Black Glass

this is a difficult one to make and i'm certainly not there yet. so, i'm posting this up for some help.

black glass, really good black glass can make for extremely interesting looks. especially, if things behind the glass are colorful and well lit.

the problem duplicating this look in FF or photoshop, is the extremely low refractive index (i think that's the right term here). there just isnt that much light coming through the glass to get a good refraction on. therefore, most attempts look like just dark lighting. it's hard to get the glass part of the look.

so, any ideas on this would be helpful. i'm posting one example image of where i am so far and may just post the whole filter later on.

if you look at the handle on steve's cup here, that's sort of the look, but less opaque. you would have refracted highlights on the objects behind the glass, but reflections, modified somewhat by the stuff behind the glass, on the glass surface, but also of a low intensity. it's quite tricky, at least for me.

hmmm, hadnt thought of using profile gradients. i try to stay away from those because how badly they can break non-square images. but, i may have to try anyways.

and as for the smoked glass remark, yes, sort of. i'm a bit ambiguous yet as to which way to go. i could do it so that the black glass is seemingly over the import, or, i could do it so the black glass IS the objects in the import. either way shld be interesting. in the image i posted, there's sort of a bit of both and that may be part of the problem.

and yes, it's a surface filter, currently. not sure how the profile grads would 'get it to conform to the object shape...'. care to elaborate on that?

in 'shark tank'? hmm, have to look at that again, then.

well, i used the cup image on purpose because of the predominant white of the cup. i wanted to turn the cup into black glass...mostly. like i say, i'm still ambivalent about where to go with this. i've seen some of your glass filters that basically turn an object in an image into almost crystal and that's sort of the look i was going for, but black crystal. the look i'm thinking of is almost an obsidian black but with a glass reflective/refractive and opacity quality to it. i've seen it in real life and it's quite a stunning effect, but it's eluding me here in FF.

here's a link to a site about black glass. these arent quite it, but it will sort of give you an idea. on this first one, scroll down to the image and look at the bottle on the left. that's as close to the look as i can find so far on google: http://www.bottlebooks.com/blglssin.htm

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StevieJ wrote: I think you want somthing like this.....only much darker and the image composed in glass instead of embedded in it???

I do!?! Either way, I would really like to have something like this... this is lovely, Steve. Is this one downloadable somewhere?

Well, it's beautiful... I look forward to being able to use something like this

putting this one on the back burner, steve. too many pots in the fire right now. need to go back to some of the basics and get a better understanding of some things.

so, thanks for the help and suggestions and feel free to do a 'black glass' of your own. then i can steal, err, check out your concepts

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Kraellin wrote: putting this one on the back burner, steve. too many pots in the fire right now. need to go back to some of the basics and get a better understanding of some things.

Oh, that's too bad... this and the snowy one are going to the waiting room
Is the waterfall still waiting too?

BTW, you got mail

steve, here's black glass applied to the yellow flower. looks better on this than on the cup, like you said

yeah, a little metallic and a little glass.

and re carl's filter, yeah, there's about 3000 filters i need to study