Free Photoshop Tutorials

Solarisation was originally used to describe the effect observed when extreme over exposure of the negative in the camera. The effect generated in the dark room was then called pseudo-solarisation.

In this tutorial we will achieve the same goal but thanks to Photoshop we will “solarise” the image with much less trouble!

 First off, lets choose a picture to apply our simple effects to.

Duplicate the original background image and you should have Background Copy or Layer 1 Copy

Invert the Background Copy layer by pressing CTRL+i or choose Image/Adjustments/Invert

Change the Background Copy layer transparency mode to Exclusion.

Create level adjustment layer Layer/New Adjustment Layer/Levels

Check the ‘Use Previous Layer to Create Clipping Mask’ check box, after clicking on OK you can change the levels in accordance with your image/lighting, etc.

Create a new Hue/Saturation Adjustment Layer and reduce the saturation to make the image black and white

The image is now solarised