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100 in 100: Color Solarization in Photoshop Elements

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100 Photographic Tips in 100 Days, Part III: Day 4

By Mason Resnick

September 4, 2008

For more tips, go to the 100 in 100 Part III Homepage

Welcome to the first week of 100 in 100, Part III! To get things started, we're going to take you back in time, and show you how to create groovy "Old School" darkroom special effects with Adobe Photoshop Elements.

One of the reasons I loved my black-and-white darkroom as a kid was that it was fairly easy to set up and use. I could work by amber safelight, and while the chemistry did give off a certain fragrance, my workspace, which had minimal ventilation, could handle it, and so could I. Color was another story: It required a darker, green safelight that really didn’t help much, and the temperature-sensitive chemistry was much more toxic and required good ventilation (which I didn't have). So, I didn’t do color, and missed out on the benefits of color printing.

And that meant I didn’t get to experiment with color effects. But now I can. Here’s a quick guide to making a color solarization, and then using some Photoshop Elements sliders to take it to the next level of funkiness.

Oops, my camera went off: I must’ve hit the shutter release by accident, although the off-kilter aspects of this shot are actually a bit intriguing. With large, contrasty areas, this is a good photo to play with.

Just as I did with my black-and-white solarization, I simply went to Filter > Stylize > Solarize and got this first pass. Note the outline around the shadow!

I opened the Levels Adjust window. Note how the curve indicating pixel density is only on the left side of the image!

I moved the right slider to the left edge of the curve. This improved contrast but the image is too light.

I then moved the center slider a bit to the left, until I was happier with the overall brightness. And that’s pretty much how to make a color solarization.

But wait. There’s more!

I wanted to explore a little, so I went Enhance > Adjust Color > Hue Saturation and started playing with the Hue and Saturation sliders. As you can see, I went a little wild and came up with this otherworldly scene.