Had a day off today, so visited a local spot, Bolton Priory, (known as Bolton Abbey by everyone local).

Thought this picture of the 12th Century priory would be a good image for some of you Art guys to work on.

Not my strength really, would like to see what someone with imagination can do, (and I know you guys have got lots of imagination.)

ah gary,

you tempt me strangely. the real challenge here would be to restore this building to its pristine condition. not sure i'm up for that one ;) but it does tempt me :)

you know, you could very well be starting a whole new class of restoration here ;)

Craig

Thanks Craig, interesting thought,my own thoughts run to either a line drawing, or replacing the sky with something stormy, then making it greyscale, sort of a Gothic look.

But for this week I'm gonna be out and about, so I won't have time to put my ideas into practice just yet.

I've been to Bolton Abbey lots of times since I was a kid, and strangely enough this is the first time I've had a camera with me. Only a 3M point and snap, so resolution's not great, but a really beautiful day, (about 90 degrees hot), and the shot came out better than my severely limited camera skills usually allow.

First thing that I had in mind was.. undeads and skeletons to match the tombstones.. but then.......*chuckles

lots of cloning, healbrushing, burlaping, smoothing sharpening.. I really cant recall the steps.

naburi,

that looked like fun. very cool :)

Craig

Hi Naburi,

Nice one. Love the sense of atmosphere, and choice of colours.

Had to have a go at this one, Although i am rather miffed that you are out and about this week " up there " :heul:
I have a brother who lives in Bradford and a friend who lives in Heckmondwike
and think that part of the country is beautiful ( my personal favourite is up the cow and calf at Ilkley) :bigthmb:

Palms

Hey Gary after posting earlier went surfing to find photo's etc of west yorkshire and found this site, have you ? thought you might like to send your photo there

http://www.bbc.co.uk/bradford/west_yorkshire_in_pictures/in_pictures_44.shtml

Palms p.s. not as good as being there though

Hi Palms,

Really love your rendition, has a really tranquil, soft feel.

Unfortunately, Bolton Abbey is in North Yorkshire (North Riding to those of us who don't recognise the sub-division of Yorkshire) so would be ineligible for that site. But thanks for the link.

I'll be able to browse it tomorrow, as my holidays have been disturbed by having to wait in for some furniture to be delivered (14 weeks waiting for it, and they have to deliver when I'm on holiday and the weather is great. God is a sadist with a sick sense of humour).

Got quite a good shot of the Strid at Bolton Abbey as well.

Had a totter round York today, wouldn't you know it, I forgot my camera. Some great buildings there to snap as well. Only 20 miles away, and I only ever seem to go there when I'm working

dunno why i did it, but i did... (blush)

:wavey:

Hi Just Checking,

You see, it would never have occurred to me to change the colouring so much, (trouble with having a linear mind), but the effect, combined with the change in lighting, is dramatic.

Thanks.

Glad you did what you did,
justchecking
lovely effect

palms

Here is a litho-type rendering.

Steve

Sketch.

Steve

nice steve. both of them :)

Craig

Hello Craig.

And thank you sir!

Steve




nice steve. both of them :)

Craig

Gary..

I "unstitched" it :surprise:

Fun project, thanks for the picture.

:bigthmb: Congratulations to all for such a varied result.

Gary, this is a rare photo, thank you! My hubby has a favourite elderly uncle living in Edinburgh who hails from Bolton so with fond memories of him, I felt compelled to give this a go.

Started in PSP8.1
Dupe bottom layer
L2 -Filters Unlimited 2/Solarize, soft inverse on a Soft Light layer.
Merged both layers.
Buzzed

In Painter...
Cloners/Wet Oils and Oils Brush mainly.
Fine Art2 Brushes & Dens Funky Chunky Brushes (available from Paint Outside the Frame Forums) on the sky - added extra colours and then blended.

Cheers

dee dee,

i like it. nice!

neve,

moody! lovely.

Craig

Steve, Swampy, Neve,

I'm blown away. Really great works, I've enjoyed looking at them all, so much variety, and as I hoped, so much imagination.

