TECHNIQUE: High Key Photo Effects

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TECHNIQUE: High Key Photo Effects
By Shelleyrae Cusbert 2007
Aug 30, 2007, 03:09

High key photos are characterized by extreme contrast in overexposed images. This can be achieved in camera as well as in photo editing software. It’s a technique that particularly suits portraits and can be a method of saving a not so good image. Traditionally high key images are black and white, but color photographs can also yield wonderful results.

Open a color photo where the face of your subject fills the frame. Duplicate the image to protect the original. Edit> Duplicate Whole Photo

The flaws in this photo are obvious – out of focus, badly exposed with a color cast but I love her expression so I’m going to use a high key effect to rescue the image for use in a layout.
Select Touchup >Exposure and lighting (ALT+SHFT+X)

Select Midtones and push the slider up past 50. You need to push it high enough to keep the barest detail in the facial features but so that the skin becomes white. It is likely this will need adjusting later so don’t worry about getting the perfect setting.

Here I have pushed the slider to 70 and the yellow color cast (caused by tungsten lighting) is very obvious. So I will choose to change this image to black and white in order to get a better effect.
Push the saturation slider all the way to the left.

The image is already looking a lot better than the original but the black and white contrast is very flat.
Move the Shadow slider to the left to increase contrast. Here 35 looks about right

Now manipulate the Midtone value again, here dropping back the Midtone value of 70 to 67 made an observable difference – particularly giving the eyes more impact.

As a final step, manipulate the dark arrow on the Levels histogram by pushing to the right to further enhance the tone on the image.

You can also experiment with adjusting curves. Click Edit curve... The red channel is likely to have the most impact on the image.

When you are satisfied with the result, choose OK.
To touch up small areas, use the Dodge and Burn brush, Touchup>Other Photo Repair> Dodge and Burn Brush. I used the burn tool on this image to darken the iris of the eye on the right to match the other.

In this image I have kept the contrast relatively low and painted in the eye color using the tint brush.

The method is exactly the same for a color image though it can usually also do with a color saturation boost. The layout below shows a high key color image.