Took this pretty rose photo yesterday and thought it perfect for us to artify..

Patricia.... :wink:

I will start off with this one i did in Photoshop CS2 with the art history brush...oils....then DC special..beyond edger and to finish Red Paw Media Beautifier....the two plugins i used are both freebies!!!

Patricia.... :pleased:

Beautiful Roses Patricia looks like they came straight from garden ( mind you can't see the greenfly or slug holes )

Palms

Lovely painting of my roses Palms...they look so delicate...got the roses yesterday...but not from the garden...glad i took the mutitude of photos yesterday as today they have wilted with the heat... :cry:

Patricia... :classic:

We would all do you a favor by leaving this well shot photo alone.

Having said that, it's also too good to passup as a photo art base.

So here I go messing with it.

Steve

Happy to see you didnt leave my photo alone Steve.....you can imagine how many different things i will do to it.....Love the second one just a bit more than your first...whatever photos i post you can play to your hearts content..

Patricia.... :happy:

OK...as long as I'm messing with it, might as well do one more.

Really great shot.

Steve

Nice one again Steve...are you using filters??? If so which ones.....I love filters...Thanks for saying its a great shot......think my great shots are happy accidents.....hopefully there will be many...

Patricia... :grin:

A little Buzz...a little Impressionist...some layering....and some ever popular, "Gosh, I think it could use a little of this...and maybe this too." :masked:

Thanks for the kind words and nice pic.

Steve


Nice one again Steve...are you using filters??? If so which ones.....I love filters...Thanks for saying its a great shot......think my great shots are happy accidents.....hopefully there will be many...

Patricia... :grin:

Thanks for the info Steve...I am always curious...havent got BUZZ...but have many others and i also flit from one to the other...hard to keep track of whats been done at times...I am trying to paint now and am enjoying the art history brush in Photoshop...must get into painter but there are not enough hours in my days....still i am NEVER bored...

Patricia... :pleased:

Patricia, what a beautiful image and thanks for letting us play with it, although I agree that it doesn't need any alteration, but I also couldn't resist.

I just used a couple of different paint filters, lighting, and adjustment layers; nothing special. I'm not sure if I am getting enough of a photo art look, but I am working on it.

Thankyou also for artifying my roses Johnnie...yes you are getting there...it takes time...i was happy just using filters for almost two years....but now i want to paint and smudge...practice thats all it takes and sometimes you can be lucky and quickly you can have an amazing picture! There are lots of great filters out there on the net ...free...hope you are enjoying Retouchpro...

Patricia... :)

Patricia, Thanks for the kind words and words of encouragement. I have tried painting/smudging, but I am not good enough to post yet, but I will.

I am enjoying RetouchPro very much and thanks for asking.

Patricia, thanks for this nice photo with impressive colours...

Patriciakay-beautiful roses!! Did they come from your garden? You did a beautiful job on your roses!!

Palms1-wonderful painting and great detail

Steve-all three are excellent but really love the second one. The texture on this one is lovely

JohnnieB-you did a wonderful job.

Oltenius-excellent job and a great border.

used smudge tool (still trying to learn how to use it)

pjb, thank you very much! Yours is a great one.

pjb -- ditto - thanks and i love your version.

patricia,

wow! great picture and some very lovely renditions. you gotta love roses for being showoffs :)

craig

Patricia, what a great photo you did :happy:
thanks for it !

my roses are oilpainting (smudged)
I used Gimp :happy:

Really nice pic, thought I'd have a go at smudge painting hope you like it...John.

Excellent John! That took some work.

Steve


Really nice pic, thought I'd have a go at smudge painting hope you like it...John.

I much appreciate your kind words. Such a nice pic to work with.

Got to give smudging a try. Must ask John for some guidance. :spchless:

Steve


Steve-all three are excellent but really love the second one. The texture on this one is lovely

used smudge tool (still trying to learn how to use it)

You have all been busy and done such amazing things to my roses...Thankyou!

Oltenius.....You have done a beautiful job with your painting and the frame...yes the colors are really bright on the roses....I like any color though....

