Photoshop, Photos and Inkwash

During a trip to the book store back in May I came across a British Photoshop magazine. I picked it up because of the main article, (recreating Art Noveux effects) but it was another article that ended up catching my attention. This article was a "how to article" on creating a ink and wash effect. Ink and wash is usually a piece with strong ink lines and a watercolor like "wash" using ink instead of watercolors.

The process in photoshop uses the "photocopy" filter on a scanned photograph to create the strong lines (the black and white of the piece) then add the wash effect using brushes with the opacity turned down. I realise that this may not make sense to non-photoshop users and I'm planning on posting a walk through of the process at a later date.

The first piece I did was my Christmas card this year. We bought some unbreakable ornaments and I liked the effect of all the shinies in a box together. The photo was kind of blah though so I tried this process on it.

The next piece is a photo I took while out on the coast one day. Depot Bay is a tourist area and I was interested in the way the shapes of the buildings interacted with the natural settings. I added an element to this piece by using different photoshop brushes to create the illusion of texture. It is hard to see on these small versions but I'm unable at the moment to link to the full size ones.



Having now worked with a man made shapes I thought I'd give landscape a try. I wasn't as successful with this photo. It looks too much like the original and having the large space with nothing in it was difficult to work with. Again I tried to add texture as well as color to piece.






My most recent attempt used a very blurry photo of an antique photograph. The original is of my great grandfather taken while he was in the merchant marines. I believe it was taken in Japan but I'm not sure. This was a real challenge because the original photo was in sepia tones and my photo of it is out of focus. (and on a tilt)

Part of what I was trying to do was add color to photo on which I had no color or historical color information. The blurriness of the photo made it hard to pick details in the background as well. Over all I'm happy with it though there are a few things I want to work on, such as toning down the colors a bit more.



So far the experiments I've been doing has been successful enough that I will keep it up.