Here is one of several pictures I took last Sunday during a walk in the hills of the Peak District of the UK. For those who would like a bigger version to play with, there is one at http://homepage.ntlworld.com/malfirth/edale050605-06big.jpg

Whilst playing with the original, and more by accident than design I came across this way of making a more surreal version.

Make two adjustment layers: Levels and Gradient Map.

Levels Settings: 0, 0.73, 255
Gradient Map: Metals - black, white, black

....a more surreal version.Intersting, Mal. Looks like something from a film I saw the other day (the guy was an artist, died etc..(Robin Williams)...). How about an orange sky and purple grass?

Rô

great picture! this is another that is almost a painting by itself. and nice effect with the greys. looks like it's going to storm soon.

Intersting, Mal. Looks like something from a film I saw the other day (the guy was an artist, died etc..(Robin Williams)...). How about an orange sky and purple grass?

Rô

Didn't quite get the colors as you asked, but how about this for weirdness (courtesy of the Randomise button on the Gradient Mask layer). :dizzy:

Cool, Mal :cool: :cool: :cool:

Think you've found yourself a new style!!

Rô

Mal,

nice effect! and in looking at that last one, how about doing a twilight effect on that image.

Craig

I did this one in Painter using sketch filter, and then adding water color washes. I added an edge, and then texture.

Cathy

Just great, Cathy :thumbsup: :thumbsup:

Rô

very nice, cathy! an amazing photo is getting some amazing treatments!

Craig

Thanks Ro and Kraellin...I am finally getting into Painter and exploring what it can do. What fun.

Cathy :wavey:

Loved this photo, but all i have done is change the back ground to black ( i have just followed Russell Browns tutorial on selections and wanted to have a go ) I would of liked to put a ray of light in to it, but unfortunately didn't know how without getting another photo and cutting and pasting, so if any body knows how to please let me know or if there is a tutorial i use ps7

palms1,

dont know what it is in Photoshop, but in Paint Shop Pro it's effects/illumination for 'lights' and 'starburst'. included some examples here.

Craig

Hi Mal,

Great looking tree.

Lost a lot of detail resizing it for posting, none the less the idea is there.

Used low opacity brushes, masks and adjustment layers to give it an overall slightly painted look and highlight the grass foreground. Chose the color scheme to reflect the colors of the Mars landscape.

Paris

Paris and Craig: Very very nice effects. Each one evokes a different mood.

Cathy :nod:

thanks, cathy :)

had i been serious about the illumination, i'd have used something other than just the black background; maybe a starry background, or mal's 'stormy' background, or one of my own.

and mal, i think i'd frame that photo just as it is, or your 'stormy' one. it's a great shot. it would also look great with that laser treatment that was popular on the west coast in the mid to late 70's.

Craig

edit: oh, and cathy, what is a "Giclee" image? (sorry, peeked at your profile ) :)

Thanks Craig it was what i had in mind, found the Photoshop equivellant under
Filters > render > lighting effects or lens flare

not sure which one i liked the best but i think it will be the third one closely followed by the first

Giclee is a term used for art that is printed on canvas. Many artists have their fine art originals professionally scanned and reproduced on large format printers. In many art magazines you will see artists selling enhanced, signed Giclee prints of their work. I quess they make more by selling reproductions of their originals. I run one of these printers and the results are quite impressive. What is nice about the process is that you can paint over the print and make it as look almost as good as the original. This site is informative.http://www.novaspace.com/AUTO/Giclee.html

Cathy :classic:

cool beans, palms1 :)

cathy,

ok, so giclee (zhee-CLAY) is basically an inkjet type of printing. but i didnt get one part of what you said... 'What is nice about the process is that you can paint over the print'. um, when you say 'paint over the print', you mean you could take an existing print and add this giclee process on top of it, or something else?

Craig

I am inspired by all the great color moods that are showing up.

Craig: After the canvas print is stretched onto a frame, we put a coat of laquer on it to seal the ink (it is water base). Then we use gel medium (it drys clear) for texture and acrylic paint to finish it up. You can see what I do at http://windsorvanguard.com/index.php. All of the canvas art that you see was printed and then enhanced.

Cathy :)

I used Mystical Lighting for a mist effect, then a motion blur to soften the forground. Some curve adjustment layers to lighten and darken areas, and then a hue/sat layer. I added an edge, and some texture. I know I forgot some steps.

Cathy

cathy,

nice color and texture mix :)

re the giclee, ok, thanks. so it is printed first in a more or less normal inkjet manner and then treated separately. cool :)

so, if i wanted something like this done to a print of my own, i would contact you? ;)

Craig

Here is my attempt using my new Trimoon Tutorial CD's...

Nice job Steve. :pleased:

Craig: Danny Raphael has a thread going on.."Photo art, Fine Art, Printing, Canvas, Mounting, Stretching". It has some sites that you might be interested in.

Cathy :grin:

Hi Mal,

From over here it's hard to believe that anything can be that green.

