Orton and Selective Colouring

One the photographic effects I have discovered recently is the Orton effect. In version of Gimp its in the FX-Foundary collection of plugins you can get for Gimp. In essence it gives a really dreamy effect to images, by creating two layers of one image. The 1st layer its boosts and sharpens, and in the 2nd layer it adds a blur. Then it multiplies the two.

Take a look at these two images.

The first is pre-orton, then 2nd after.

You can see in the 1st version that the swans are nice and sharp..and in fact there isn't anything particularly wrong them. But for the image I wanted, it needed to have a dreamier effect, and to mold into the background a little more.

The final image ended up like this

The technique was orginally developed for slide use by Michael Orton, one slide out of focus over a second slide

very sharp. The Orton effect is really easy to use and great for adding a luxury feel to image
s for portraits or Christmas and so on. It even has a group on flickr now.

For me it really adds to the image. For this one I used selective colouring on an autumn scene of leaves on a bench. Todo the selective colouring you create two layers, and convert the top one to black and white, then with the colour version below, erase the b+w layer around the leaves, so that the colour comes through.

Then add the Orton effect on the whole image, and it gives the dreamy view you're looking for. (It even enhanced the bokeh at the back of the image).

However I still wanted the crispness of the leaves to show through, so I erased the top layer just in the centre around the leaves, so that they would remain ultra-sharp.

Check out my other images in flickriver