Tutorials > Photoshop
High-Key Portrait Effect
Using channels to produce a fast high-key effect
August 7, 2008
I've had several nice folks email me asking how they can create a portrait effect called high-key.
It's a trick photographers and videographers use when they aim a ton of high-powered lights at their subject in order to produce really high contrast. The face of the subject is super overexposed, which leaves you looking at areas of shadow, like an outline of sorts.
Well, low and behold, as I sat here late last night toiling on the channels chapter of my forthcoming book, I noticed a way to recreate a very similar effect in under a minute. It involves popping into CMYK mode for a just a few minutes and stealing a channel. Read on!
Enter CMYK mode
Let's start off with this beautiful portrait snatched from iStockphoto.com:
Step 1: Choose Image > Mode > CMYK. If your image is already in CMYK mode, you can skip this step. But if it’s not, go ahead and switch it now. CMYK stands for cyan, magenta, yellow, and black. These are the inks used in professional printing.
Step 2: Once you're in CMYK mode, you can cycle through the individual channels by clicking each one in your Channels palette. This is what each channel of our image looks like:
Step 3: Open the Channels palette by choosing Window > Channels, and then click once to select the Black channel.
Step 4: With the Black channel selected, select all by pressing Command + A (PC: Ctrl + A). When marching ants surround your document, copy it by pressing Command + C (PC: Ctrl + C).
Step 5: In the Channels palette, click the CMYK composite channel at the very top so you can see the full color version of your image.
Step 6: Open the Layers palette by choosing Window > Layers, and then paste the black channel into it by pressing Command + V (PC: Ctrl + V).
Step 7: If you need to go back into RGB mode you can do that now by choosing Image > Mode > RGB.
That’s it! Here's the final image:
Folks have been known to labor long and hard over this effect, when they could have stolen the black channel from a CMYK version of the image instead.
Until the next time, may the creative force be with you all :)
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