Modern American Hardcore

             

For this image I chose a photo I had taken at a hardcore show on March 5^th, the photo focuses on the three guys “hardcore dancing.”  I chose to emphasize these figures by using the color-layering technique.  This technique required me to cut out the three show-goers and make 13-14 layers for each, once I had the layers I would manipulate each using the Threshold Image Adjustment option.  This caused all of the layers to turn to black and white with different degrees of the two colors in each, I would want my top layer to have very little black in it and then it would increase throughout the layers until the bottom layer of the image was completely black.  Once I had completed the Threshold adjustment to all the images I would go through and delete the white out of each layer using the magic wand tool, I would then “CNTRL-click” the layer photo in the layer menu which would select the black parts still in the image, and would use the “CNTRL-Delete” option to fill the black with the color I had selected.  I chose the colors blue, purple and red to emphasize each of the figures; I would choose the darkest tone of each of the colors for the top layer and then lighten the color as the layers went down, until the layer that was fully black would have the lightest tone of the color.  When I finished doing this to all three of the figures I cut out, I duplicated the background layer of my image.  To the top background layer I added two new adjustment layers, the first one being the “Hue and Saturation” adjustment in which I de-saturated the photo changing it to black and white; I also chose to darken the “Lightness” option on this image until I had a darker background in comparison to the figures.  The next adjustment layer was a “Photo Filter” layer, where I chose to put a red filter over my image; I used the filter at 77% of the color.  After changing the adjustment layers I chose to use an “Artistic Filter” on the background in order to differentiate it from the figures, I chose the filter “Sprayed Strokes” which caused the background to almost look painted.  After doing all these changes I decided to add one more final touch to my image, I found an image of the “American Hardcore” documentary DVD and cut the main title out of the image.  I chose to blend this image onto my background layer by making a new layer with the American Hardcore text on it, I put it right on top of the background adjustment layers and chose the “Apply Image” option, I chose to “apply” the image using a color burn technique which allowed some of the red to show through.