Hi. This is Marty from Blue Lightning TV.
I'm going to show you how to create the look of 19th century, wet plate colodions from
regular, everyday photos.
This process used light-sensitive materials on glass, rather than on paper since glass
was a more stable surface than paper and less expensive than iron and copper, which tin
types and daguerreotypes used respectively.
The wet plate collodion process was sensitive only to blue light.
Warm colors appear dark, while cool colors appeared uniformly light.
I provided a Photoshop PSD file that you can download, so you can follow along.
Its link is located below in my video's description or project files.
It includes an old film texture and a scratches texture.
Open a color photo that you'd like to use for this project.
Make sure your subject isn't blurry, nor too grainy.
The first step is to sharpen the overall image.
We'll use the High Pass filter to do this.
First, make a copy of it by pressing Ctrl or Cmd + J. Go to Filter, Other and High Pass.
Slide the Radius until your image has as much detail as in my example.
For this the Radius is 2 pixels.
Change its Blend Mode to "Overlay".
As I toggle before and after, you can see the difference in sharpness.
We'll convert our image into a Smart Object, we can modify it non-destructively.
Shift-click the bottom layer to make it active, as well, and click the icon at the upper,
right corner of the Layers panel to open the fly-out list.
Click "Convert to Smart Object".
To place your image into the template document I provided,
first make sure your Move Tool is active.
If it isn't, press "v" on your keyboard.
Then, drag your image up onto the tab of the template and without releasing your mouse
or pen, drag it down onto the texture and release.
I'll zoom out a little in order to have a bit more room to resize and position my photo
on the document.
I'll press Ctrl or Cmd plus the Minus key on my keyboard to zoom out.
Open your Transform Tool by pressing Ctrl or Cmd + T. Center it more and go to a corner.
When you see a diagonal, double arrow, press and hold Alt or Option + Shift
as you drag it out or in.
Continue to finesse it until you're happy with its position and size.
Then, click the check-mark at the top or press Enter or Return.
To fit it back onto your canvas, press Ctrl or Cmd + 0.
Go to Filter, Blur and Motion Blur.
Make the Angle between minus 5 to minus 15 degrees at a Distance of approximately 20 to 25 pixels.
We want to restore the sharpness of our subject's face, especially her eyes.
To do this, first, check your foreground and background colors
to make sure they're black and white, respectively.
If they're not, press "D" on your keyboard.
Make the Motion Blur's layer mask active.
Open your Brush Tool and Brush Picker.
We'll take care of the Brush size in a moment.
Make sure the Hardness is 0% and press Enter or Return.
Make the Opacity and Flow both 100%.
To make your brush size bigger or smaller, first, make sure your Shift key is off
and press the right or left bracket key on your keyboard.
Brush over the eyes to reveal our original subject.
Reduce the Opacity approximately 50% and brush over the nose and if you want, the mouth, as well.
Drag your subject below the old film texture.
Make the Scratches layer active and change its Blend Mode to Multiply.
Make the film texture layer active and change its Blend Mode to Soft Light.
Make the subject layer active.
Click the Adjustment Layer icon and click Channel Mixer.
This adjustment layer is probably the most important filter we'll be using in this tutorial
because it'll give our image the basic brightness and contrast that wet plate collodions have. First,
check "Monochrome".
Since cool colors look very light in wet plate collodions, we'll drag out Blue channel all the way to the right.
Since warm colors look very dark in wet plate colodions, drag the Red channel to the left
until your image has a contrast that looks good to you.
Lower the brightness a bit by dragging the Green channel to the left.
I'd like to make the medium-dark tones and medium-light tones to be a bit brighter, so
I'll use the "Curves" adjustment layer.
For this image, I'll drag the medium dark point up a bit as well as the medium light
point creating a slight arc in the histogram.
As I toggle back and forth, you can see the difference.
It's important to note that you can adjust the settings in any of the adjustment layers
to tailor their effects to the particular image you have open.
I'd like to decrease the midtone contrast, so I'll open the Levels adjustment layer
and drag the Output whites to the left a bit, to darken the mid-tones.
Next, we'll add a sepia color cast to our image by opening the Photo Filter adjustment layer.
Open the list of Photo filter presets and click "Sepia".
Make the percent 25 to 35%.
If you want to brighten areas of your subject, make your top layer active and make a composite
snapshot by pressing Ctrl + Shift + Alt + E on Windows or Cmd + Shift + Option + E on a Mac.
Open your Dodge Tool
and make your foreground color white by pressing "x" on your keyboard
or clicking this curved arrow icon.
At the top, choose "Midtones".
This will brighten the middle range of grays.
Reduce its opacity to between 35 to 40% and press Enter or Return.
Make your tool bigger or smaller and brush over the midtones you'd like to brighten.
To brighten the darkest tones, click "Shadows" and press Enter or Return.
Then, brush over those areas, as well.
This is Marty from Blue Lightning TV.
Thanks for watching!