Digital Coloring/Layering Warhol Images

by PC Smart

sandbox serendipity (my art blog)

Here is another simple example of how you can change up a Warhol Scanned Image...You will need a basic understanding of Photoshop/Photoshop Elements (or any other layered graphic program such as Digital Image Pro).

I was bored one day and looking through some old photos....found a cool one of a young girl and decided to play around with hand coloring and layering.... I was working on a beginners' article and needed a funky altered effect for old photos. This technique works really well for non-people images also....

(1) is the original image

(2) is the image after scanning on the b/w text setting: Notice the image has been reduced to black on white, details are lost in the conversion (the level of detail lost will depend on your settings and the contrast levels of the original image, you may not be able to do this technique with every photo) After bringing it into elements, I had to save it as a tiff (the default setting these images will save as is usually a .bmp). I used the magic wand to select all the white areas and delete them so only the black remained. Now this is cool by itself...you can print it on a transparency and use it as an overlay or you can print it and color it in by hand with chalks, photo pencils/pens I pulled it into elements and started playing...again because I had nothing better to do that day...
(3)Just for the heck of it, I pulled in the original grayscale image and placed it under the b/w one, it is a subtle effect but sort of cool
(4) in this image I simply went into the color variations menu (enhance>adjust color>color variations) and took the red to the extreme, sort of a duotone effect

(5) back to the original image, I opened a new layer under it and filled it with blue

(6) I decided to take this idea of coloring the image a bit further....using a brush, I opened a new layer (layer style of "color") and started coloring in the b/w image....I wanted to make the colors kind of pop art/stark, almost comic book bright....
(7) then I placed the original grayscale image under the colored one

(8) here is my layers palette for the image with the b/w, color layers and grayscale image. Notice each color has a separate layer, easier for me to edit that way. Note the layer style is "color" for highlighted color layer (brown for column). no need to reduce the opacity when you have a color layer. The layer labeled background is the original grayscale image, background copy is the b/w scan image.