How do you get this effect

[Annabella Atheria]

I have seen these types of pictures all over Flickr and I just can’t figure out how to get the look they did on this pic.  It looks kind of realistic comic book to me and I want to know how to create that look in my pics.  If anyone knows of vids or tutorials that show how to create this or what programs they could have used.  I know it’s a lot of photo editing but I want to know what steps can create something similar or a technique.  Sorry just wanted a link and it didn’t work but I looked for an image that is not as bodily revealing.

 

[Rachel1206]

Use ink/pencil style and glow effect.  Programs like Adobe Photoshop etc has dedicated add-ons/layers to make the comic effect very good looking.

 

If you use Phtotoshop, check out this video:

 

 

Edited February 18, 2021 by Rachel1206

[Stephanie Misfit]

One way to get the exaggerated dodge and burn effect (highlights and shadows) on the image, is to make a new layer in Photoshop, fill it with 50% gray and set it to overlay mode in the layers panel. Take a soft brush, you will need to keep adjusting the size of the brush as you work, and set the opacity of the brush to no more than about 13%. Paint on the layer in white to add highlights, and in black to add shadows. If the effect is too dramatic, you can lower the opacity of the layer, and you can also use guassian blur to smooth it out a bit.

[Bree Giffen]

It looks like they used a 'bloom' effect which makes all the light areas of the skin glow similar to what Stephanie mentioned but it's an automatic effect that can be applied in some art programs. I don't recall if Photoshop has it. They might have also done some blur and sharpening.

[Nalates Urriah]

I've been looking and experimenting trying to get that look too. For RL images they call it glamour photography but they ALWAYS make a much less dramatic effect. Pushing their technique has not produced the look I wanted. But, that may just be my inexperience.

There is a fashion blogger that uses the technique pushed past what you show. I haven't seen her work pop up lately and can't find her (?) in any of my Feedly streams.

I'll try @Stephanie Misfit's tip and see if I can cause a bloom effect in PS as @Bree Giffen hints.

 

[Orwar]

   In Gimp, you can achieve that by tweaking the shadow-highlight sliders and by using the softglow filter. 

   Raw on the left, darkened the shadows and added a softglow filter on the right.

[ValKalAstra]

That does indeed seem to be heavy use of dodge and burn - like @Stephanie Misfitsaid, along with brushed on hair (either painted, using a brush or a composite) and selective sharpening and blurring.

To break this down:

First step is the right lighting in Second Life. This is true for most editing too. Unless you go for a specific effect or style, you will want to avoid extreme pure black or white in your screenshot as much as you can and have a rich mid range. This goes especially for these types of shots as you will want room to breathe. With avatars that have extremely dark or light skin, this becomes even more important. *1

Dodge as a tool, or using the layer method mentioned (personally I tend to pick multiply), adds white to the existing colours (hence why you want the room to breathe). Usually this is set to a certain color range, from shadows to mid tones and finally highlights. The latter is what gives it the exaggerated glossy shine.

The opposite then is the burn tool. It adds black instead and likewise, can be configured to target shadows, mid tones and highlights. Setting this to mid tones produces the darkened red effect the picture has and further contrasts the highlights.

In essence, one would paint over the body using dodge to highlight aspects, such as a nose, cheekbones or cleavage and burn to emphasise structure and shape.

It's generally a good idea to keep the effect subtle, as dodge and burn very quickly escalate, leading to a somewhat, uh... crispy look, so to speak. It's also a bit of a trap in my humble opinion as actual lights and shadows are not black and white but the funniest of mixed colours.

Moving on, another effect is to use selective blurring and sharpening to further put parts into focus. In general, one wants the eye catching parts in focus while the rest adds a soft look. For example on my pictures I tend to sharpen the cheekbones, to have the freckles draw the attention. I've often seen artists sharpen the eyes and lips while softening the immediate area around the hair but not the hair itself.

Finally, the last part is a whole box of goodies. Painting on hair allows a much finer control over where it goes, while also avoiding the SL alpha issues entirely. There are a large selection of ready made brushes (stamps more like) or stock images for this purpose. The ultimate form then is to literally paint the hair. Now that's a whole different topic - with a lot of great tutorials out there.

1 - If you are willing to learn or perhaps know how to read a colour histogram, you can get a live read on your image using shaders (gshade -> quint lightroom -> preprocessor definition -> histogram enabled). That's kind of going nuclear though and an explanation would get a wee bit more technical. If wanted or needed, I can make a guide about setting shaders up and using them with SL. That might take a few days though.

