We all remember the Grunge Years in the late eighties and the early nineties. Well i remember it but i lived my grunge years in its resurgence at the end of the nineties.
This is a quick technique and work flow to create a “Grunge Photo Montage” using Photoshop’s Merge to HDR tool.
Here’s the video of the work flow with an added extra at the end to finish of the picture off.
Here are the five stock photos is used.
The work flow is quite simple. Load 5 pictures into Photoshop and go File Automate merge to HDR. Untick the box to align images and click OK. In the next dialogue box select EV and number the images from 1 to 5.
Photoshop will open up its merge to HDR window, play with the settings until you have the image you want.
Once the HDR image is created add a hue and saturation layer. Click colorize adjust the hue to 36 and the saturation to 25.
Duplicate the HDR layer and set the opacity to overlay. Add a brightness and contrast adjustment layer adjusting to taste and set the layer as a clipping adjustment to the duplicated layer
Your picture is done
I created a smart object of all the layers and duplicated it bluing and sharpening the layers and then adding a layer mask that i then filled with Filter -Render Clouds. This can be seen in the video above.
I quite like the technique and it can be good for when you have those not so good images from a day out and you can create a montage of the day.
I like the mixture of the different sky lines all merging into one another but still having the clarity of the fun fair on the water front. I think this image has worked quite well.
Do you like the technique, is it something you will use? Is there anything you wished you knew how to do in Photoshop? Let me know in the comments box below.
Aperture64 