Add grit & contrast with a bleach bypass

A bleach bypass effect might sound like the sort of cosmetic surgery that costs thousands and is ‘enjoyed’ by the rich, famous, and stupid, but actually it’s a simple technique that’s great for creating contrast in an image, writes Andrew James. In this video tutorial I take a tonally flat interior dereliction image and give it a bit of processing pizzazz, starting in Lightroom before moving into Photoshop.

Published in Imaging Skills
6 Comments
  1. Your artistic eye definitely shows in this tutorial AJ, something that I struggle with. I would never have thought of this process at all. I think I have a photo somewhere that I can try bleach bypass on and if I can find it and it works, I’ll share.

  2. Similar to Paul, I would not have thought of using this technique which most definitely works. I may have looked what Color Efex may have offered but gone no further. Cheers AJ

  3. Just had a bit of a play and guess what? diffuse glow was taken out of photoshop in 2014!!

  4. I’m back again and so is diffuse blur!! you have go into preferences/plugins and tick show all filters. Well that was a learning curve!!

    • That’s interesting! As far as I’m aware that should be ticked as default. I wonder why yours wasn’t! Anyone else have the same issue as Barry?

  5. Just trying out your technique for latest fotomission and I had the same issue as Barry

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