I read a blog post by Karen Jones called Tutorial: A Trick with Kill White. I highly recommend it for two reasons. First, it is an interesting way to add contrast to an image that provides a lot of flexibility and control. Secondly, it turned me on to what may be the coolest tool ever! KillWhite.
KillWhite is a Photoshop Plug-in by Mikeal Simburger and Yael Martiz. Read more about the KillWhite filter. Okay, it may not be the coolest tool ever, but it’s close. If your are an illustrator, or you work with line art in any way, this is absolutely indispensable. I could not believe how easy it was to clean up some of my daughter’s pencil drawings and put them on any background I wanted.
A slightly haunting photograph created using the KillWhite PS plug-in
I went through Karen’s tutorial with a couple of pictures and found all types of variations that provided interesting effects. Here is a picture that created using similar steps. See if you can figure out how I did it. There are probably lots of ways to get this effect. I will post the description tomorrow of the steps I took to get this portrait.
Extra points to those of you who got the Hoyt Axton reference BTW.
David Miller Imagery 
Pingback: How to be in a Crowd When You’re All Alone « David Miller Imagery
I’m glad you liked the kill white filter. Thanks for linking back to me.
I know how you did it, but I’ll let you explain it. 🙂 It’s more arty than what I usually use Kill White for, but it’s still awesome. It’s amazing how many things you can use Kill White for with a little thought and creativity. 🙂
Malik, that picture IS haunting. Did you ask her to pose ‘serious’?
This picture was taken some time back. She has different expressions in each one in the series . This portrait had a straight on face angle and an expression that just looked like what I wanted.