Duncan Waldron

Since discovering the Orton Effect, I have realised that it doesn’t suit all images (thank goodness!). However, some images that I would have expected to look good, just didn’t, so I tried an experiment. Going on the principle that if you use a diffuser over the camera lens, the highlights spread, and if you use it under the enlarger lens when printing, the shadows spread, I decided to try inverting the tones before and after applying the Orton Effect. The results are quite interesting:

Original image

Normal Orton Effect applied

“Inverted” Orton Effect applied

With the classic Orton Effect, there is a certain muddiness, whereas the “inverted” version is more glowing. I will do some more work on this, but thought I’d publish this first trial just now.

EDIT: 5th June 2009

I have now settled on 4 versions of this effect, which follow these approximate stages. For anyone trying to follow Peter Hill’s method and relate it to mine, I only duplicate the layer once before blurring, blending etc. Unless you want to preserve the original background layer to check what’s going on, it’s a redundant step:

1:

duplicate layer – blend:screen – flatten
duplicate layer – gaussian blur – blend:multiply – flatten

2:

duplicate layer – gaussian blur – blend:screen – flatten
duplicate layer – blend:multiply – flatten

3:

negative image
duplicate layer – blend:screen – flatten
duplicate layer – gaussian blur – blend:multiply – flatten
negative image

4:

negative image
duplicate layer – gaussian blur – blend:screen – flatten
duplicate layer – blend:multiply – flatten
negative image

There are 2 essential differences between these methods: whether the highlights or the shadows are spread (blurred), and a difference in how the midtones are affected.

Here are the 4 effects compared:

If any of this doesn’t make sense, let me know :) Now, go forth and multiply (& blur & blend…)!