In this Photoshop tutorial we show you how to create an image reminiscent of an old film negative, with all the dark and light tones reversed.
When you shoot on traditional film, the silver halide emulsion on the surface of the film reacts to light to replicate a scene – but because the reaction is caused by light, the image is tonally inverted, with the highlights dark and the shadows bright.
You then have to develop the film to create a negative, and expose that onto photographic paper to get a final photo. In a somewhat confusing contradiction to exposures, the longer you expose your paper in the darkroom, the darker it gets.
While film photographers may have gone to lots of effort to create an image with realistic dark and light tones, the negative look can be striking in its own right, and is achievable in digital photography using a simple tool in Photoshop CS.
The editing process is very simple – your main challenge is in finding a suitable image. As you are inverting the highlights and shadows, and converting your starting image to monochrome, what would normally look quite pleasing may appear flat and boring as a negative, whereas a not-so-perfect image might lend itself perfectly to the process.
The trick is to look for a photo containing plenty of contrast. Our start image of snow-covered rocks is perfect due to the mixture of bright whites and dark shadows throughout the frame to swap around.
If you’re still feeling less than positive about negatives, have a look at the ‘Blackout’ works of Dan Holdsworth for some remarkable landscapes.
1 Select an image
Download our start image, or if you’d rather work on one of your own photos, look for a high-contrast image with a variety of tones, including dark shadows and bright highlights. Try to imagine how it might look if these are reversed, to help decide whether it’s suitable.
2 Invert the tones
Open your image in Photoshop CS. Hit Cmd/Ctrl+J to make a copy of your background layer to work on, keeping your original file untouched, then press Cmd/Ctrl+I. This will swap the highlights and shadows around, and reverse any colours (we’ll remove those later).
3 Boost the contrast
With the top layer selected, click on the New Adjustment Layer icon at the bottom of the Layers palette, and add a Curves layer. Lift the Curves line at the far right in several places to brighten the image (see above), but place another point low on the left to retain some contrast.
4 Deepen the blacks
Draw around lighter areas in the shadows with the Lasso tool (L). Right-click, select feather, and set this to around 50 pixels. This time, create a Levels adjustment layer, then move the shadows (left-hand) slider to the right to darken the image.
5 Remove the colour
Add a Black and White adjustment layer as the top layer. Move the sliders to affect how the colours in your original image are converted to mono – we lowered our reds and cyans while increasing yellows and blues. Many areas will be affected by multiple colours, so find a balance.
6 Tidy things up
You’re nearly finished, but the image may just need some tidying up, as you’ll probably now have a few light specks visible in the dark areas. Create a new merged layer by pressing Cmd/Ctrl+Alt+Shift+E, and then use the Spot Healing brush (J) to delete the spots.
Quick tip
Always add your adjustment layers above the inverted layer, otherwise your adjustments will be reversed.
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