Jim Thompson graciously allowed me to use his great picture. (Thanks, Jim.)

Have fun!

~Danny~

Here's my interpretation. Note I cropped the attachment so more detail would be visible.

I'm working on the tutorial, which I'll post in a day or so. When I do, I'll update this post with a link.

Note: I'm not eligible for the contest. I just wanted to play along this time. :)

Got to take a shot at this one. A watercolor interpretation using the Xero Caravaggio filter (4,2,0,0), and painted on a white layer with a Reveal All Mask and photoshop watercolor brushes.
Alan

So I got a little lazy and used Van Gogh on a duplicate layer set to Hard Light. I duplicated the Hard Light layer again and flattened. Filters are cool. :)

Photoshop: I did add canvas on just the light areas. :grin:

Nice picture :happy: My version in Deep Paint with the rain cloner.
I like your watercolor version Alan, I never thought of using Caravaggio for a watercolor effect, looks nice.

Howdy ... my attempt here to make something artistic from my Sailboat photo ... its a lot easier to push a button than to make something like all of you have with my photo!! Thanks for the ideas ...

I used Photoshop, Drybrush 2,10,2, then Hue 11,42,9, then Palette Knife 4,3,10 and then a little adjustment with the Levels. Here goes ... Jim

Nice work everyone. Can't wait to get back on the water. Have to wait another 2 months here in Minnesota.

My sketch using Corel Photopaint.

I drew inspiration from Swampy's great post here

http://www.retouchpro.com/forums/showthread.php?t=3608&page=3&pp=15

changed the facet to smart blur for this one and used a different pattern (looks much better bigger )

Palms

I thought I would try a new techniqe I watched on the PhotoShop TV podcast involving making selections, copy to a new layer and set a bevel or shadow style. I varied slightly by distorting and reshaping some of the selections.

Make a selection, copy to a new layer, apply a style (bevel and emboss for exampl). New selections the same way until the boat subject was covered. Merge all these selections onto a new layer.

I then applied one of my favorite PhotoShop Filters, Pixelate->facet about 10-12 times to make the boat less like a photo, but still keeping some sharp detail. At this point I added more canvas and inked the boat grahic and background and centered them better on the page.

I created a medium blue layer with canvas texture over the background graphic and set the blend mode to soft light. Added a curves adjustment layer to bring the make the photo image a little darker. Merged these layers and made a rectangle marquee selection into a new layer then copied them to a new layer.

I then added an Extensis Photo Frame to the textured background with the background of the frame set to transparent. In Photoshop I added some bevel and emboss to the frame that gave the effect of raising it off the page.

Set another texture layer. This time in a parchment tone under the blue texture. Merged all and added a stroke and signature to the result.

Nice effect, it works good with this image too. :)

Spent hours and hours doing brush stroke after brush stroke.



Looked terrible so gave up and used a plugin, then added a canvas texture.
Learned a lot about brush strokes though.

Peter

Here's my version of the sailboat. What a beautiful picture!
Sylvia

Hi everybody ! :classic:
this is my try to create an illusion of real watercolor
(used simply tools - blur (selective), edge detection plus a bit of sharpening,
then I painted this onto white layer to simmulate a real watercolor work,
and then added a touch of texture.

and now I will try to attach a thumbnail from gallery

http://www.retouchpro.com/gallery/data/500/25393barbaras_sailboat-thumb.jpg

sorry,I dont know how :eek:

Barbara have a look at this link it will help you and welcome

http://www.retouchpro.com/forums/showthread.php?t=7933

Palms

Here is my "sketchy" version". As usual, great variations. Used Photoshop only - my Painter versions seemed too boring(must be the artist) so back to the old Photoshop!
MargaretM

Hey all, I haven't been around in a long time. Moved to a place with no internet. Well actually we had internet but it was sooooo slow I couldn't stand to use it. All is good now though DSL is here!


Don't remember what all I did but I know I used the quadrant flip filter available fromHarry's Filters (http://http://thepluginsite.com/products/harrysfilters/index.htm).


It's good to be back! :wavey:

My attempt

my variant - oils.
two layers - impressionist. then - Unsharpen Mask.