Neve, Bolton Abbey funnilly enough is nowhere near Bolton (wrong County, wrong side of the Pennines) just as Leeds Castle is nowhere near Leeds (my home town), but is in fact in Kent (about 200 miles away). Thats Britain for you, nothing makes sense. But thanks for the great painting.

I thought I should give it a try..

Thanks Drach, nice interpretation. I like the colour fade out, it focuses your eye nicely onto the Abbey. Like the texture lots too.

:dizzy: :lmao: Kent?

Thanks anyway, it was fun!

Sorry just re-read my earlier post.

No, Bolton Abbey is in Yorkshire. Bolton is in Lancashire (the old rivals on the wrong side of the Pennines).

Its Leeds Castle thats in Kent, sorry for the confusion.

Just to confuse you more Gary, my brothers address is Bolton, Bradford , which is why i thought you were close to that part of Yorkshire,

palms

well, i wasnt going to do this; the cost was enormous! but having worked in construction some, i just couldnt pass it up :)

i really couldnt tell much about how the left half was covered, so someone else will have to restore that part.

Craig

oh yeah, i did some new landscaping also with the addition of the lake :)

Leave it to you, Craig!! Just great!

thanks dee dee :) is fun ;)

Craig

It looks so nice now Craig ! It is a double restoration job, the construction and the artistic one :wink:

regards - Martha :wavey:

thanks martha :)

made one little change.

Craig

Hi Craig,

nice one mate. Actually, there is a river in front of the Abbey (just off shot) so the lake wasn't too far off the mark. Just gotta wait for the finances to improve so we can have a new roof on the south trancept as well.

Palms 1, Bradford is right nextdoor to Leeds where I live. Don't know of a district called Bolton, and I'm a truck driver so I do a lot of deliveries round Bradford, but could just be somewhere I haven't been yet.

Just had a look at my A-Z, there's an area called Bolton Outlanes (could this be it).

Pass on that one Gary all i know is that the area is very close to the city Centre of bradford, will have to ask bro more when i speak to him next

palms

thanks gary :)

a river, cool. well, the lake just sort of looked right to me. besides, i hadnt tried the flood plugin yet. i did an image search on google using the keyword 'priory'. i wanted to see pictures of others to get an idea of how to maybe restore the roof. it's an interesting architecture, but i really couldnt get enough info from the other pics or yours to really get any idea of how that 'south trancept' might be. the front roof i simply borrowed/cloned from another and rotated it a bit to get the angles right. the repair of the stonework was all borrowed/cloned from existing areas within the picture. the stained glass was all done by hand painting except for the large one at the front. that one i simply borrowed from another priory's windows.

i also found another picture of that same priory, but it was pretty much the same shot you took only theirs was pretty badly blurred and not much use. it would be interesting to have shots from all around and aerial so that a full reconstruction could be done of the roof(s). whereas i was doing this reconstruction for the fun of it, i found myself a bit intrigued by how this place really used to look. i've seen enough shows about archaeology and so on to know that others actually do this sort of thing, make computer models of old ruins and such and reconstruct in modeling old buildings and living sites.

so, if you're ever up there again, particularly in a plane, take some more shots :)

Craig

Yeah, well if I get my helicopter out this weekend, I'll be sure to take a few snaps for you :tongue: :grin: :grin:

You're right about my pic though, it was taken from where most of the "Postcard Shots" of the Abbey are taken.

I've got a couple more from other positions, but none that give much more info.

I wasn't really visiting the Abbey as such, it just happens to be the starting point for a hike I was taking with the wife and dogs.

For a guy who spends quite a bit of time playing about with other peoples photos, I take remarkably few myself.

Like the idea of an Abbey re-build though. Unfortunately don't have too much time at the moment to do this, so will have to let it sit for a while, but the idea certainly appeals.

well, damn, if yer not going to take aerials for me, i'll just have to call up the c.i.a. and get some satellite time ;)

still, if you get more info, might be fun to finish this.

Craig

The U.S have got a satellite monitoring station at Menwith Hill, no more than 10-15 miles from Bolton Abbey, (it's easy to find by the crowds of protesters outside), so should be no problem for the C.I.A to get hold of a few shots.

Done a few deliveries there, and fixed a few Fax machines there as well (in an earlier job), the steaks are great (I usually manage to scrounge lunch for free whilst I'm there).

