Orton Effect

Have you noticed a difference in some of my photos lately? Scroll down and look closely at the silver, my bed, the Buddha lady, the sunflowers, and the columbines. They all have a dreamy quality, created by the Orton Effect. It also looks fabulous on portraits.

I discovered a tutorial about using Photoshop to change your photos with the Orton Effect. I always considered modifying your pictures as “cheating” somehow, but someone pointed out that they’ve been tweaking things in dark rooms since photography was invented. This is just another way to do it digitally.

The Orton Effect is based on a complicated procedure of taking a series of photos at different exposures using a tripod so nothing moves. Now you can do it in Photoshop with a quick series of layers. It took me about 20 minutes to figure out the method, and then I went crazy, doing about 30 of them in a row. I went through all of my old pictures and deciding which ones would look good with this technique.

If you feel like giving it a try, here’s the tutorial: Orton Effect