The Orton Effect

  One of my fellow scrappers at DSAG, Arlene, turned me onto this fabulous effect, known as the Orton effect, which I have used over and over again on my photos. I found tutorials for it on several sites but I  think this one was the easiest to follow so it is the one I use.  I found it at http://www.pcin.net at their photography tip of the week page.

 
    The Orton Effect is named after Michael Orton who first used the technique is a sandwich of two images, one in focus the other out of focus. Freeman Patterson and Andre Gallant have both used the technique successfully in their work as well. The Orton image has traditionally been done using slide film with the first, sharp, image overexposed by two stops and the second, out of focus image, over exposed by one stop. It is important to use a tripod for this type of work to ensure your photographic elements remain in register on the film. The shots were then sandwiched together in single slide mount to produce a beautiful, impressionistic image.

• 1. Open your photograph in Photoshop (a photo with some light or sun works best, and I found a landscape really works wonderfully. My friend Arlene has achieved beautiful effects with her portraits of her granddaughter however.)

• 2. Duplicate the background layer (Right click on the background layer and choose duplicate) and name that layer Sharp.

• 3. Create another duplicate of the background layer.

• 4. Change the Blending mode of the Sharp Copy to screen

• 5. With the Sharp Copy layer selected, right click and choose Merge Down

• 6. Right click on the Sharp layer, choose Duplicate and name this layer Out of Focus

• 7. On the Filter Menu, choose Blur - Gaussian Depending on the resolution of the image you are using, the amount of blue needed will change. Use enough that the shapes are still visible, but detail is not. For this 6.1 Megapixel image, a value of 15.9 was sufficient.

• 8. Change the blending mode of the Out Of Focus layer to Multiply

• 9. Once you are complete, you may find it necessary to adjust the opacity of your Out of Focus layer and/or apply a levels (or curves) adjustment layer to the Sharp layer if some tweaking is necessary.You can also adjust the amount of blur you apply to the out of focus image, as well as adjustments such as level, brightness and contrast and it is good practice to apply sharpening to your image Sharp layer.

Here are my before and after photos. There really is a striking difference between the two. Try it out and let me know what you think.