Craig as i would hate to think of you having nothing to do, :lol: i have been more daring than the c.i.a. and done a quick search in google maybe this would be of some use to you ?
although not a photo

http://www.boltonabbey.com/priory-past-frameset.htm

The U.S have got a satellite monitoring station at Menwith Hill, no more than 10-15 miles from Bolton Abbey, (it's easy to find by the crowds of protesters outside), so should be no problem for the C.I.A to get hold of a few shots. lol. it's ok, gary, palms came up with something ;)

palms,

wonderful! and just a bit confusing. it would seem that that big open arch in the middle of gary's image is the entry into the part that would be directly under that central tower. and there's a central tower! ok, hadnt even considered that one. if i've got the orientation correct, you'd rotate your images about 90 degrees clockwise to get the same as gary's image. and that part on the left of gary's that sticks out and has two arched windows is actually the back wall of that section, not the front! fascinating. and not how i had imagined things. hmmm, gonna take some work here....

thanks, palms :)

Craig

Thanks for the link Palms, I've been there loads of times, and I never knew there'd been a central tower. OK, it probably fell down a few years before I was born, but still.

My only excuse is I've never really gone there to look at the ruins (there's loads of ruined Priories and Abbeys in Yorkshire), but to swim in the river and walk in the hills.

oh well, i wanted to redo the large stained glass in the front anyways. the alignment is wrong. and that brings me to a question. Paint Shop Pro doesnt really have good tools for altering perspective and rotating on a vertical or horizontal axis. i rotate an entire image around the whole, but not well on the vert or horiz. i had image align, a plugin, but it was a timed demo and it's expired. i may get the full version at some point, but in the meantime, i was wondering if anyone knew of a plugin or app that could do multiple axis rotates, skews, liquifies, warps and other geometric actions like this. i know Photoshop can do a lot of these, but i'm not quite up to getting Photoshop yet and my trial on that ran out long ago also. any help here?

Craig

what about gimp , i know it has excellent reviews not sure on the scaling etc, but it is free

palms

Craig you have started me of surfing again
how about this one it does state about skewing etc

http://www.freeserifsoftware.com/software/PhotoPlus/key_features.asp

cant find any plug ins though

palms,

thank you! most kind :)

i'm reluctant to download that one and the subsequent programs they're offering. any time someone says 'free', my ears perk up, but i also get a little spidey warning going off telling me to be careful. in this particular case, the Serif folks distributing these programs want a registration with a registration key by email to verify a legitimate address, so they can send me MORE offers of .... something.... .... in an undisclosed, continuing amount.

ummm, ok, i used to get 400 to 500 or more spam emails a week and finally had to discontinue that email addy because of this. thus, i'm a bit reluctant to get on more mailing lists in exchange for 'free' programs. it's also why i dont put my email address in my profiles on forums like this one. it's not that members would abuse it, but there are little crawly things out there that specifically sniff out email addresses for the purpose of selling to junk distributors.

i have bookmarked the site, however, and may yet get it, but i'll prolly want to set up a 'blind', throw-away, email address first for collecting and getting rid of spam in a hurry before i do download it.

nonetheless, thanks :) on a brighter note, you did get me thinking about editors and that i had bookmarked some others in the past that i never checked out. so i went to http://www.eecs.wsu.edu/paint.net/ which also is offering a freebie. this one is open source, but requires microsoft's net framework 1.1 . now, i have net framework, 1.1, so i downloaded that one and i'll check it out.

also, if you have windows service pack two installed, you can check out 'Acrylic', one of microsoft's graphic editors that is still in beta. you can find that one here: http://www.microsoft.com/products/expression/ . i never downloaded that one because i dont have SP2 installed, and not sure i want to.

so, i love that you're looking out for me. thanks :) but i'm going to temporarily pass on that one :(

Craig

oh, and i do have the Gimp, or rather Gimpshop, the Gimp in Photoshop clothing. it just doesnt have the tools i need either :(

Craig

Craig
understand were you are coming from with the spam etc although i havent really come up against that Yet ! !
well good hunting i have included a link to some downloads that the magazine computer active supplies some are free some aren't,
http://www.computeractive.co.uk/downloads/

palms

palms,

you are a dear! thank you :)

Craig

Hi Garry,

Please find attached my rather tardy attempt at your picture. I saw it as a night-time scene, so I put in a night sky and various adjustment Layers to cool the colours and darken the overal exposure.

