Luminous Landscape Forum

Raw & Post Processing, Printing => Digital Image Processing => Topic started by: bongobongo on April 22, 2008, 05:05:22 pm

Title: How do I simulate old way darkroom softening?
Post by: bongobongo on April 22, 2008, 05:05:22 pm

Hi.

Did a lot of photography some years back, mostly using Velvia and B&W negative film.
Have practically been "out" of photography for the last 4 years due to lots of work and a new member of the family

I'm finally getting closer to use more time on photography again

Now I'm about to invest in an A2 printer, a DSLR and a couple of software packs for digital photography (probably Photoshop CS3 and Photoshop lightroom).

When I made my B&W portrait prints I often used a "womans sock" (sorry about my bad english) stretched over a tiny "burning frame".
This gave the prints a pleasing softening effect (mostly applied to human faces)....

Can someone please give me advice to which software I may use to accomplish the same effect when working with the digital files?
Hopefully a plugin to photoshop though... but also interested in other software tools to do the job.

This is a nice forum by the way

Title: How do I simulate old way darkroom softening?
Post by: Richowens on April 22, 2008, 05:31:29 pm

Lightroom 2.0Beta........negative clarity reduces local contrast, works great for portraits. Don't know at this time when it will be a shipping version, but you can download it and try it for 30 days.

HTH

Rich

[attachment=6234:attachment]

Title: How do I simulate old way darkroom softening?
Post by: Jonathan Wienke on April 22, 2008, 07:42:54 pm

Quote

Can someone please give me advice to which software I may use to accomplish the same effect when working with the digital files?
Hopefully a plugin to photoshop though... but also interested in other software tools to do the job.

Filters / Blur / Gaussian Blur, Radius 5-50
Edit / Fade Gaussian Blur 10-50%

Title: How do I simulate old way darkroom softening?
Post by: Schewe on April 22, 2008, 08:25:35 pm

Quote

When I made my B&W portrait prints I often used a "womans sock" (sorry about my bad english) stretched over a tiny "burning frame".
This gave the prints a pleasing softening effect (mostly applied to human faces)....
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You were using nylon hose? I did...the way to simulate that effect (spreading the shadows) is to duplication the image to a new layer, set it to darken only, run guassian blur-prolly an amount of 40-50 with a radius of 3-5 and adjust the layer opacity to taste. The gblur will blur the whole image but since you are only blending the tone where it's darker, you'll spread the shadows. You can use a layer mask to control where the blur is/isn't added.

Title: How do I simulate old way darkroom softening?
Post by: bongobongo on April 23, 2008, 01:52:00 am

Hi there

To all: Thanks for the quick feedback

To Scheve:
"You were using nylon hose?" Yep, that was the correct name for it.. thanks.

Did some searching and found a nice tutorial describing the technique you mentioned....
looks like that is what I'm looking for.... need to test it out laiter when I eventually get the new printer in house though.

For those that might be interested in using this technique you can have a look here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b7VdtGQqsmk (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b7VdtGQqsmk)

Will certainly take a look at the negative clarity stuff in lightroom as well when that arrives.

Thanks again

Title: How do I simulate old way darkroom softening?
Post by: 01af on April 23, 2008, 11:40:13 am

In portrait photography, a piece of nylon stocking was used on the enlarger lens as a softener just because it was more convenient than using it on the camera lens at image capture time. In many cases, the spreading of the shadows was just a unwanted side effect which however was accepted in exchange for the convenience of the method. Generally, softening the image at capture time (with a piece of nylon stocking on the camera lens, breathing on the lens, a soft filter of some kind, or a dedicated soft-focus lens) was considered superior to softening at printing time because it would spread the highlights rather than the shadows, thus rendering a more pleasing result.

So in order to soften the images and spreading the highlights rather than the shadows, use Schewe's method outlined above but replace the blending mode 'Darken' with 'Lighten.' Of course, you can also try both methods easily and quickly, and compare. Using more layers and layer masks, you can even apply both methods in one image ... e. g. spreading the highlights in the subject's face and the shadows in the background. Using other blending modes, like 'Overlay' or 'Multiply' for instance, even more complex renderings are possible ... see here:

http://www.luminous-landscape.com/tutorials/gaussian.shtml (http://www.luminous-landscape.com/tutorials/gaussian.shtml)

-- Olaf