I saw your picture as an old fashioned sepia/black and white photo.

To do this I first used two Hue/Saturation Layers to convert to Black and White. I then Selected the sky and applied a Curves Adjustment Layer to it to bring out the clouds. This was followed by another Curves Layer with a Radial Gradient to emphasise the tree.

I then created a neutral gray Layer in Overlay mode to use for my dodging and burning.

I blured the landscape beyond the ridge to make the foreground stand out more and added a Colorfill Layer to give a warmer "Sepia" tone to the image.

Finally I added a Copy Layer in Luminosity Mode to add a bit of sharpness.

I toyed with adding a few lightning bolts in the left background but somehow they didn't seem to work so I gave up on that idea.

Hope you like the result.

Regards

Con

cathy,

ok, i'll quit bugging you and read that other thread ;)

nice, tiger :)

con, i love that one. great contrasts! and yes, the lightning prolly would have been 'too busy' for that image. great job!

Craig

Con, that came out real good. :thumbsup: Great stuff!
You're right, lightning wouldn't combine with the 'mood' of the image.

Rô

Thanks Craig...I might go back and try the tiger again. :)

Nice work Con. It has a very moody atmosphere. :)

I though I would try a montage. I used the threshold to make the picture look like an ink drawing, and then used several photos and blending modes to make the montage.

Cathy :)

Thanks everyone for your marvellous contributions to this thread, you've inspired me to try a watercolor rendition. I just used Filter>Artistic>Dry Brush then fiddled about with Shadows/Highlights (twice), saturated the reds and yellows a little and tweaked the Levels.

very nice, mal. suitable for framing.

Craig

I love this photo Mal, thanks for letting us play with it.

I cropped, flipped and did some colour adjustments in Photoshop then cloned over the Artists Canvas texture in Painter IX with Den's Oil Brush Messy and Funky Chunky, and Jeremy Sutton's Mish Mash and Mish Mash Scumble brushes. Did some slight blending of the sky with Den's Oil Brush Blender. Back to Photoshop for some sharpening and texture enhancements.

Larger version available here: http://www.pbase.com/pamsav/image/44769003/original

beautiful! i wish i had 10 times the space in my house. nine tenths of it would be a gallery.

Craig

I prefer autumn :)

Really nice rendition Drach! Thought I'd try one myself.

Cheers
Dave

wonderful creations, everyone! :nod: ... @Con: wooooo, it turned out just great! :bigthmb:



mine is just Painter and Photoshop...

:wavey:

Mal,

Yet another beautiful image of a beautiful region!

I upped the saturation of yellows and reds and blues, ran Sketch->Notepaper (using green/ dark orange from the image) on a layer with a Color Dodge layer above, duped the results and ran Fragment on one copy, then Dry Brush, added a layer mask and masked out the outlines. Then ran Blur->Zoom on the top layer and set the blend mode to Color Burn.

For some reason, the stark beauty of this picture reminds me of the Serengeti..not that I've ever been there mind you.

Cheers
Dave

wow! wonderful tones, duv. the inclusion of the animals is an interesting touch also.

the cat doesnt quite look right, though. he looks a bit 'pasted in'. and there's some extra 'stuff' around the zebra legs that needs to be blended out. otherwise, an excellent rendition! (sorry, i know this isnt the critque forum, but it's such a great piece i just felt i had to say something)

Craig

Inclement weather.

Steve

Thanks Craig. You're right. I tend to put more stock in the idea and less on execution. I think or hope that I would spend more time if I was working from scratch with high resolution images. Anyhow, your comments are well taken and appreciated.

Steve, nicely done!

Cheers
Dave

Steve
loved your rendition, know the weather well :nod:

palms

Thanks all, for your comments on my lousy weather rendition. 8-)

Steve

nice steve. did you use one of those lightning plugins or draw it in yourself?

duv,
i just HAD to print yours out. and that meant i had to 'clean' it a bit first. i blended in the cat a tiny bit. and, the zebra legs were kind of funny. there were more legs than those zebras would account for :) so, i removed the extras and did a tiny bit of blending. for a last step i ran a 'soften' once to remove the sharpening blocks.

this .jpg isnt quite as sharp as the 'cleaned' one, but it mostly shows it.

i did the print on glossy photo paper. it came out spectacularly! so, thanks mal and duv! (btw, this is for my private use only, so i hope this is ok..and if it's not, why ppphhhhtttt! ).

oh, and i took the print out to my folk's place today and showed them. my dad thought it was a picture taken in africa :)

Craig

Hi Craig, glad it worked out for you. Cleaning things up sure helped. Thought you might be interested in seeing the source images. They're from Adobe Stock Images that comes with CS2. And the Zebras do seem to have too many legs!

Cheers
Dave

thank you, duv. i dont normally try to 'improve' someone else's rendition when it's posted here, but i just really liked yours and wanted to print it.

and thanks for posting those images.

Craig