[Doris Johnsky]

On 2/18/2021 at 10:10 AM, Bree Giffen said:

It looks like they used a 'bloom' effect which makes all the light areas of the skin glow similar to what Stephanie mentioned but it's an automatic effect that can be applied in some art programs. I don't recall if Photoshop has it. They might have also done some blur and sharpening.

This has nothing to do with the thread, but your cover photo is hilarious.

[Bree Giffen]

Thanks @Doris Johnsky !

[Doris Johnsky]

lol

 

[kari Velvetleaf]

On 2/18/2021 at 9:10 AM, Bree Giffen said:

It looks like they used a 'bloom' effect which makes all the light areas of the skin glow similar to what Stephanie mentioned but it's an automatic effect that can be applied in some art programs. I don't recall if Photoshop has it. They might have also done some blur and sharpening.

Yes, I agree that 'bloom' is used here.  You don't mention which photo-editing program you use.   For those of us who do not have PS, but use free online photo-editing programs such as pixlr, there is an effect called 'orton' which can achieve a somewhat similar effect.  You play with the slider to get the desired look.  Under 'touch--up's' or 'make-up tools', it looks like the photographer added highlights to the skin.  Personally, if you have seen a lot of this style of photo-editing in flickr, why not just shot a flickrmail message to one of the photographers and ask them if they could direct you to an instructive video, or tell you the editing program that they use, etc. I think that most people are pretty helpful.  

While it's good to ask people how they achieve a certain 'look' to their photographs to learn, we should all try to develop our own identifiable style.  I can just look at some flickr photos and recognize who took the photo by their unique style.   

 

Edited April 13, 2021 by kari Velvetleaf

[Orwar]

22 minutes ago, kari Velvetleaf said:

While it's good to ask people how they achieve a certain 'look' to their photographs to learn, we should all try to develop our own identifiable style.  I can just look at some flickr photos and recognize who took the photo by their unique style.   

   I used to use it a lot when I first got into photo editing, I really liked the stark contrasts between the shadows and the highlights, but I probably overdid it. I occasionally use it still, but not quite as much as to make it a noticeable effect, but just to pick out the highlights a bit more than in the original shot.

   In Gimp, the softglow effect can be edited a fair bit in both magnitude and scope, it's great for making the skin 'pop' in scenes where you shot with low lighting. 

   There are other ways of doing it too, just playing with the highlights-shadows scale and shifting the whitepoint you can create similar effects, especially if you layer in different modes. 

[ValKalAstra]

On 4/13/2021 at 9:08 PM, Orwar said:

I used to use it a lot when I first got into photo editing, I really liked the stark contrasts between the shadows and the highlights, but I probably overdid it. I occasionally use it still, but not quite as much as to make it a noticeable effect, but just to pick out the highlights a bit more than in the original shot.

I feel like that's almost a rite of passage for anyone interested in image editing. Even just tinkering around with it often produces immediate and eye catching visuals. It was like a rush to me at the time - I had finally found the secret ingredient! Everything *popped*. Big league here I come! Yeh. No. More like I faceplanted in the training pool. Looking back now, all I can think is that my pictures must have been ordered extra crispy - and I'm still not out of the training pool either.

 

[Orwar]

8 minutes ago, ValKalAstra said:

I feel like that's almost a rite of passage for anyone interested in image editing. Even just tinkering around with it often produces immediate and eye catching visuals. It was like a rush to me at the time - I had finally found the secret ingredient! Everything *popped*. Big league here I come! Yeh. No. More like I faceplanted in the training pool. Looking back now, all I can think is that my pictures must have been ordered extra crispy - and I'm still not out of the training pool either.

   Yeah, same. It's like unsharpen mask, it got me really excited when I discovered it, and probably used it much too sharply. 

   It's all part of the learning process though, and what result you want in the end. Realism isn't always necessarily the goal in SL photography, after all. But regardless of what effects you want to achieve, playing around with different filters and tools to learn how to comfortably use photo editors makes it easier and more fun to work with them.

[Jackson Redstar]

this is rather easy in most cases. It is called Diffuse Glow. Photo shop and most other photo editing software has it. Of course there are alot of ways to achieve the same effect/ this seems a little overcooked on the face and chest, though

[Tess Falworth]

There are lots of ways to create this effect, actually. This also appears to have been manipulated with hand drawn shadows and highlights, so there is more to this than just pre-set effects. I think its a lovely image really. Starting out with a very good , high quality raw image is going to do wonders for you as well. Overlays, shadows, lines, bloom, textures, and all sorts of things can be done to create this effect. Probably already suggested but check out some Youtube tutorials for editing SL images. There are many, many out there that can show you various ways to create different looks in post-processing.