularly the ones by Pam R in the discussion forum (type in Dragan, look for Pam R). http://porg.4t.com/kcdragan.html rounds up these techniques from dpreview in one go.

Thanks Radders, I'll check it out and let you know how successful I am.

Imitating other people's photography isn't a great thing, and always looks like an imitation.

The original Dragan photography is true Polish, catholic photography - I mean the other side of the coin of catholicism.

PS: If you want to look at truly sick looking photography, go for Joel Peter Rifkin.

You mean Joel Peter Witkin: http://www.edelmangallery.com/witkin.htm

OK, I've looked and thought and I give up. What on earth is he for?

Jeremy

When I started this post, I wasn't necessarily interested in copying his technique, I was more interested in learning how he gets his contrasty look and then possibly utilising parts of that technique into my post processing. I believe I've pretty much cracked his technique but for the images I've been producing recently his technique definitely doesn't work for me.

I prefer the processing techniques of someone like Jill Greenberg but again I don't want to copy her work, just interested in learning how people achieve their looks.

We all copy each other's techniques, from birth to death. If we didn't, we would never even learn to talk, let alone learn our complex professions.

Beware of false premises. "If you buy the premise, you buy the bit."

Hey Radders, Thanks for sharing this tread about Manny with us. His work and his technique is new to me, and like you I just want to learn how to do things in PS. Im' 69 and I've been a photographer for 65 years, don't know squat, and been copying others all my life. My work however is unique to me.

That's a very poor tutorial with a shockingly clumsy workflow and the end result is pants too. And as for the wretched clicking noise
Also Dragan's work looks like HDR work to me, which is a very different technique.

And that's the best I could find on the web
I tried doing HDR on some portraits and the results look like nothing like Dragan's work. I give up!

Quite a few of the shots in this section Pixus are a little bit like the style you like. Done neither like Dragan, Dave Hill [http://www.davehillphoto.com/] or some HDR. I was just improvising with Photoshop many years ago and came up with this look, but all those pics were shot with a low res P+S camera [2.1M!], but if applied on a high res image would probably look a bit like the other techniques.
Just play around with PS, don't do things 'correctly' and see what happens.
Best way to learn, don't just copy someone's else's signature style.

Oh and one other thing, a large part of the look of say Dave Hill's photos is how image was shot/lit in first place. So it's not simply a PS technique.

Working on some shots today and I ended up with this variation of an image.



It's a 100% crop from a H3D-39 and I think MF quality and the lighting had a big effect on the look.
Very easy to do. Sharpening and two adjustment layers!

In the most recent Photoshop User there's an article that illustrates one way to accomplish this look. It involves opening the image in Camera Raw (latest version) and adjusting the sliders to your liking. It works great! The article suggests some extreme moves, they might not be necessary, it depends on the image. Attached is an example I shot of my son at his All Star Game. Good luck! JimClick to view attachment