post processing - What is the Orton Effect and how can I apply it to digital photographs?

I have heard of a photographic effect known as the 'Orton Effect'.

Can anyone tell me what the effect is, what its history is and how I would create it in both film and on my digital SLR?

Answer

The Orton Effect is an image-processing technique resulting in a high-contrast look with a slightly "glowing" appearance. It started as an analogue technique made from two slide exposures of the same scene - one sharp and one soft - but nowadays it's more commonly done digitally. You can find plenty of examples on Flickr.

A basic recipe for doing this in Photoshop (or similar image-editing software) is as follows:

1. Create a duplicate layer (so you have two copies of the image, stacked one directly on top of the other).


2. Set the blend mode of the top layer to Overlay.



3. Apply a Gaussian blur to the top layer - the required amount will depend on the size and subject matter of the image, so experiment.


4. Tweak the opacity of the top layer to taste: somewhere around 50-80% should do it but again it'll depend on the image and how pronounced you want the effect to be.