Pjb.....Sadly the roses didnt come from my garden...from the florist...
Love the color you have done the roses and the smudging looks good to me...like your edges too they set your picture off really well....

Barbara....A really lovely smudged, oilpainting and the frame is perfect for your picture...

Craig....Roses certainly are show offs and they do it beautifully!!!

Britsdad....John i think you have smudged great...i love the edges too...what program are you using??? Where are you from in South Yorkshire...I am a Leeds lass....

Steve...Yes do try smudging....its great....I didnt know there was anything called smudge painting till i joined Retouchpro...I thought it a great tool and used it mainly to rid flower petals, from blemishes...liked the effect and started doing the whole flower...what program do you have??? In some programs there is a smear tool too and that works well for me with the smudge tool...

The main thing is that we all get pleasure from what we do..... :nod:

Patricia..... :)

:blush: Steve: you're alright asking me! it's the first really ernest try I've had smudging....I saw it on this site a while ago and thought these roses would work well, I got really engrossed with it and spent about 2 hours doing it.
Patriciakay: AYOP LASS...thankyou for your comments, I've been useing Corel Photopaint for about 7 years until recently, now I'm trying to teach myself PSCS, with huge amounts of help from the tutorials and members of this forum (I am in awe of what you people can do!!!) still tying myself in knots tho'.....lol. As for the edges, it was a suprise to me when after smudging I ran two adjustment layers, one for levels, one for curves both at auto settings, then copied background copy and ran a few filters opting for just crosshatch at default ....don't know why it got these edges tho'...but I like them too. Yea I have seen you're a tyke in you're profile, I live roughly equidistant from Rotherham, Doncaster and Barnsley in a town called Mexborough.....I've been thinking it's such a nice original image it should be shown 101 times, see below......it's not my idea, I saw it in a thread that I can't find again done with skulls......John

Britsdad....I have actually been to Mexborough...many moons ago......I still miss fish and chips...guess i always will.....had my fill of them in Gibralter earlier in the year...not quite as good as the Yorkshire ones though....

Your painting is again lovely and the background really cool....

You have been painting a long time...7 years....I am just a novice and have also got Painter....havent mastered it yet have been playing in photoshop this past month...I love the art history brush...I am getting better with layers and a bit more adventurous...but its fun learning.....plus i have a mutitude of free paint programs too....keeps me out of trouble... :lmao:

Patricia.... :wavey:

Patricia, thanks, I'm waiting for a new great photo from you :wavey:

You are welcome Oltenius.....what kind of photo would you like???

Patricia... :)

patriciakay: Funny that I've been to Leeds too, hehe...sorry if you misunderstood, I never did any "painting" until I started with Photoshop a few months ago, I only ever did photo restoring, and not that succesfully either. But I keep trying (it must be a Yorkshire trait..lol) But thanks anyway....John

Patricia, I would like a sweden photo girl :dizzy:

Beautiful photo Patricia! Thank you and hope you like my painting!
Btw, Great job, people!

CLICK HERE FOR PAINTING (http://www.pbase.com/judy2810/image/61903627/original)

Judy your painting is fantastic.... :bigthmb: I love it....oh I really,really want to paint like you one day....thanks for the inspiration...

Patricia.... :)

A rose by any other name would smell as sweet....

Beauty in all things.

Hello Candice.....Wow what a beautifully colored, delicate painting you have done...its fabulous... :nod:

Patricia... :happy:

Main programs are Paint Shop Pro 9 and Gertrudis with many plugins.

Always see a lot of Photoshop tuts here, but not many for Paint Shop Pro. If there was one for smudging in Paint Shop Pro posted here, point me to it if you will.

I'm game to try this, but I ain't no free-hand artist :sad: ...that's my brother who teaches art history at a college here.

Wasn't really that interested until I saw John's work. That's fantastic!

Steve



Steve...Yes do try smudging....its great....I didnt know there was anything called smudge painting till i joined Retouchpro...I thought it a great tool and used it mainly to rid flower petals, from blemishes...liked the effect and started doing the whole flower...what program do you have??? In some programs there is a smear tool too and that works well for me with the smudge tool...

