A couple of days ago my brother in law (using adobe products) and me tried to emulate the Masashi Wakui look following the excellent analysis from the post here in the forum. We got relatively close, but couldn’t get things to glow and there was still less color in our pictures.
Shortly after that I had the idea to use the residual of a wavelet decomposition to color areas. The coloring part worked nicely as expected but using the wavelet decompose brought another surprise that I hadn’t expected, “flooding” lights using a higher decomposition layer. Tried it on a picture from Tokyo as I had been there a couple of years ago and, sorry if I sound arrogant, but I am totally stoked about the result.
I basically used 8 layers of wavelet decompose. This gives a residual that is just a blotch of colors. Use just theresidual in “color” mode over your picture and see how it colors the areas. Then go back on the opacity until you like it. The surprise was using level 8 of the decomposed layers on the original picture. This gives you basically a huge soft halo and gives the picture a blurry, light flooded feel.
(Ok, there was some color toning in the beginning also, but just very basic)
@Biff, @paperdigits:
I used the Wavelet scale 8 (my coarsest) in grain merge mode on the picture. The residual was used in color mode also on the picture.
Be aware that the number of wavelet detail scales depends on the size of your image. Mine was 4735x2911 pixels. Important is the size of the scale relative to the picture size.
I would gladly write a tutorial about this. Should I include the teal toning I did in the shadows before applying the wavelet decompose tool, or just focus on the wavelet fun and why it works in these kinds of pictures?
Ah, got it, sorry it wasn’t completely clear to me.
How you author the tutorial is up to you; if you were to use the images from this post as examples, I’d include everything you did to get this look, else you’ll have a bunch of comments to the effect of “it doesn’t look the same!”
Should you decide to author, I’d be happy to proof read, test instructions, and/or ask a bunch of annoying questions to flush out all the details or whatever other help you need.
Ok, I’ll probably go with the Akihabara picture (the first). I have already prepared all the pictures. As soon as I have written something I’ll send it to you (can you read word files?). Thanks for the offer.
As long as the word file can be read by LibreOffice, yes. But the site articles are authored in Markdown, which is a pretty simple plain text format. Are you familiar with markdown? The bonus of markdown is that it can easily be versioned with git.
How is that different from a normal bloom filter? The residual layer is basically a blurred version of the image, and merging that with grain merge should add some light spill around highlights and darken the shadows.
@houz I haven’t looked into the bloom filter yet. But I do not use the residual in grain merge mode I use it in color mode. I use the coarsest scale in grain merge mode.
Hi.
Very interesting.
I tried this technique. I found that using the “residual” layer in Color mode (Color HSV) actually reduces saturation in the image, deafening the original colors. Using one of the higher numbered scales in Grain Merge mode scales is working.
This is a cool technique. Here is my attempt using a night-time photo I took of the Galata Tower in Istanbul last October. I used the G’MIC plugin in GIMP to split the wavelets (Details > Split Details [Layers]) with “9” levels (8 details and the residuals). I then loaded these on top of the original image as layers.
I used “Dodge” merge mode to merge the residual colors onto the original image, setting the residual layer’s opacity to 35. I thought “Dodge” merge mode worked better than “Color” mode, as it really made the more colorful parts of the image brighter.
I then used the “Grain Merge” mode to merge the two coarsest levels of details onto that. In G’MIC it labels them coasest to finest (1 - n), so that was levels 1 and 2. I left the opacity of level 1 at 100%, but reduced level 2 to 50%.
Yes that may happen. Basically you are blurring colors, so if for instance you have a colored wall and a bright white light in front of it, the residual will be a mixture of the color and the white. So, naturally it will be paler, more desaturated. I have also experienced it and I actually like the look on some pictures. But if you don’t like it, just pull the saturation back up afterwards. I have done this on some occasions.
Here’s one with out the grain merges with coarse detail wavelets, but just using “Dodge” blending of the residuals back with the original image. As before, the opacity of the residuals is 35%.
Ok, here the noise is not that strong. That means that the coarse wavelet layers do that, which seems strange to me as they shouldn’t amplify things on such a small scale??
BTW, does anybody know what size the levels in Gimp’s wavelet decompose are?
And what size in the G’mic Plugin?
awesome results!
