Cross processed color

I

love Photoshop! This week is a vacation week for me and although I have spent quite a bit of time trying to keep work things under control, I’ve also been playing with some new Photoshop techniques and thought I’d post a few pictures.

The first technique I worked on this week is a digital version of cross processing. Cross processing was used extensively in advertisement photography during the film days. Negative film required processing in a specific set of chemicals to create the negative that would then be printed. Slide film required a different set of chemicals for processing. Processing slide film in negative film chemicals or processing negative film in slide film chemicals was known as “cross processing.” The technique produces images with intense and vivid colors and extreme contrast. Color labs providing this service had to be very careful with skin tones to keep them from turning green or blue when using this technique. The resultant pictures are amazing.

I took this photo at work during a planning session for a community involvement event.

This was the original photo (taken at the 2011 Front Royal Celtic Festival)
The cross processed version is below:

This next photo is from the Prospect Hill Cemetery in Front Royal, Virginia. I loved the picture prior to cross processing, but the cross processed version (below the original) is wonderful.

Prospect Hill Cemetery – taken this past November

Here’s the cross processed version

These next two photos involve a new technique I just tried today—adding lightning to a stormy scene. I don’t quite have the technique down just yet, but it’s still fun to look at the results.

Both of these photos were taken on legitimately stormy days, but there was no lightning and the clouds were not nearly as dark as they seem in these examples