The main thing is that we all get pleasure from what we do..... :nod:

Patricia..... :)

When is a smudge not a smudge...when it's....this... :dizzy:

Steve

OK......last one of the roses....promise!

Steve

gave this one a shot also. thought i'd break away from filter forge for a while and get back to Paint Shop Pro only for a bit.

i forget all the steps here, but i do recall using digital camera noise reducer on a very high setting. the settings were done to act as a blur rather than a true noise reduction.

i also cropped the image, not because i thought there was anything wrong with the original, but because i like to print these things in a 6 x 4 format and that's the aspect ratio i cropped to.

there was a bit of hand smudging on this to reduce some of the side leaves left over from other actions that now just looked like noise. so, i erased that by smudging and did a bit on the main leaves as well to soften those up.

also changed the lightness/contrast a bit somewhere in there.

craig

I like that variant Craig, I don't know why, but that little bit of wood grain bottom right is really beginning to facinate me, it seems to draw my eyes, and on yours it stands out well.
John

Steve...More lovely pics from you...I like the second one a liitle more than the first...
Been trying to find a tute for PSP9 for smudging...no luck yet but will keep my eyes open...My favorite program to smudge in is Project Dogwaffle then i like Twisted brush, I can smudge okay in photoshop too but I find it quite hard in PSP9 so you must be good if you are doing it in there.....

Craig...Lovely...like everything about it and the lighting is just right too...

Patricia... :classic:

thanks john :) you know, i hardly even noticed the wood grain in the original pic, but when i got to working with the image i noticed it also and in a couple renditions i tried, it just really popped out. so, i tried to keep a bit of it in the final.

thanks patricia :) i've worked on a LOT of flowers and this is definitely one of my favorite original pictures. and it's always easier to get nice results when you adore the original :)

as for tuts on smudging in Paint Shop Pro (any version), throw away the smudge tool and use 'push'. lower the hardness to at least half and use small strokes on a blank layer. this allows you to 'cheat' quite a bit and get better results. one of the cheats is that you can blur or gausian blur this layer to smooth things out nicely and give a more finished look. you still have to do a lot of hand work, but frankly, that's one of the pluses in smudging. it's just relaxing as the dickens.

for a little variety in your smudging, lower the density a bit also. opacity can vary at any time depending on what you're doing. you can also vary the brushes quite a bit and i've built a couple of my own for this. i have one 'comb' type that is kind nice at times as it gives a varied depth to the strokes. but, the default brush works fine also..

the reason the push tool works better in Paint Shop Pro is that with push you are more closely approximating the way a real paint brush works. it's like dragging a brush full of paint rather than smudge, which is more like dragging a clean brush over existing paint. so, with push, you get a longer stroke of the same thing, while with smudge, you get a stroke that fades quickly.

and by the way, i loved the smudge work on the roses.

also, get palms1 to talk to you about smudging. she's our resident expert.

craig

Beautiful roses. Really nice work going on here. Craig and Steve I like what you did to your roses.

I used Painter and the Sargent cloner brush for the painted effect. In Photoshop I added texture and a little bit more smudging. I add a layer above the image and fill it with 50% grey and set it to overlay. This is the layer that I smudge until it looks like part of the under painting.

Cathy :classic:

One more. I just gave the same image a vintage look with a sepia tint.

Cathy

thank you, cathy :) i take that as high praise receiving it from one whose works i've admired so much.

craig

Nice site you have here!
Here is my rose attempt - great photo!

Cathy, love both your paintings!

Thought i would have another go this time with the ahb and a sketch layer, some really beautiful postings here

Palms

Craig....Thanks for taking the time to write all the info on smudging in Paint Shop Pro...will give your way a whirl and let you know how I get on...happy my photo will go into your favorites file...its indeed an honor.... :blush:

Palms is really amazing at smudging.... :nod:

Cathy...Fabulous painting...really lovely....I think the sepia tint is just great!!! :bigthmb:

DESI6N....Welcome to Retouch pro...hope you enjoy all this fun and informative forum has to offer...
Lovely painting with a great texture... :thumbsup:

Palms....You did it again and I am happy you did...love the outlines...makes the roses stand out beautifully... :bow:

Patricia.... :knockedou

Patricia, if you use Project Dogwaffle then you may have Gertrudis. Am trying out some free-hand brush work with it. The second (and last) image I sent was done that way. Not as good as real smudging I suppose, but it gets me in the ballpark. And maybe with a few more attempts and some more digging I may get closer. Who Knows?