Hope you like it.

Regards

Con

Hi Con,

Absolutely love this one, I can almost forgive Australia for winning the first Ashes Test.

Thanks, Gary.

con,

i love that. incredible job!

Craig

Hi Garry,

Thanks for those kind words. They're much appreciated.

Yes we've won the first Test, but there are still four to go. I do think you have to win the next one though, or it's going to get too hard because our blokes are still picking up speed.

Regards

Con

Hi Con,

Well I've managed to get a bit of time off to watch the Edgbaston Test, hopefully McGrath won't be as devastating this time, now that he doesn't have the Lords slope to work with.

Looking forward to it a lot. I'd like to see England win this one, to get a good fighting series. Not too worried about who wins the series (obviously I'd prefer it to be England) as long as its close.

The weather seems to have improved today, and the forecast is good for the Test. Just got to get a few beers in now.

Gary

I'm not sure what I've got going on here. Was fun to make. Kind of cliche with the supposed drop and all, but I have never done that, so I'm pleased.

Tyler

Thought you both might like to see this (quality is rubbish and focus is bad but please take my word for it ) It is the Quantas flag being paraded over Edgbaston Cricket Ground by helicopter at about 12.20 today, ( took from my upstairs window)
Good luck all

palms

Photoshop love the last two photo's

interesting look, tyler. nice.

Craig

interesting look, tyler. nice.

Craig

Thanks Craig! A bit of an odd result, but was fun.

Tyler

Hi Tyler,

Totally different from anything I'd have expected, which is what I'd hoped for when I posted the original image. I'm constantly surprised by the different interpretations evrybody finds.

Palms,

Had the day off today to watch the test, (unfortunately couldn't get seats, so had to watch on telly). But with a couple of beers, and Flintoff and Pieterson in cracking form, it was a pure pleasure.

Con,

Sorry about McGrath's unfortunate accident, what a way to go out of a test. Could'nt understand Ricky Pontings decision to field first though, still, I hope to see a good batting innings from Australia tomorrow.

Hi Garry,

I hope you've enjoyed the cricket. You should be a happy man later today.

Regards

Con

Hi Con,

Well, it's not quite over yet, and Aussie tail enders can sometimes have a bit of a sting, so I'll reserve any premature celebrations. But yes, it's been a really good and close battle, just what you want from an Ashes Test.

Well impressed with Flintoff, but also Brett Lee, who bowled well this morning, and frightened the hell out of me. Shane Warne as usual did his thing, (boy can he get that ball to move) and I really think Australia will be diminished if and when he decides to retire (hope that's not for a while yet).

Assuming an England victory tomorrow (with reservations expressed above), I really look forward to the Old Trafford Test on Thursday. Haven't got a contract at present, so who knows I might even get to see that one as well.

Gary.

Could use a lot more work but I ran out of time.

Goose

WONDERFUL restoration! Very believable. Just amazing.

dee dee

wow goose. very cool!

Craig

Hi Goose,

Really good work, now I know what all the 12th century monks saw when they went to prayer.

Thanks for this one.

Gary

goose,

would you mind if i borrowed parts of yours for the one i'm still working on?

Craig

Craig,

Take what you'd like. I have no problem with that.

Thanks to everyone for their kind words. I would have liked to have done more but I ran out of time with it.

thanks goose. that shld help with my own stone reconstruction. need some of that texture you have there.

i also like how you did the open end of the structure and the windows. i put stained glass in them, but your way may be more accurate for this one and certainly very well done!

Craig

Craig,

If you look VERY closely, there is stained glass in the windows. The only thing is since this is pre-electricity, there would be no light source inside comparable to the daylight outside so the colors wouldn't show as bright. In fact even with electricity it would be hard for the indoor light to compete with such a bright day. I did the stained glass with noise and mosaic although it's so small I doubt the mosaic did much to help.

Here is the window disected.

ah! very clever. and very well done.

thanks :)

Craig

Thanks Craig,

I can't wait to see what you come up with. Maybe you can incorporate your archer.