The Orton Effect
It’s something you’ve likely already seen in use, but weren’t sure what to call it. Now you do.
The Orton Effect was created in the eighties by Michael Orton, a Canadian landscape photographer. It was very popular when film was in its prime, and remains a favorite effect today for adding an ethereal, dreamy look to landscapes. Michael took two (sometimes three) slides of the same subject and “sandwiched” them in layers. When projected, the images combined in a similar way as they would if a double exposure had been taken. The result could then be printed using the cibachrome process.
His technique was to take a normal exposure, and one or more in which the image was defocused, all slightly overexposed. When combined, the images were both sharp and soft at the same time producing a “painterly” effect. It quickly became popular amongst landscape photographers, and also worked well for many other types of images.
The effect can also be created directly in the camera using negative film through the use of a double exposure. A tripod comes in handy for this, but with skill and a little photographic slight-of-hand, it can also be done hand-held.
Old is new again
With the advent of digital photography, this effect is even more accessible than ever. It can also be done in-camera with those digital cameras that support double-exposure in much the same way as with film. You can even use bracketing to automatically control the exposure between shots. If you’re shooting handheld, set your camera to manual focus and take the defocused shot first, aligning the center focus point with a specific feature within the scene. Then flip the focus switch to automatic and take the second shot aligned to the same point. You of course need to do this with the double exposure feature set to on. If you’re shooting Raw or Raw+JPEG, this will combine the two images into a single Raw file.
If you don’t have this feature on your camera, no worries. You can use the same method above to create two separate exposures, and if your camera supports “Image Overlay” you can combine them in the camera. However, this won’t produce a Raw image the way the double exposure technique will.
If you have neither of these features, or just wish to apply the effect in post processing, you have even more options.
Using Camera Raw and Lightroom
This effect is actually built right into CR and LR. It’s called “Clarity”, and if you set the Clarity Slider (Located in the Basic panel) to a negative value, it will give you a similar effect. It’s based on the High Pass filter, as are many effects in PS (Photoshop) CR and LR. Used alone the results are not ideal as it tends to eradicate a lot of fine detail. However, you can combine it with an increase in Texture (also located in the Basic panel), which helps to bring back the detail. You can also try Sharpening as well, using a high radius.
But like the original Orton Effect of blending “Layers” of imagery using multiple slides, the best way to apply this effect is in PS through…layer blending.
Using Photoshop
To do this, you start off with the focused layer as your background layer, and place the defocused layer on top of it in the stack. This could be an actual defocused image produced in the camera, or a copy of the focused layer with any of the 8 different blur filters applied. The best way to approach this is to convert the layer to be defocused into a smart object and apply these filters as “Smart Filters”. This way, you can experiment with the amount, radius and other settings to achieve the effect you want. Sadly, “Lens Blur” does not work as a smart filter, and “Smart Blur” does not work on a 16-bit image. But Gaussian Blur works under both these circumstances, and is one of the most popular options as it includes a preview so that you can see the results before you apply it.
Once you have the defocused layer to your liking, it’s time to do the blending. Here is where PS really shines, because instead of just changing the layer opacity to do the blending, you can use any of the layer blending modes. “Lighten” and “Screen” work best, but others are worth trying as well as they can also yield some interesting effects even if not true to the Orton Effect.
So, just to summarize…
- The Orton Effect can be applied in-camera to Raw images using double exposure
- It can also be applied in-camera to JPEG images using the Image Overlay feature
- During Post-processing, it can be applied in CR and LR with limited options
- It can also be applied in Photoshop with many more options using different blur effects layer opacity and layer blending options.
Dreux Sawyer and Nath Kaplan are both members of the Essex Photo Club
