Freaky Details

Hi all. I posted some before and after shots that have been been given the "freaky details" touch in photoshop. I learnt this from Christian Fletcher, so here goes.

Step1- open image in photoshop

Step2- you need to duplicate the image so we are not working on the background layer. to do this hold command J (all these steps are on a Mac)

Step3- we now need to DE-saturate the image. The shortcut is Command + Shift + U

Step4- now we need to add a gaussian blur to the image. When doing this, I generally blur out at and bout 250pixels. Depending on the file size, but use the preview screen to see how blurred it is. You want to have it as blurred as possible but still be able to see a very faint outline of the shapes in the image (hope that makes sense)

step5- In the layers box, there is a drop down menu that will change the blend mode. Change this to soft light 

step6- after changing the blend mode to soft light, your image may end up a bit too dark. Next to the drop down menu for the blend mode there is the opacity slider. You can adjust the effect by reducing the opacity. 

 

I find sometimes, also adding a layer mask is helpful to control the shadows and highlights. To add a layer mask, click on the small icon at the bottom of the layers box. It is a square with a circle in it, the third icon from the left. When I use the mask, I leave the mask on reveal and paint with black as the foreground colour to remove the mask. The simple, well i find it the simple explanation for masks is, white reveals, and black conceals. A layer mask allows us to select parts of the image specifically that we want to work with. 

 

hope this works for you. Please let me know if there is something not going according to plan and ill try and help out, but it is a really cool way of getting the details out of the image. Please also post up some results you have had obtained, I would love to see some.

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Permalink Reply by Hillary Younger on April 11, 2011 at 0:33

Thanks Daniel...looks straightforward...I'll give it a try....really appreciate the write-up,

cheers,

Hills

Permalink Reply by Bob Simpson on April 12, 2011 at 8:55

Good tutorial Daniel. I learnt a slightly different version of freaky details from Christian but the end result is probably much the same. Where are the before and after shots you mention?....maybe I'm not looking hard enough but I can't find them.

 

I use freaky details sparingly because it's a pretty strong effect - it's great for detailed foregrounds but I usually mask off most of the image, and then reduce the opacity of the freaky layer so it isn't too obvious.

Permalink Reply by Mike Bailey on May 5, 2011 at 0:21
Thanks for the tip Daniel.  I'm still tied to Photoshop elements, but I've found a method to apply a blending mask in it - see http://www.photoshopessentials.com/basics/elements/fake-layer-mask/... for details if you are like me and putting off buying CS5 until after your next holiday :)
Permalink Reply by Dylan Toh on May 6, 2011 at 21:42
Interesting! I picked this up from a tutorial I saw on bringing out skin textures with a 'dragan' like effect. I've been applying it to landscapes and love it for the results on wood rock and rust (textured parts of the image).
Permalink Reply by Matthew Stewart on May 30, 2011 at 16:12

I too learned a different approach from Fletch when I was down in WA in January.

 

I will try this approach as well next time I work on an image and see how it goes.

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