A lot of people have been asking how I edit the photos here on my blog and although the process is not entirely something I came up with on my own, I’ve been a little hesitant in sharing it until today. It’s called Cross-Processing and the moment I saw photos around the web that had that effect, I immediately fell in love with how it looked so I researched about it and the method has been saved in my Actions folder ever since.
1. There are tons of tutorials out there already but this is how I specifically work on mine. I find this effect much better applied if the photo has strong contrasting colors so what I do after opening the image is duplicate it (Ctrl + J) and Overlay it to the image below (Ctrl + Alt + O). You will notice that the image became more vibrant after that but you can still adjust the layer’s opacity until you get the contrast you want.
Adjust the contrast and liven up your image
2. Then the actual cross-processing begins. Click the New Adjustment Layer icon in the Layers palette and select Curves. When the Curves window pops up, you will see a drop-down box with the label ‘Channel’. Click on it and select the Red channel first.
3. While in the Red channel, drag the top right corner a little to the left. Then drag a couple more points on the curve so that it will look like a subtle S. Once you’re finished, it should look something like the figure below. What this does is darkening the shadows and brightening the highlights of the Red channel.
Drag the line to form a curve on the Red channel
4. Click on the drop-down box and select the Blue channel and drag the top right point downwards and the bottom left point a little upwards. Go to the Green channel and make another subtle S curve but slightly different from the one in the Red channel. To make it a little easier for you, just follow the configurations in the image below. Make sure that you don’t touch the curve in the RGB channel.
Blue channel and Green channel
5. After you click OK, change the blending mode to Color in the Layers palette and you’re good to go.
Sometimes when I’m still not happy with the result, I adjust the curves or play with the saturation and contrast of the image. The actual cross-process ends here, but you can have several different outputs depending on how you adjust the curves, you can even add other effects to it if you want.
The final result
39 REPLIES
wow! :D binunyag na secret! woot :) yung sa caricature naman,hehe
Nyahaha. Di naman siya super secret. Hehehe.
Yung sa caricature…. hmmmmm. Wag muna. Wahahaha.
ayun!! hahaha. salamat :D pwede na ako magcrossprocess ng manu-mano. ang alam ko lang na cross processing eh sa picnik.com. pagsinisipag ako, ang ginagawa ko para maging vibrant is duplicate tapos multiply tapos soft light. :D
Wahehe. Ako din isa sa faves ko ang Soft Light pati Screen kapag kelangan paputiin ang sarili ko. Hahaha.
nice one robbie! this is really helpful! :D
Hi, this is pretty helpful. Thanks! I love your blog. Been reading it for a while now :)
hearts,
Melai of Style and Soul
Thanks Melai! =)
Among all other Photo effects that can be played out by adjusting levels and curves in Photoshop – this one is the best!
In CS5, the effect is already given at Curves>>Presets>>Cross Process.However you would have to adjust it a bit to make it appear more vibrant.
Well, I don’t have PSCS5 yet sooooooo I don’t have any presets to fall back to. Hahaha. But yes, this is one of the best ways to spice up a photo! :D
This is very helpful… thanks!!!
Wow. That’s why. I still haven’t tried it yet, but knowing you, I know that it’ll work perfectly. I’m trying my best to enhance my blog’s images in such manner, and when I finally got it… It’ll be all thanks to you, Kuya Rob. :)
No prob Zia! Hope it helps. =)
laking tulong nito. Kaso wala pang photoshop sa pc ko. wahahahah.
Toinks! Wahahaha. Madami naman dyan nyan sa tabi-tabi. Wahahaha.
hey, robbie. thanks for responding to my inquiry about this :) i really appreciate it. this is pretty cool. di ba ganito din yung sa lomo effect.parang may napanood ako na sa ‘curves’ din yung ginagamit. Galing!
No prob Ron! Yung sa lomo I still haven’t tried it but I guess adjustments lang din yun. =)
woooow thanks robbie for this! :D sobrang helpful :)
Nice Thanks for sharing!!!
WOOT! WOOT! Kuya Robbie!
Thanks, very helpful ito. Di kasi ako marunong mag-photo shop. Yikes! I’m so shy for this. XD But this year, isa sa mga to-do list ko is to learn how to use it. Good luck to me. & sana more tutorials pa in the coming posts.
Madali lang ang Photoshop! Nung una medyo intimidated ako sa kanya pero kelangan mo lang masanay sa paggamit nito. =)
Ma-try nga. As in ngayon. Hinde, as in now na.
Now na now na. Eto na, ginagawa ko na. Now na!
parekoy, i’d like to enrol for a photoshop crash course coz i’m on my one month vacation. unfortunately,microcadd’s scked does not suit my time frame. can you recommend any other schools where i can enrol to?
Hmmmm. I’m not sure if I know any. Try looking for some sa Sulit.com OR you can just look for online tutorials! Wala pang gastos masyado. :D
yes. hong bait nomon ni robbie! :D
Witwiw thanks for sharing this Rob!! I’ve been wanting to ask you how you process your photos, gondo gondo kasi. I usually use actions na lang kasi hindi ako marunong haha
I love the two steps you’ve mentioned! :D Pero di ako makapaniwala na you’re doing just the same as I do on my photos. Mas maganda pa rin yung sayo. Haha. More on Reds and Yellows kasi ako. Never tried Green and Blue. Makapag-experiment nga. Yung sakin pag super panget quality ng photo inaauto-contrast ko muna bago doublehin ang layers and overlay tapos I’ll add more Reds. Ewan ko ba. HAHA.
At ngayon ko lang nalaman na Cross processing pala ang tawag dun. :D Thanks Robbie!
I was wondering too! Too bad I’m using Gimp so walang red/blue/green channel pag nagcu-curve ako. Or most likely, di ko lang alam. Halos lahat din ng awesome tutorials dito gusto ko gawin kaso di ko alam kung pano yun itra-translate sa Gimp. Malas. San ba ako makakakuha ng photoshop?
I don’t use auto contrast eh… mas comfy ako na manual…. except kapag Overlay. Hahaha.
Ayos. Salamat sa pagshare. Pero pano naman sya gawin sa lightroom? Hmmm…
Yay! Thanks for this Robbie! Such a big help. :D
Awesome! Thanks for the quick tutorial, I love your blog even more now haha. ^_^
You are great Rob! I am lovin’ ya BIG TIME!
Ganun pala un. Nice, ang galing. :)
Finally got to use this tip of yours. I hope you don’t mind. :)
I applied this to 100++ pictures so i figured saving this setting as a preset curves adjustment would make sense.
Again, thanks. this was really helpful. :)
No problem! I’m glad you found it helpful. =)
You might want to try out the awesome Lightroom3 . Pretty good for post-processing too. :D
i love this tutorial. thanks for sharing this.
nice! love it :)
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[...] today I read a tutorial from the Creative Dork. Finally, Robbie shared how he post-process his photos. I have been wanting to ask him but I kept on forgetting about it and the post came [...]