{"id":1702,"date":"2011-02-04T22:12:55","date_gmt":"2011-02-04T13:12:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/regex.info\/blog\/2011-02-04\/1702"},"modified":"2011-02-04T22:12:55","modified_gmt":"2011-02-04T13:12:55","slug":"is-there-some-blending-mode-magic-to-this-photoshop-problem","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/regex.info\/blog\/2011-02-04\/1702","title":{"rendered":"Is There Some (Blending-Mode?) Magic to This Photoshop Problem?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n\n
\nNOTE<\/b>: Images with an icon next to them have been artificially shrunk to better fit your screen; click the icon to restore them, in place, to their regular size.\n<\/div>\n\n\n
\n\nLow-Resolution Example<\/span>\nof a fake-matted photo\n<\/div>\n\n

This post is a request for ideas from Photoshop-savvy folk, about how to\nbest approach a particular<\/span> Photoshop issue I'm facing.<\/p>\n\n

So, I'm working<\/span> on a Photoshop<\/span> CS5 script to generate photo-realistic\nfake matting around an image, for when you want to display a print<\/span> on the\nwall, but don't want to go to the trouble of having matting custom cut and\nfitted. Once it's done, I'll join the calendar-template-building\nscript<\/a> I built<\/span> long ago, which has been well received over the\nyears.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n

It's trivial to make a fake-looking fake mat in Photoshop, but it's\nquite another thing to make a photo<\/span>-realistic fake mat that fools the eye\neven upon fairly close inspection. The script<\/span> I'm working on even goes so\nfar as to take the expected viewer and lighting positions into account for\nperspective and shading.<\/p>\n\n

The results are great, though I must<\/span> be clear that you can't tell much\nfrom the image above... the proof is in the “printed on good paper\nwith a good<\/span> printer and displayed in a nice<\/span> frame<\/i>” pudding.<\/p>\n\n

Anyway, the problem I've run into is that the process of selecting the\ncolor for the mat is not as flexible as I'd like, so I'm wondering whether\nthere's a better<\/span> way.<\/p>\n\n

For a simple one-mat, one-cut, one-photo situation, the script makes a\n16<\/span>-layer Photoshop document, as illustrated at right. (The sample document\nitself can be downloaded here: sample-mat.psd<\/a>).<\/p>\n\n

After being presented with this document, the user would simply adjust\nlayer #15 to pick a color<\/span> for the mat, likely plucking one from the\nphoto with the eye-dropper tool. There are many other adjustments the user\ncan make to tweak the look and feel of the mat, but for the most part,\nonly the color needs to be adjusted.<\/p>\n\n

The problem is that layer #15 adjusts only the mat chromaticity<\/i>,\nand not its brightness<\/i>, so to truly pick what humans think of as\n“color”, you must make a separate<\/span> brightness\/darkness adjustment with layer\n#16. To make matters<\/span> worse, that brightness\/darkness adjustment layer\ndoesn't allow you to reach the extremes — black or white matting\n— so that's another problem with the current approach.<\/p>\n\n

Is there a better<\/span> way?<\/p>\n\n

My goal for the script is to be able to build a Photoshop<\/span> document that\ncan be color-customized after the fact (e.g. by someone who has downloaded\nonly the Photoshop document, and not the script).<\/p>\n\n

The actual mat texture is in layer #14, and is derived from an actual\nhigh-resolution photo of a mat,<\/span> adjusted to the current document's intended\nprint resolution. It finds<\/span> itself here as a grayscale<\/span> of average\nbrightness, but I can<\/span> build different texture sources if need be.<\/p>\n\n

I can't help but wonder whether there's some combination of blending\nmodes that can do what I want,<\/span> which is to make subtle adjustments to a\nbase<\/span> color-adjustment layer based upon whether the mat-photo pixels are\nbrighter or darker than their average. In reading<\/span> about the various\nblending modes, I'd think<\/span> that putting the mat pixels (layer #14) above the\ncolor layer (#15) with an “overlay” blending mode would be exactly what I\nwant,<\/span> but it doesn't work at all, even when I ensure<\/span> that the mat layer's\noverall average is exactly 50% gray.<\/p>\n\n

So, if anyone has ideas, I'd love to<\/span> hear them. Thanks!<\/p>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This post is a request for ideas from Photoshop-savvy folk, about how to best approach a particular Photoshop issue I'm facing.<\/p>

So, I'm working on a Photoshop CS5 script to generate photo-realistic fake matting around an image, for when you want to display a print on the wall, but don't want to go to the trouble of having matting custom cut and fitted. Once it's done, I'll join the calendar-template-building script I built long ago, which has been well received over the years.<\/p>

It's trivial to make a fake-looking fake mat in Photoshop, but it's quite another thing to make [...]","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/regex.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1702"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/regex.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/regex.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/regex.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/regex.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1702"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/regex.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1702\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/regex.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1702"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/regex.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1702"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/regex.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1702"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}