I was wondering if anyone new how to get a Sin City like feel using different filters in photoshop. I've been trying stuff out for like an hour and nothing seems to work well. If anyone has ideas feel free to say them

I have been looking at the material (Jackie Boy is my desktop right now). My best bet is one has to work with Adjustment Layers and maybe even alphachannels. The basis look seems to be a color palette of black, white, red and the colors in-between that result in brownish/reddish skin. And yellow for Yellow Bastard. I would go at it like this: Select the color red, do a 'color range' selection on the picture of your choice. Go to the tab 'channels' (with the selection still active) and click on the little mask icon, the circle in the square. A new alpha channel is made, with white representing the red and black the non-red. You need to work that. Dark tints of red will be partly grey, you have to color correct the channel in a way that the white covers all shades of red in the picture, and the black really is black. You can do everything you want with alpha channels, later we will use this channel to make a selection. Do the same with a 'skin color' I used the brown in front. You can activate the original image 'beneath' the alpha channel, to see which parts you are including or excluding from the picture. Now command-click on the alpha channel of the first selection (red) and choose the 'color tone/saturation (?)' Adjustment Layer and slide the saturation to 0. Because you activated the Adjustment Layer with a selection active, you created a mask in that layer. One of the main reasons to use AL's. You need to invert this mask. The result is that the picture goes black and white, except for the red parts. Now command-click (well, at least on Mac, I am not sure for Windows) on the other alpha channel. We'll use the same adjustment layer as before, but tick the box 'fill with color', and slide the top slider until a nice tint is there. You can paint around in Adjustment Layers mask all you want. That's how I created the dark borders, by using a 'Curves' AL. I made the rain stripes in another alpha channel. I painted white dots, did a large motion blur, sharpened it, did another blur, sharpened it again, and did a little gaussian blur. I command-clicked on the alpha channel and filled a layer with white stripes (nice name for a band) and painted them away in the most important part of the picture. It is good fun to do, and you can use other AL's to come to this result. The reason I do it this way, is because it is all non-destructive.

Most people forget to paint in Adjustment Layers. This is the pallette for this picture.

Oh, and this was the original. Good luck! Hoof

I also overlayed a 50% grey layer with some noise on it, I forgot.

Well...I must say that ur picture looked realy good and thats pretty much the effect I wanted. However, I am not nearly an expert with photoshop and when making the alpha channel i was not able to get it to make a channel where the white represented the red and the black the non red. If you could give me a little more detail on what has to be done that would be great. Thanks in advance.

it's that "darn" screen-cap!!! i can't understand a thing!!!! ;) but i do know this, Adjustment Layers ARE the way to go! anytime you need to experiment, the non-destructive method of adjustment layers is the way to go!!! :) retrocity

are you looking for something like this?

When you have a selection you should not click on the 'new channel' icon, the one that looks like a tiny page, but on the mask icon, the circle in the square. If you make a new channel all is not lost. If white is your background color (in the two large squares under your tools), press delete, if it is your foreground color, fill your selection. I think that if you read closely you should be able to follow the steps. It is pitty that I have a localized version of PS, so I have to guess some names and stuff... The misunderstandings could be the cause of that. My way is one of may ways, you can use other Adjustment Layers, or just paint over a black and white picture (with the document set to RGB) in a new layer that you set to 'screen' in the layer palette (or another blending mode) Have fun!

ok, im gonna take a look at it again and get back to you in a few minutes to see if i understand it. Also, thixen, thats kinda wat i was looking for but with more of the comic like effect like in the other pic. Thanks again for ur help Hoofdcommissaris