Contents
- Introduction - this page.
- Using Actions - how to use the Photoshop Actions set to make Orton images.
- How the Methods Work - a discussion on how Orton methods work, and how the different lightening options work.
- Action Details - a step-by-step guide to what the Actions do.
- Gallery - some images showing the results of each method.
Introduction
Everything that I've written here was inspired by those who came before me. Michael Orton developed this technique in slide film. Darwin Wiggett's article explains the film technique, and offers what I call the Screen Method of duplicating it digitally. Debbie Grossman's article in Popular Photography is the one that first showed me how to do this effect, and inspired me to read more about it. "SomeOtherBob" suggested using Gamma instead of Screen, and took it all a step further with his excellent video tutorial on how to add 3-Layer masking. You may find any or all of these links helpful.
1 - Michael Orton Photography website
2 - Orton Imagery - A "How to" guide for Photographers, by Darwin Wiggett, published in Nature Photographers online magazine
3 - Digital Toolbox: Sharp Blur, by Debbie Grossman, published in Popular Photography Magazine, May 2007.
4 - 3 Layer Orton video tutorial, by SomeOtherBob, published on his Lake Hyatt Trout blog.
In the Using Actions section, I will give you a free set of Actions for Photoshop CS3. I've fiddled around quite a bit with various methods for doing Orton, and assembled 5 very similar Methods that you can do with an action and 2 additional steps.
Put briefly, the Methods are:
- Exposure - most closely mimics the film technique as described by Wiggett above.
- Expcurves - my own method based on the exposure method except that it doesn't blow out highlights quite so much.
- RawExpose - uses lightening curves derived from camera raw exposure adjustments.
- Gamma - uses gamma correction to lighten the source images, as used by SomeOtherBob.
- Screen - adjusts the source images by a screen correction, as suggested by Wiggett in his digital technique.
All five of these methods use a layered technique as suggested by SomeOtherBob. This means you can still do 3-layer Orton adjustments on any of the methods. The action will leave you with the layers and masks already setup.
In the following section, I will try to explain How the Methods Work. This part gets a bit mathematical, but I've tried to provide familiar-looking curves to explain how things work. If you know how to make a contrast adjustment using a Curves layer, you should follow the explanations.
The section on Action Details provides a complete (if somewhat terse) list of all the steps that were used to build the Actions that I have provided. If you use an earlier version of Photoshop, or some other image editing program, you may want to read this part to help you work out the steps for your program.
Finally, the Gallery shows four of my photographs. Each one is shown in original form, and as composed using each of the five Methods provided.
Links
Here are some more links, in addition to the references listed above.
Flickr groups: Orton, Orton Addicts.
The Orton Effect - Digital Photography Tip of the Week - another example using the Screen method with Photoshop Elements.