: How would one create a high contrast, grainy look in Photoshop? I was wondering if any kind souls out there might help me with recreating something similar to the effects on the images below:

@Megan533

I would use pattern to make the stripes, other than that the process is similar to Storm Brewer's addition to the Ashlee Palka method.

Sample image, credit goes to @tylerbarnes from Unplash.




Create a new document with 1x8 pixel with transparent background.





Zoom in and fill the first 4 pixels in white.





Go to Edit > Define Pattern... and name it "stripes" or whatever you want and that's it, we created or stripes pattern, you can close the document without saving it, once we define it as pattern it will be saved on your pattern list.





Now open the sample image and from your layers tab, click on icon create new fill or adjustment layer > Hue/Saturation...





On the properties window, check the option "Colorize" and ajust the values with the blue you want i used Hue: 200, Saturation: 20 and Lightness: 0, then you can close the properties window.





On the Layers tab, change the bleding mode of the "Hue/Saturation 1" to "Hard Light", now the "blue effect" looks better.





Select your image layer "background", right-click > duplicate Layer... name it whatever you want...





Now drag the duplicated layer above "Hue/Saturation" layer. Change the blending mode to "Color Dodge" and "Opacity" to 50%





Click on icon "add layer mask" and press "Ctrl + I" to make it black





Select your Brush tool and change its size and hardness, also make sure to set your brush color to white and that your "mask" is selected on the layer tab. Now you can start painting the areas you want to highlight, i highlighted the soldier and some parts of the bottom...






Now we have to add the stripes pattern, create a new layer and change the "Opacity" to 5%





Go to Edit > Fill... or press "Shift + F5", on the Fill window, in "Contents" select "Pattern", Select the pattern we created in "Custom Pattern" and click ok






Finally, the result...

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@Michele215

To achieve a "high contrast, grainy, almost cool grey-blue look", try following these steps:


Choose your image. I chose one of my favorite bouldering pics.





Use a couple of adjustment layers. For this look, I used levels and Hue/saturation.




Here's how I used levels. Really play around with this adjustment (it's my favorite one). You can take an image from flat to almost polarized if you want. It's a really rad feature.



Here's how I used the hue/saturation adjustment. For this look, you probably just want to lower the saturation until it looks roughly like how you want.




Now create a new layer and color some shade of blue. You probably want something trending towards the navy range so it's not too bright. Now take the opacity of that layer way down. I used 10%.





Now for that grainy look. For this, I just used the sharpen tool. I like to use a big brush size and do little sections at a time so I can see how it looks. You can go over the same section multiple times to get a grainier look. For this image I passed over the climber about 5 times and the landscape roughly 3.




Hopefully this helps you get the look you're going for. :)

To add those "electronic frequency" lines, you could overlay a photo similar to this one



Desaturate the lines and apply an overlay to achieve this effect

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