Any thoughts on how to get this darkroom effect digitally?

In a book I was reading there was a darkroom effect that I liked. I was wondering if anyone had any thoughts on reproducing it digitally.

During the print exposure, the photographer placed a sheet of tissue paper over the photographic paper for a portion of the exposure. The darker areas (in other words, the areas that receive the most light from the enlarger) have a somewhat of blotchy dark halo around them. This is caused by the light of the enlarger being absorbed and diffused by the tissue before exposing the paper.

The lighter areas are unaffected, having no similar light halos - and that makes sense, and the lighter areas have no light to diffuse striking them in the enlarging process.

I tried various overlays with a Gaussian blur, but couldn’t come up with anything satisfactory.

An example can be found here:

http://www.amazon.com …=tissue#reader_​0817453725

It is on page 60, if that link does not open to that page, and the photo is titled "Avenue of trees, Picardy"

Thanks,

Rad

Try ... one of the artistic filters, with same blur, and sepia.. and maybe some dodging and burning...

It looks like maybe a soft blur, glow, and sepia.

This is the print I have been trying to use to get the same effect.

Rad, just to let people know, when I clicked the link it didn't go directly to that page, but at the left there was search results link for "tissue" that got you there!

onOne Phototools has that effect. There is both a Black Soft Filter and White Soft Filter. Here is the Black Soft - Super at 70%.

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Duplicate layer, apply blur, set blend mode to darken. Adjust opacity to taste.

Maybe this.

Byte size: ZERO | Content warning: NOT AN IMAGE

Thanks, of the three, I think that iso's is the closest to what I had in mind. Would you mind listing the steps you took and the software you used?

One of the issues I had was that the Guassian blur does not give the effect I want. What I am hoping for is a blur where the darks bleed into the lighter values, and not the other way around.

Gurus, the question I now have is this: In CS5, is there a blur method that simulates the "in camera blur" where the brighter areas refract around and take over the darker areas of a shot?* So, if PS, or some other dedicated program offers a blur like that, I can duplicate the layer, invert the values, apply the blur and then re-invert the values. This will cause the dark to blur into the light, but not the other way around.

My workstation is going to be offline for a couple weeks, so I can't try this out. If anyone has any additional thougths or experience, let me know.

Rad

*(Imagine a pole in front of a lighted area, with the pole being in the OOF background of your shot. You can see that the pole will appear thinner that it really is, and still have reasonably sharp-ish margins. When I see that, it seems that the light from behind it will move into the dark of the pole, rather than a continious smear of light to dark.)

Radtech1 wrote in post #13343300
Thanks, of the three, I think that iso's is the closest to what I had in mind. Would you mind listing the steps you took and the software you used?

I used Photoshop but to write down every setting would be difficult lol.

I'll upload a zip file with the PSD and the actions used. Basically i made some color overlays, used a vintage effect then did some softening with a Guassian Blur action. Then adjusted everything and stacked layers until it had the desired effect. It might take some adjusting to use on other photos to get them exactly the same. But there are a few variations you can see in the PSD file. There are probably shorter methods to achieve the same or better effect but this is my way of going about it.

http://thump.varzi.net​/imagehost/photo.zip