One of the disadvantages of editing for stock is that it doesn’t give you much liberty to play with your images. At iStockphoto.com every image is inspected by one of a team of approximately 100 inspectors. They look at each image for quality issues such as focus, lighting, noise and artifacting, along with looking for logos and branding that make an image unsuitable for stock. As a result, when editing for stock, the photographer can’t get too crazy. For this reason, sometimes I just need to play…
I had recently had the grungy texture image below approved, and was working on an image of the Baltimore skyline showing the former Baltimore Trust Company building. I decided to play a bit and ended up with the image at the top of this post.
I started out with the full image of the skyscrapers, but all of a sudden it dawned on me that something was wrong:
It doesn’t look too believable with that modern skyscraper on the left! So, rather than cropping, I added the text and solid area in the same tone as the photo. That’s better!
To create the final image I used the original photo below, overlaid with the texture above on a layer set to “Softlight” blending mode. I used a Gradient Map adjustment layer to create the monotone color and a curves adjustment layer to boost the contrast. I also added layer filled with 50% gray on “Softlight” with the Photoshop “Texturizer” filter run on it to add a bit more vintage look. And, of course, what “vintage” photo would be complete without a vignette!
