Fancy a sandwich?

... or Going all Soft.


One of the nice effects you can make in Photoshop is this recreation of the Michael Orton slide sandwich. It attempts to replicate his remarkable technique for creating soft and ethereal images by combining two individual slides, one sharp and one soft.

These days you can create and combine layers in Photoshop with great ease and there are many different versions of this method, but the result should have a hint of sharpness in with the soft look. I aim for a nice high saturation too, this gives the picture a certain richness.

This is a method that works well with flowers and subjects from Nature.



However, you can also apply it to man made scenes like this one, and it can add a certain nostalgia to the image. In years gone by this could have been done with a smear of Vaseline on an old filter on the front of the lens - but the Photoshop method is reversible and a whole lot less messy..


(Discarded tractor on Kerrera island, Scotland)

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