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Saw this effect on a image used in a TV commercial.

Liked it so much I spent some time figuring out how to recreate it the best I could manage. It is incredibly easy and the effect gives a very light, clean, soft look to an image I think.
Supplies: Paint Shop Pro. As far as I know, this can also be easily done in Paint Shop 6 as well.
Tim Lister's Halftone Filters: These are free ware filters. They will need to be unzipped and placed in the Plug ins folder for Paint Shop. The pathway for that normally is C:\Program Files\Jasc Software Inc\Paint Shop Pro 7\Plugins.
Image of choice: There are a few of different pictures I will use for this tutorial .. one light, one medium, and one sort of dark .. to helps show the different blend modes and halftone filters. If you would like to use the same ones that I am using, please click the thumbnails below to view at normal size .. then right click and save to your own hard drive.

It works best on light to medium images .. this does not mean it can not be done on dark images ... just means that a dark image would need a few more adjustments (histogram, levels, contrast adjustments, or maybe playing with blend modes) done to it before the effect could be applied and come out as intended.
Let's play ....
1). Open the bookplate.jpg image in Paint Shop. This will be our light image.
2). Go to the Layer Pallet and right click on the background layer. Select 'duplicate' from the drop down menu.
3). Go to Effects/ Plug in Filters/ ECSW Halftone/ Hex Order 2 and use the settings below ...

4). Go to the layer pallet. Click once on the word 'Normal' and select 'Screen' from the pop up that will appear. For those of you that have never done this before ... you have just changed the Blend Mode of the image.

now for a tiny bit of magic ...
5). Go to Effects/ Blur / Gaussian Blur .. and place a 4 in the box.
6). Optional ... The level of Opacity can be played with in the Layer Pallet if you like .. to show more of the color below if you prefer.
Tada ... all done. There are many ways this can be done ... lots of blending modes and such. Below are some examples ..


she looks so soft ... and blends so beautifully with the white background. Can imagine a web site done this way .. nice clean, sophisticated look without being over bearing or a distraction. my personal favorite is the first one .. the Lighten Mode causes a subtle neon glow to the image i thought.
ok .. on to the medium image ...
1). Open the Gdavis.jpg in paint Shop.
2). Go to the Layer Pallet and right click on the background layer. Select 'duplicate' from the drop down menu.
3). Go to Effects/ Plug in Filters/ ECSW Halftone/ Diagonal 2 x 2 and use the settings below ...

Each one of the Half tone filters will produce a different level of black and white. The Hex Order 2 is excellent for lighter images. I found it adds more black then some of the others. The Diagonal 2 x 2 is better for the darker images, as it adds a bit more white to the image. This can be a good thing to know ... since it is the blurred black that allows the color from the bottom layer to show through.
4). Go to the Layer Pallet and set the Blend Mode to Overlay
5). Go to Effects/ Blur/ Gaussian Blur .. and place a 4 in the box.
Below are some examples ...


Ok ... now on to the darker image ..
I tried this effect on the image 'as is' and found it to be too dark .. it would not lighten up well enough. Also I did not care for the fondue pot in the picture either ... so we are going to fix all that.
1). Open bubblemusic.jpg in Paint Shop.
2). Go to the Layer Pallet and right click on the background layer. Select 'duplicate' from the drop down menu.
3). Go to the Layer Pallet again and change the Blend Mode to 'Screen'. Much lighter now. This work pretty well for most dark images.
4). Go to Layers/ Merge/ Merge All Flatten.
Now that we have it the lighter color that we needed, we will get rid of the fondue pot .... or .. whatever that is.
5). Use the eye dropper tool to select a light color that is in the background around the girls in the picture. The color I picked for this tutorial is #FEF6DF .
6). Select the AirBrush tool and place the settings below in the Tool Options Pallet ..

7). Start low in the corner of the image and spray over the fondue pot .. her elbow .. and part of her hand. It does not have to be solid ... and be careful not to get the one girl's braid when you spray.

Now that we have the image ready we can follow the same step as before to apply the soft tone effect to it. Don't worry about the words up in the top right of the image .. these will disappear in the Blend Mode.
8). Go to the Layer Pallet and right click on the background layer. Select 'duplicate' from the drop down menu.
9). Go to Effects/ Plug in Filters/ ECSW Halftone/ Diagonal 2 x 2 and use the same settings we used before. Top number: 209, Bottom number: 39.
10). Go to Effects/ Blur/ Gaussian Blur .. and place a 4 in the box.
11). Go to the Layer Pallet one more time and set the Blend Mode to 'Screen'.

Hope that you have enjoyed this tutorial .. if you have any problems please use the email button below and I will do what I can to help.

lilly

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