alternative processes and stuff

[Glass Mike]

it is quite surprising. i deal more with analog black & white photography, lith printing, toning and alternative processes. for me, it was the best way to create old, grainy and contrasty pictures. then i see the Smith's work and i am curious about the techniques. is there, behind all those great pictures, something special except digital photography and editing? i suppose the general technique is probably medium or large format negatives that are scanned and edited with photoshop, but there must be something else. are those negatives developped in a special way? or do Smith counts only on photoshop to create effects? how and why a photoshop picture can look more really old than an analog picture?

peace

 

[Glass Mike]

i refer more to Opeth and Katatonia's albums

 

[Ozzloaf]

I'd imagine photoshop tampering but I'm not entirely certain of Travis' technique. In my own experience it's incredibly easy to create an old looking image using functions on photoshop from any previous medium.

 

[affinityband]

dont expect to get an 'old' looking image from a modern camera. Though in my experience, using a lower quality film where the grain is more defined helps(1800ISO being the worst quality). Also adjusting the focus so that it is slightly off will give you a larger depth of field which alot of these great old black and white photos possess, while also increasing the magenta slightly to whack up the contrast on the image. Although you could try buying a little holga camera or something or even using out of date film to use. always looks pretty.
Theres plenty of stuff in photoshop to get an old grainy effect too, Recently did a project to mimic old war photography using toy soldiers, heres an example

Basically this was a lil scene i set up, Adjusted the Curves, added some shitty photoshop filter grain (which always looks terrible, but it didnt do to badly here) and then took out the saturation, added .7pt of red to inject a little warmth. and then also took some of the black out in the levels tool box to give a faded look to it.

 

[Glass Mike]

thank you guys. we are apparently in the photoshop age. there is apparently no major commercial future for ancient processes but i prefer to stick to them. digital stuff is pretty nice and there is so many possibilities with it, that's really great. but i prefer to make the thing instead of imitate it. i am maybe wrong, but i don't feel honest if i use photoshop special effects on a picture to make it "old". i think it is a bit like the fake old clothing that people buy and wear, just to look grunge without being grunge. i don't blame anybody here, and i actually think that, for exemple, the Smith's works are more than great. but anyways what do you guys think?

 

[Ozzloaf]

An actual old photograph will always look more authentic because it IS more authentic. That said, I only own a horrible digital camera so I can only take "new" pictures albeit awful ones. I personally prefer to draw my subjects.

 

[affinityband]

theres plenty of ways to make things look old. just use worn textures as an overlay or whatever, to make it look natural dont use digital effects, scan in some tea stained paper or something and switch the layer effect to overlay(or whatever looks cool in those layer options) over your proposed image