Sky Captain look

[xli_ne]

I've got some pictures of my hometown's downtown area and wanted play around and give them a look similar to "Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow" Found one picture from the movie that might help. I'm using photoshop and wasn't sure what filters to use to create the look. Any advice would be helpful.

 

[dornoforpyros]

millions of $ worth of CGI work?

ok, that was not helpful. I dunno, it's hard to say exactly without seeing the photos your working from but I'd probably up the contrast, make some selections onto new layers (ie cut buildings & cars and such and give them their own layers) then I'd play around with gausian blur filter and put some white outer glow on some of the objects

 

[mark_wilkins]

1) Desaturate.

2) Up the contrast.

3) Add glow.

4) Add more searchlights!

(A friend of mine who was a compositor on Sky Captain said that "add more searchlights" became a running joke with the director, because he took the position that more searchlights would always be better.)

Also note that some of the darker areas seem to bleed a bit into the brighter areas, which used to happen a lot in printing negative film before anti-halation coatings became common. You can get that effect by inverting the image, converting to Lab color, applying a glow effect in luminosity, converting back to RGB, and then re-inverting.

-- Mark

 

[Blue Velvet]

Here's my quick hack.

1. Desaturate by -40 or so
2. Then Gaussian Blur by 10-30 pixel radius (depending on resolution)
3. Then Edit>Fade Gaussian Blur: Choose Overlay.
4. Adjust Levels or Curves to get the Noir contrasty look
5. Desaturate again.
6. Gaussian Blur by 1-3 pixel radius
7. Then Edit>Fade Gaussian Blur: Choose Normal and fade to about 50% to soften...
8. And yes, add spotlights.

Before and after on a random Googled image of St. Pauls, London. Took a minute or two...

 

[Blue Velvet]

I'm bored and can't sleep. Here's another of Trafalgar Square... I did the same steps as before but also overlaid a solid dark blue adjustment layer in Overlay (blend mode) after all those steps to cool the hues...

If I was going to do it properly then I'd mask off certain areas and do them separately on different layers as someone suggested earlier and also add a number of glow layers as well. But this is a quick and easy way to get started.

 

[xli_ne]

blue velvet, this one is just what i was looking for. very nice.

 

[killuminati]

Blue Velvet that's awesome! I just tried it out on a bunch of photos and it looks really cool.

 

[andiwm2003]

blue velvet, if that's the "quick hack" what does the real thing look like? it's just great!

 

[dornoforpyros]

4) Add more searchlights!

(A friend of mine who was a compositor on Sky Captain said that "add more searchlights" became a running joke with the director, because he took the position that more searchlights would always be better.)

-- Mark

I gotta have more cowbell!

anyways here's my quick & sloppy attempt

 

[mikemodena]

Here's my attempt.. original and shopped

 

[dornoforpyros]

this was a fun little challange

 

[Kingsly]

While we're on the subject: I heard that the glowy look of sky captain was due to the extreme amount of keying that was required, and the glow helped cover up the inevitable problems encountered during a chroma key process.
I don'[t know. Can anyone confirm?

 

[chaosbunny]

That was funny.

Just did this in about 15-20 minutes, added some invading blue monsters.

 

[xli_ne]

Here's my attempt.. original and shopped

also very nice. I need to get my pictures scanned and see what I can do.

 

[gauchogolfer]

That was funny.

Just did this in about 15-20 minutes, added some invading blue monsters.

View attachment 45513

Nice blue monsters
How did you add in the spotlights?
I like the underlying image in your image, btw.

 

[chaosbunny]

Thank you!

Spotlights: I created the triangular forms with the path tool and then converted the paths to a selection (in the path menu, make selection comand) with a smooth border. Filled it with white on a seperate layer and duplicated the layer. On the top layer I applied the filter "minimize" or "maximize" (don't know exactly how it is called in english because I use german photoshop). It should be under "other filters" or something like that. Anyway it makes the white areas smaller. I set transparency to about 50% on the other layer and merged the two. A little erasing here and there with the rubber tool and it was done.

 

[xli_ne]

Here is mine with a pic off of google

 

[gauchogolfer]

Here is mine with a pic off of google

Looks good, but where are the blue monsters?

 

[xli_ne]

Looks good, but where are the blue monsters?

not blue but scary as hell

 

[gauchogolfer]

not blue but scary as hell

You're almost there, you just need to add some spotlights shining on DK and you'll be all set

 

[Macaddicttt]

Here's my attempt. It turned out better than I expected.

 

[yellow]

Here's my quick hack.

1. Desaturate by -40 or so
2. Then Gaussian Blur by 10-30 pixel radius (depending on resolution)
3. Then Edit>Fade Gaussian Blur: Choose Overlay.
4. Adjust Levels or Curves to get the Noir contrasty look
5. Desaturate again.
6. Gaussian Blur by 1-3 pixel radius
7. Then Edit>Fade Gaussian Blur: Choose Normal and fade to about 50% to soften...
8. And yes, add spotlights.

Well, nice jorb, BV! Even sans spotlights it looks nifty!

 

[xli_ne]

another cause I was bored at work.

 

[yellow]

Is that Chicago? It looks like Chicago.

I'm also bored at work. Clearly.

For the life of me I cannot figiure out how to make decent spotlights. I tried following chaosbunny's directions, but I think perhaps he/she is using a post-PS 7.0.x version, as the path tool only allows me to draw boxes for some reason.

Anyone got any tips (for a retard)?



Hmm Too much red..

 

[chaosbunny]

Is that Chicago? It looks like Chicago.

I'm also bored at work. Clearly.

For the life of me I cannot figiure out how to make decent spotlights. I tried following chaosbunny's directions, but I think perhaps he/she is using a post-PS 7.0.x version, as the path tool only allows me to draw boxes for some reason.

Anyone got any tips (for a retard)?

Hey, looks nice when applied to World of Warcraft!
I've got a lvl 60 druid myself. Have to try this with some of my screenshots too.

Concerning the spotlights maybe I did not give the correct name of the tool in english, I'm using the german version like I wrote. But I'm pretty sure it is called path tool in english and this should work with version 7 too. It is the one with the red arrow. Or alternatively use the one with the blue arrow in the screenshot.

Hope this helps.