Grunge – Lorri Freedman Photography

Above is an example of what you can expect from following this tutorial.

Here I have a photo I took recently in Kauai. Its ok, but I can get artistic with Topaz:

Topaz Adjust is a program that installs right into Photoshop as a plug-in. Once you install the Topaz Adjust program into Photoshop, it will go into the Filter menu. To open, I’ll go to Filter/Topaz Labs/Topaz Adjust 3:

This is what the interface looks like:

I can pick one of the presets that are on the left side of the screen, or I can use the control panel at the bottom of the screen. I prefer to use the controls:

With the first example, I’ll give this image a grungy HDR look. Here are the Exposure settings for this image:

Here are the settings for Details. The details controls are what really gives the grungy look:

Here are the settings for the Color:

With this photo, since I’m going for the grungy look, I won’t use the last tab — the Noise tab. When I’m finished and I like how the photo looks, I’ll click OK. The photo will open in Photoshop, where I can make more adjustment if I want to.

At any time, if I should change my mind about a setting, all I have to do is hit the Reset Tab button. This resets only the individual tab like the Exposures, Details, Color or Noise. If I were to hit Reset All button, all the tabs that I used would be reset to the original photo:

Here is the before and after:

Now I’m going to take the same photo and give it a painterly effect. Here are the Exposure settings:

To give this image a painterly look, I’ll use the Details tab opposite of the way I used it to give the image the grungy look. I’ll bring the Strength slider to the left, giving the image less details, and the same with the Boost. Play around with all the sliders and see the effect it has:

Here are the settings for the Color tab:

Next I’ll use the Noise tab. This tab gives an extra soft look. When I use the Noise tab, it zooms in on the photo. To look around the photo, I’ll just hover my mouse on the image, then click and drag the photo to see effect on different parts of the image.

Here is the setting I used for the Noise tab:

Here is the before and after of the painterly look:

Here are other examples of what can be done with this photo in Topaz Adjust:

Topaz has 30 day unlimited trials on all of their products, if you want to try this out.

This tutorial was inspired by a video by Matt Kloskowski on the NAPP site.

Here is the starting photo, that I took at a riding competition in Bedford Hills, NY:

For this tutorial all I’ll need is a .jpg file. In Photoshop, go to File/Open As and click:

I’ll pick a .jpg file from this folder and I’ll make sure to open it as a “Raw” file, then I’ll click Open:

Here’s the Camera Raw dialog box before I start to make any changes:

What I’ll do here is bring the Exposure to +20, Recovery to 73, Fill Light to 75, Blacks to 15, Brightness to -9, Contrast to +80, Clarity to +80, Vibrance to +80, and I bring down the Saturation to -50.

Here’s what the image looks like at this point with these settings:

The next thing I’ll do is go to the HSL/Grayscale and click on Luminance. I’ll make the Reds -100, Orange 14, Yellow 18, Green -73, Aquas -94, Blue -60, Purple 11 and Magentas 23:

Here I’ll give the image a little vignetting to bring the focus onto the horse and rider. I’ll go to the Post Crop Vignetting and give the Amount a -30 and Roundness -60:

Here is the finished image:

Now I’m going to save this as a preset, so I’ll go to the Preset tab and then click on the New Preset icon:

I’ll name it “Grungy Look” and then check all the features I used while creating this look. Then I’ll click OK:

Here’s the preset ready to be used for another image:

Here I opened another image in camera raw. I’ll click on the preset icon and then I’ll double click the “Grungy Look” preset to add the effect:

The good thing about doing to this way is that, if I don’t like any specific part of the image, I can go back to the Basic tab and tweak it to my liking:

If you’re into this kind of grungy look, have a great time playing with this tutorial and remember every image is different. The settings I used might be different from the settings you’ll need. Experiment and play around with the sliders. If the first image doesn’t come out to your liking, just try a different image. Not all images take a liking to this effect.

Have fun!

Tag: Grunge

Using Topaz Adjust in Photoshop

How to Create a Grunge Photograph using Photoshop Raw