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Wet Plate Collodion Effect

Hand it a photograph and it takes the picture again on a wet collodion plate — an emulsion blind to red and wide awake to blue, so lips go black, a sky goes blank white, and the whole look follows from that one fact. Two fields.

bring a photographicsstillphoto-inprocessimage-promptminutes
ExamplesOne photograph in · one collodion plate out · red black, blue white
in
Red lipstick, blue shirt
in
Poppies and sky

We made two examples, from two different photographs: a woman with red lipstick and a blue shirt, and a border of red poppies under a blue sky. Both pictures were chosen so that the two colours which swap places are in the frame.

Reds go dark, so the lipstick becomes the darkest thing in the face and the poppies and foliage drop in tone. A clear blue sky turns to blank white paper. It is not a sepia wash: the tones genuinely change order. A pastel blue barely moves because it is already mostly white, so look for the effect on saturated blues. It often adds a heavy dark poured edge around the plate; crop it off if you do not want it.

Generated for this library

Input
  Red         the lipstick
  Blue        the shirt is pale blue, background neutral
              grey
  Held still  long enough that one blink shows, and a
              loose strand of hair has drifted
  Photograph  portrait.png (1254 x 1254)

Returned   1 image · 1:1 · the same woman, on a plate

reds       the lipstick is the darkest thing in the
           face, 84 down to 58
blues      the sky in the second run went 151 to 228,
           blank white with no cloud - but the pale
           blue shirt did not move at all
skin       pale and waxy, the cheek unchanged at 192
green      foliage 67 down to 39
plate      a heavy poured edge on both, more than the
           body asks for
words      none, in any script
SKILL.mdthe whole thing, as you would paste it© vibary.ai

You fill in 2 fields — the braced lines at the top. Everything below them is fixed.

  1. 1What in the picture is red, and what is blue
  2. 2How long the sitter had to hold still, said as what moves

Wet Plate Collodion Effect

What this makes

Hand it a photograph and it takes the picture again on a wet collodion plate — an emulsion blind to red and wide awake to blue, so lips go black, a sky goes blank white, and the whole look follows from that one fact. Two fields.

The whole template, in one piece. The steps below are the entire workflow.

How to use it

  1. Copy the whole template with the button above.
  2. Attach the photograph and paste the template in the same message.
  3. Replace the two FIELDS lines. List the reds and blues by where they are, not by mood.
  4. Check the reds first. If a red thing came back as mid-grey, the run made a black and white photograph rather than a collodion one.
  5. Then check the blues. A blue sky should be blank white paper with no cloud in it at all.

What you swap

What in the picture is red, and what is blue
the lipstick is red; the shirt is pale blue and the background is neutral grey
How long the sitter had to hold still, said as what moves
long enough that one blink shows, and a loose strand of hair has drifted

Before it runs

  • A photograph, attached to the message. This re-photographs a particular subject, so there has to be a picture of it.
  • Red and blue in the frame, and knowing where they are. The whole effect is those two colours swapping ends, and a picture with neither in it comes back as an ordinary grey photograph.
  • Tolerance for an unflattering face. Everything reddish in skin — lips, cheeks, freckles, broken veins, a healing scratch — goes dark, which is why everybody in 1860 looks weathered.
  • A subject that could hold still. Seconds-long exposures suited seated people and buildings; they did not suit a dog, a child or a busy street.

When to reach for it

When a portrait or a place should look like it was made in 1860: a cover, a title card, a programme, a wall print. Templates in this genre ask for a vintage wet plate look and hand back a sepia photograph with scratches on it, which is a modern picture in fancy dress — every tone still in its modern place.

What changes

  • One photograph in, one collodion plate out — the same subject on an emulsion that sees a different world.
  • Red records as black and blue records as white, which rearranges every tone in the picture before anything else happens.
  • Skin comes out mottled and weathered, because everything reddish in it goes dark.
  • The exposure is seconds long, so whatever could not hold still is smeared and everything else is razor sharp.
  • One image, no scratches applied as decoration, no border, no frame.

Pairs with