Silkscreen Effect - by Spacific Designs.com

SILKSCREEN EFFECT

This Technique can add new Drama and Artistic expression to old photgraphs. The results mimic being printed from a 4 Color press.

1.) Open a Photograph of your choice. (I decided to use the file named Hands.psd, taken from the Samples folder that ships with Photoshop 6.) You can download the same file here for your convenience. Just Unzip the folder, then Double-Click the file and it will Open in Photoshop.)

2.) Go to File > Save for Web. When the Optimizing palette appears, Click the Upper Tab named Optimized. (This will give us a preview of the image as we make our adjustments.) Now, change the file format to GIF, Colors to 4 and adjust the Dither to 0.

3.) Now, click the Save button. (Name and place the file anywhere you like, then Open in in Photoshop.) Here is the screened effect.

Controlling Colors

1.) Using the same starting image, go once again to File > Save for Web. This time Select GIF, then Select Restrictive Web (Located directly Under GIF) and you will notice that the Color Table now displays all the Colors present in the image. Click a Color, then click the Lock Icon (located at the Bottom) and this will Save the Color. Repeat this 4 times.

2.) Now, go back to the Restrictive Web tab and change to Selective. (Notice only the Colors Saved are now present in the Color Table.)

3.) Click the Save Button. (Name and place the file anywhere you like, then Open in in Photoshop.) Here is the New image...That pretty much caps off the Drama part.

Now, on to adding a bit of Artistic Expression!

This image was altered in the same fashion of the Techniques listed above.

Upon Reopening in Photoshop, I went to Image > Mode > RGB Color. (This allows for New layers to be added.) Clicking the Create a new layer button

(located Bottom of the Layers palette) I Created a New blank layer. Next, I Selected the Eyedropper Tool

and clicked once on the "Pink" on the boat to change the Foreground Color to this.

Now, Selecting the Magic Wand tool, I went to the Options bar and set the Tolerance for the tool to 25.

Clicking in strategic area's of the image I Created a Selection and then used Ctrl+Backspace to Fill.

When you are pleased with the results, Use Ctrl+D to Deselect the last Selection. To Finish my image, I adjusted the Opacity to the layer down to 60% to subdue the added color, keeping the Strong color in the boat to accent it as the main subject. Here is the finished results...

This Technique of reducing the Color palette in prints made the Artist / Illustrator Andy Warhol famous during the early sixties.