Freelance Graphic Designer London

A gritty, grainy, reportage look and feel to photos

The above picture of a couple has been treated in Photoshop to give it a gritty, grainy, reportage look. This has also been described as the “Dave Hill effect” after a Californian commercial photographer (not the guitarist from Slade) although, of course, this won’t be his exact method.

It immediately looks like a serious photo that could be used with a medical/lifestyle/reportage feature rather than the slick/studio/airbrushed shot that it is.

There’s two main parts to this. First, adding the particularly high contrast, and second, adding the grain.

The contrast can be changed to something more akin to contours on an aerial photo by the High Pass filter. After copying your layer go, Filters > Other > High Pass… and choose a radius you feel comfortable with. Set the Layer Blend Mode of this layer to Hard Light. You will start to notice a hardening of the edges. Copy the layer again to increase the effect. Experiment with this Filter and the Blend Modes of the layers to achieve the effect you want.

The grain can be added to a separate layer of 50% grey, applying Noise and setting the Layer Blend Mode to Overlay.

Cmd/Ctrl-Opt/Alt-Shift-N or click the new layer icon in the Layers palette to create a new layer. Go Edit > Fill (shift-F5) and choose 50% gray from the top drop down menu and Overlay from the second. Now go Filters > Noise > Add Noise… and choose your degree of grain.