strxberryjasmine

step 0: get the right lighting and exposure

in iron lung (either the movie or the game) all photos are made with a dark background and a high contrast spotlight directly where the camera is, barely extending into the background. ie, big bright foreground dark expansive background. the key here is to take a photo kinda replicating that. make sure to have enough background though so you can mimic the marine snow the photos have in future steps.

i feel like this step would be better replicated by irl photos and not in-game photos, but i can't really go out exploring right now so gmod it is. if you can make it work do it.

step 1: gaussian effect (ditherboy)

for the next two steps i'll be used a photo editor called DitherBoy. (it's not free--sorry--and i'm also not sure what else could replicate these effects--also sorry. if any of ya'll really want a photo to be edited in this style you could send a photo thru my asks!)

the first effect is called "Gaussian" under "Error Diffusion". The settings I put for it was: scale 2, distribution spread 9, contrast 36, midtones 55, higlights 69 (nice), luminance threshold 30, blur 20, and depth 3.

you don't have to exactly replicate what i have here, just make sure A) there is a bright section on the object closest to the camera, B) there is a lot of noise in the background, and C) you can still tell what the objects are but you cannot see finer details.

save the image.

step 2: waveform alt (ditherboy)

take the image you saved in step 1 and import it again into ditherboy. this is important because normally you can't stack effects, but you can if you take the static image of an effect and feed it back into ditherboy.

the second and final effect is called "Waveform Alt" under "Glitch Effects". I used the settings: scale 1, modulation blend 4, contrast 50, midtones 5, highlights 12, luminance threshold 100, blur 0, depth 5.

again, you don't have to do exactly what i have here, the main points are just A) make small vertical scanlines and B) make the noise made in step 1 larger. the photo is going to grey out a little but that's ok. we'll bring back the highlights in the last step.

save this image too.

step 3: just a plain ol' photo editor

here's where the magic happens.

i used windows photo editor for this image because that's what i had on hand, but honestly any basic photo editor that has brightness, contrast, and a blur option should do just fine. preferably also having shadows, midtones, and highlights too but that's for fine tuning. (you could just send the image to your phone and use your phone's photo editor too!)

for windows photo editor specifically, i used these settings: brightness 20, contrast 66, shadows 74, and sharpness -20. but let me explain for those who don't have it: basically, we're cranking up the contrast and giving the image a little blur. that's it. the rest is just fine tuning.

just make sure the noise in the background is still visible and the bright highlights on the closest object to the camera get bright again. otherwise? you're done!

yahoo! i hope you guys enjoyed the tutorial i gave and i also hope it's good enough detail.

if anyone doesn't want to get ditherboy, feel free to send me an ask with the photo you want to be edited. i may not do it immediately but most likely i will :) just remember step 0! (also in case this blows up and i get a lot of traction i may stop. but don't be afraid i don't bite)

here's some more photos (one cat--specifically the actual deep sea creature looking one--is not my cat. i found it on the internet. dunno whose cat it is. the other cat is mine, he is named megaroy :) the other pictures are from the same gmod map, Macey State Psychiatric Center by steam user Cool Cat.)