Also am glad Craig posted re. smudging in Paint Shop Pro. That sounds like a very good technique. Will give it a shot, but I don't expect to post anything for a good long time.

Steve

Steve...More lovely pics from you...I like the second one a liitle more than the first...
Been trying to find a tute for PSP9 for smudging...no luck yet but will keep my eyes open...My favorite program to smudge in is Project Dogwaffle then i like Twisted brush, I can smudge okay in photoshop too but I find it quite hard in PSP9 so you must be good if you are doing it in there.....

Craig...Lovely...like everything about it and the lighting is just right too...

Patricia... :classic:

Hello Steve...

I dont have Gertrudis but did have a trial run with it and thought it good...but havent bought it yet...I think you are the first person that i have come across that also uses project Dogwaffle...I really like it and am only using the free version at the moment but will upgrade as soon as i have the pennies...

Kind of Craig to post the info and its just to practice...I am sure you will get there...

So I will look forward to your first smudge painting.... :nod:

Patricia.... :pleased:

Sorry didn't mean to mis-lead you. I bought the stand-alone version of Gertrudis Pro. Never tried Dog Waffle.

As for the smudge painting that may take some time. :(

Steve

Hello Steve...

I dont have Gertrudis but did have a trial run with it and thought it good...but havent bought it yet...I think you are the first person that i have come across that also uses project Dogwaffle...I really like it and am only using the free version at the moment but will upgrade as soon as i have the pennies...

Kind of Craig to post the info and its just to practice...I am sure you will get there...

So I will look forward to your first smudge painting.... :nod:

Patricia.... :pleased:

Oh Steve I am a bit dizzy :dizzy: at times...I did misunderstand....but i think you should try it ...Its free from download.com...here is the link....

http://www.download.com/3120-20_4-0.html?tg=dl-20&qt=project%20dogwaffle&tag=srch

If you do try it then we can have a chat about it later....

Patricia... :classic:

These roses are so gorgeous, I couldn't resist.

Thanks for sharing them with us and or ALL of the wonderful renditions.

Janet

Beautiful painting Janet...so glad you couldnt resist!!!

Patricia.... :classic:

By golly it is free! Thanks for letting me know about this version.

Can't go wrong with that price. So I got it. I am not much with a brush, so let's see how much guidance It will give me as I try to use it.

Will let you know if I'm in over my head or not. :confused:

Steve

Oh Steve I am a bit dizzy :dizzy: at times...I did misunderstand....but i think you should try it ...Its free from download.com...here is the link....

http://www.download.com/3120-20_4-0.html?tg=dl-20&qt=project%20dogwaffle&tag=srch

If you do try it then we can have a chat about it later....

Patricia... :classic:

Steve.....Good you have downloaded project dogwaffle and i hope you have fun with it...

Patricia... :pleased:

well, since we're talking smudges, i thought i'd re-visit that style a bit. i dont know if you'd call this one a true smudge or not. it was a two smudge layers and some blends. on one layer i did small and medium smudging and on the other i did larger smudges. all the brushes were smooth brushes this time. there was also a lot of light opacity finish work, which is why i guess i'm reluctant to call this a true smudge. on the large smudge layer, which was the top one, i blended to the others with soft light.

so, this one doesnt have the normal deep lines or stroke look of a normal smudge. it's almost more of a blur than a smudge. still, i kind of like it.

craig

well, since we're talking smudges, i thought i'd re-visit that style a bit. i dont know if you'd call this one a true smudge or not.
craig

I like it too Craig, The only true smudge is one that uses the smudge tool whatever the style so i give you 10/10

Palms

Craig...Agree with palms totally...it certainly looks like a real SMUDGE to me...its really beautiful...

Patricia... :classic:

thank you, palms :) thank you, patricia :) since i consider palms our resident expert in smudges, i'll take this as a high compliment. i do like the smudge effect and technique.

craig