How does petra collins edit her photos?

[alvanylander]

I would love to figure out how she creates her images. I understand it’s the lighting to a certain extent. But there’s often this cool haze and it also looks like the colors are bleeding, and like the highlights are blown out, which i feel has to be the editing. Can it be just using fill layers with different blendingmodes and tinkering with the color channels. If so, HOW more specifically? what other adjustments do you think she makes?

im very clueless as to how she goes about to achieve this hazy but still intense and sharp and colorful effect.

here are some more examples:

[Steve Werner]

Moving to Photoshop General forum

[Trevor.Dennis]

Those are artful images indeed, but I prefer this amazing triplet.  It has a wonderful sense of open space, and the flow from one canvas to the next, is breathtaking.  It has an adolescent 'cow eating grass' quality that is pure innocence, and the brushwork is beyond subtle.  I have agonised for hours on whether the predominant colour in these inspirational art works is Mountain Snow Fall, or a masterful shade of fully desaturated terracotta? 

I have just realised that in the time it took to type this, the young gentleman is so transfixed by these paintings, that he has barely moved.

[gener7 · Accepted solution]

Classic definition of a blank stare, Trevor.

To answer the question: She doesn't use Photoshop. She uses 35 mm film exclusively and does not retouch.

The information comes from this article and explains why others have been going back to traditional film.

Have We Reached Peak Digital Photography?

[davescm]

Trevor,

I think I saw those paintings, you posted, on display at my local cinema....just before they put the film on....

Dave

[D Fosse]

Trevor.Dennis  wrote

I prefer this amazing triplet

Meh. Pussies.

This is our latest exhibition. The whole area has been cordoned off, so that nobody - nobody - gets in. The image is from a surveillance camera:

[Trevor.Dennis]

Do visitors need special glasses to see the artwork Dag?  Assuming that is where you work, it is interesting to see the white walls and neutral floor and ceiling colours.  Do you use special lighting?  They look like LED downlighters, but we don't know their colour temperature unless we assume that you took the photo, in which case they will be _exactly_ as they appear.

A nice bit of recursion going on beyond the far wall there.  I now have this mind-image of your museum/gallery being so big, that the never ending series of rooms we can see, actually disappear beyond the horizon — or Russia — whichever is furthest.

BTW  thanks very much for waking this old thread (my irony dial is set to a Spinal Tap Eleven as I type this) and exposing us again to those truly dreadful photographs. 

[D Fosse]

Ah, sorry about that. I didn't wake it up - freckledeyes did. I totally agree, we should just let it sleep with the fishes, but I didn't notice the date...

Move on, nothing to see here.

[freckled_eyes]

I imagine she uses a lot of different photo editing softwares or even apps. There are many that can give you those effects. One I like using is called Polarr Photo Editor.

[tania_hb]

Hi, to extend the answer of gener7, besides film she uses a diffusion on camera filter, maybe Pro mist, maybe Satin or a Black Promist, or maybe she has them all! also I'm guessing for some of these photos she could be using actual haze/fog from a machine (like in movies). Besides scan the negatives she may also tweaking colors on lightroom, she has a really good pointing start because colors on film have infinitely more deep than on digital, it is nearly impossible to have a ready to use/publish/print analog photos just by scanning them. But in old times that color/contrast/sat tweaking was made in analog as well, mostly in the enlarger, analog printing uses CMYK dials to get the desired color and depthness, so in a way lightroom is the modern digital enlarger but with more precision at the cost of a smaller color space. You can tweak the dehaze slider but it will never be the same as an oncamera diffussion filter. Tiffen and Prism Lens FX make the best, in my opinion.

[trinity_irene]

Just came to say how incredibly helpful this was. Petra's work is a huge inspiration of mine and I could never really pinpoint how she created such a soft lighting in her photos. Don't know why I never thought of a diffusion filter but yeah just wanna say thanks lol.