Hi, I missed the car contest trying to decide between good reflections and bad reflections so decided to get in early here.
I cropped, then adjusted the colours with a tone curve, added some duplicate layers with low opacity and played with blurs, find edges and a spot focus filter so the men stood out. Then flattened, smudge brushed lots and painted on some light strokes, added the feathered border and smudged a little more.

I went for bold and contrast.

Great picture!

Janet

This picture was done for fun and not for the contest.

Hi,
Here's my version of this beautiful picture. Wish I was there!
Done mostly with Virtual Painter Collage.
Marvin

dup layer and desaturate
apply colored pencil
apply canvas texture

copied image as new image and applied Little Ink Pot's Thredgeholder and placed that on top of the original with overlay 100

new raster layer, black overlay 100
new raster layer, black overlay 100
new raster layer, black overlay 50

merge and upload

gives it a colored pencil sketch look

Thought I had posted this, but I guess not.

Impressionist, some line drawing, a lot of blurring and softening.

Amy

Don't miss out on your chance to enter!

~Danny~

I am new here and this is my first post. Hope I have done this correctly.
I did this quick and simple with Photoshop poster edges 7, 5, 2.

Frame from Alien Skin Splat
Accented Edges - Photoshop CS2 filter
Texture - Canvas Photoshop CS2 filter

Beeeeautiful Janet! Very cool effect Swampy. Love that "splat" thing you are doing Frank! Didn't feel like taking time with painter so did a little buzz, and playedwith h/s.

~Nancy~

Congratulations to Swampy, whose name was drawn out of the hat by my son, and to everyone who participated. There were some GREAT interpretations.

Thanks again to Jim for donating such a great pic to work with. Who needs celebrities anyway? :)

~Danny~

Thank you so much, Danny (and your son... :nod:).

It was a fun project and there were so many wonderful entries. In a way it's good that it was by drawing because I couldn't have picked out ONE to win.

Congratulations Swampy.

As a side note: how much must I pay your son in order to draw out my name? :lmao:

Nice one Swampy - Happy reading.

Great fun all. Congrats to Swampy for the win. Bigger kudos to Danny, who shares selflessly with us all. Thanks for the contests Danny. It keeps some spice in the mix.

Janet

Thanks all... And like Janet said, thank you Danny for all you do around here! :bow: :bow: :bow: :bow:

As a side note: how much must I pay your son in order to draw out my name? :lmao:If it was me, I'd start by bribing his father. :)

= = = = = =

FYI: I got a PM asking, "Why are the contests not decided by member votes?"

Good question. Here's the main reason: There's no "pressure to perform" in the random model.

I remember when I first started this sport it felt like EVERYBODY on the planet was better at it than me. Realizing my skills were not on a par with "the pros," I would never have entered a "vote for the winner" event. Why bother?

I realize many people aren't wired the way I am and would not be intimidated by the skills/experience gap. But based on years of reading e-mails, PMs and RetouchPRO forum posts, I know there are many, like I was, who are intimidated. For many years they have heard voices in their heads saying something like, "You can't draw. What makes you think you can do this?"

So, in my opinion a no pressure/you cannot fail event feels safer and has broader appeal.

For those of us who have been doing photo-art for awhile, we know you get better at it the longer we do it. Hopefully the random model will encourage more newbies to leap into the pool, where there's always room for one more.

"But doesn't pressure/competition spur one to do better?"

No doubt it can and often does.

But think about it. You start an 7-year-old by playing T-ball, not facing 98 MPH fastballs. (For our international readers: You start an 7-year-old by letting them kick a ball, not entering them into the World Cup soccer match.)

I hope this makes sense.

= = = = = =

Thanks S and JP for the kind words. It's fun watching people grow and have fun. :hat:

~Danny~

danny,

when i first saw these type contests i was also a bit curious about 'why enter a competition when it's not a competition', but it makes perfect sense to me now. what you are rewarding is PARTICIPATION. since, one tends to get what one rewards, rewarding that would tend to get more participants, which then makes perfect sense.

so, thank you :)

craig

I actually like this form of picking the winner. All who contribute do fantastic work and it would be quite hard to pick and choose and catagorize the votes. The voting process can also get political too. I like the random draw. :)

such contest is not a race
here everybody,who learned something by the way, is the winner.
I think, random draw is the best solution. :thumbsup: