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As a photographer, I love photographing through glass, for its distortion and softening effects. In iColorama I can achieve a similar affect by blending or distorting images through photos of glass windows. Here I blended an image of a girl with a serious expression through a photo of a window with broken glass, rusted areas, wire and metal bars suggestive of a prison. There is a dirty handprint visible on the glass, as if someone in the past had been desperate to escape. The hue and tone of the blended image give it a dismal feel. Slight vignetting lends focus to the face and the hole in the window.
I started with this photo from Pixabay, which is a source of copyright-free images.
In iColorama, I used Form/Warp to change the shape of her face (just drag your finger or stylus across the image to warp it). Then I used Brush/Paint, with white paint and a very small, hard round brush to paint in catchlights in the eyes. Then I applied Style/Flow preset 1 at low opacity to smooth the face.
I will blend with this Pixabay photo. I like the broken glass, the rusted areas, the wire and metal bars suggestive of a prison, and the dirty handprint that is visible on the glass, as if someone in the past had been desperate to escape.
In iColorama, using Effect/Blend, I blended the window over the girl. I tried several different blending modes. I used my fingers to resize and position the top image for a good composition.
The blended image appears very flat. I applied Adjust/Tonelab preset 4 for tonal separation (clarity).
I applied Effect/Denoise Smooth Preset, and then Style/Coherence, to smooth the image, which had a lot of graininess.
I used Form/Crop to crop the image. In Adjust /Exposure, I decreased exposure, and darkened the right eye, using an inverted brush mask. I sharpened in Effect/Sharpen at low opacity, and I applied Effect/Raise Preset 2 at low Size, to emphasize the wires, rust and cracks in the window. I want the girl to still look low contrast and smooth, as if smoothed out by the light being dispersed through the glass, yet having the window wires sharp, not being affected by such dispersion.
Viewing the girl through the window, the metal bar between the panes should be dark and solid. However, because of the blending mode we used in the blend step, part of the bar is actually partially transparent. So using Effect/Blend, I blended the image with itself several times, each time moving the top image to a different position, to blend the solid parts of the bar over the partially transparent sections, each time using a new inverted brush mask. This results in a solid bar for its entire length.
To bring out the handprint that is on the window, I darkened it. To do this, I used Adjust/Exposureto reduce exposure, with an inverted brush mask. When painting the brush mask, I used full opacity brush strokes for the fingers, and 50% opacity brush strokes for the palm (so as not to darken the face too much). Now for finishing touches, I used Tone/Duotone preset 1 in Multiply mode at low opacity to give a dismal feel to the image. Then I used Preset/Border Preset 2 at low radius and low opacity for a bit of vignetting, using a brush mask with a big soft brush to protect the face and also the hole in the window. The face and the hole in the window are the focus of the image, and the vignetting lends them focus.
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