How to create this effect

[Guest]

Is anyone aware how to create this silver/black low key effect or know any online tutorials? I'm not sure what you would call this so struggling to find help online. Many thanks for all your  help!

[Danny Whitehead.]

Terse answer: with a camera, lighting, studio, make-up artist, skill and experience.

It depends on the original image. Playing around with Black & White and Curves Adjustment Layers may get you somewhere, but it's unlikely to be anything like as pleasing as doing it with lighting, exposure etc, while shooting the original.

[davescm]

As Danny said - good lighting and camera technique.

Also use black and white conversion and lower the red slider - this will darken the skin (don't overdo it). You will need to use curves to adjust contrast.

Dave

[KShinabery212]

I have to agree.

This was done with a good light set up in a studio.

Varying the intensity of the lights will give you different effects.  If you go really bright then you will get an even higher contrast look.

If you do have a color image that is high quality and high res.... you can play with it.  Trying out different effects to give it a cool look.  But I am not sure you can really capture this look perfectly in Photoshop alone.  Bu like I said you can play with Photoshop and come with a cool look of your own and that would be more special in my eyes.

Or if you can get into a studio and set up lights.... go for it!  If not, then have fun and experiment.

[Guest]

Thank you for all the replies, really appreciated. While I take on board what you are saying I don't believe that creating a very dark/silver skin tone such as this is simply a matter of playing with tone curves/adjusting the red tones as I have done quite a bit of experimentation already without success. I'll keep asking around

[KShinabery212]

Just found this on Google.... Metallic skin photoshop retouch - YouTube

[KShinabery212]

Also...

RetouchPRO Tutorials

Not the best tutorial... but you can get an idea.

The video link I posted above is better.  But again.... that is what I could find.  I still think to really achieve this you need to really light the scene in a studio before processing the image in Photoshop.  But hope this helps.