1800s Illustration Look

[DeMorcan]

Rob has mentioned a couple times about how I do the old time limited color illustration look. While I have that as preset and a Lightroom color profile, I did it manually for this picture. This was all done in Lightroom alone. I call it an illustration look because I was going for a look in 1800s and early 1900s books. I created this and a woodblock print look for a series I was doing for a tourist center. They are printed on yellowed museum rag (or grey paper) and therefore do not need matted or framed to sell. This is my little niche of photography - art prints, book covers, and album covers with some posters. I think I am competent at what I do. But trying to learn new things for video display of photos.

First, this does now work with all photos. Many, it will look awful. But with the right shot, it can be very nice. To limit the colors involves 3 things. Before I start, I chose the Olympus natural photo color profile. For other brands I use Adobe natural. I want a consistent starting point. I do not use sharpening ever. My default is 60% at 0.5 radius and masking 80%. I may change the masking. I do not know what detail is as I use whatever Lightroom had. Many times I leave the level at the default percent (I think it it 25) and just lower the radius and raise the masking. Since I do not use it, I just want it out of the way and not messing things up. First I set a white balance that is very high. This one was an 20,000. Usually I start at around 15K and go from there depending on the colors in the image. Then I move the contrast to -100. This smooths the colors. To counter the softening this appears to do, I set the clarity to +100. I will do a little texture to taste. This photo was 23. Then the last step to get the colors is to set the vibrance to 100 and lower the saturation. I did not write down what it was for this one. The one thing I forgot to write down. I start at -90 and usually raise it to around -85. Some photos I have to go as high as -80.

After you have the basic look, then do the shadows, highlights, exposure, etc to peek it. It does not need much editing for this look. I do not touch anything beside lowering the detal (sharpening) and perhaps noise adjustment, and the basic panel as described. It can be a quick easy edit. Or you can spend a long time getting the luminous levels right to not add contrast.

I use gradient filters for vignetting as I have more control in fine tuning them. First I shrink the photo smaller so I can the gradience centered outside of the photo to get the edge of it and smoother softer transition. This gradient was simple. +100 exposure, -100 saturation, -25 texture. My normal gradient is either +100 or -100 exposure, - 100 saturation, and - 80 texture. Because this was processed for look it was, I had to keep more texture. Using the edge of the gradient is can be very subtle. I do this on almost every normal edit for Rob's photos. Light draw the eye (vignetting). Color draws the eye (which vignetting may somewhat effect). And detail draws the eye. I use this in almost every edit to guide the eye into the photo. And many times my gradient will not be centered. For normal photos after editing, I do the shift ctrl alt E to make a merged copy and then make is smart object so I can go back to ACR and adjust it if I change something else in a lower layer. I can then use blend modes and the blend if so no one knowingly sees it but looks where I want. I explained it here because it was open and obvious. Usually the gradients are the final step of my edit as every other adjustment affects them if applied earlier.

[Richard Francis]

There needs to be a 'like' button so we can acknowledge the post! Nice work.

[DeMorcan]

I think so also. Thank you.