I really do need a retouching detective on this one, as I have no idea how I did it.

I do know I used this self-portrait by Anna Cray:
http://www.sxc.hu/photo/68002

Everything else was pure Photoshop.

Decontruct/Reconstruct/Explain (please!)

First glance, stab in the dark.

Bunch of horizontal lines. Softened up a tad.
Shear to wiggle.
Polar Coords.
A little more softening.
Colourized with a rainbow gradient set to Hard Light or similiar.

I don't know what I did either Doug, but sometimes that's the beauty of "CSI: digital" :shocked:

Got me tossed, if you work it out Doug would love to know

Give it a try. I have a little bit of an idea how I did it :)

If a couple more people give it a try I'll post a hint (unless someone solves it completely).

hey Doug,
I played with this for a long time and I couldn't get.
Can you give us the hint?
thanks
cathy

Oh my, that's been awhile...let's see, I remember making a spectrum gradient, then running polar coordinates on it (like Stroker said). Then the wave filter. And I ran my favorite effect (duplicate layer, gaussian blur, lighten blend mode). The final thing I added was the face (just layer masked in with overlay mode).

I know I'm forgetting some stuff. Oh yeah, the final image was actually just the lower right quarter. And I think I started with a b/w gradient, converted to polar, then did the steps above using the polar spectrum in color mode.

Try it, ask some more questions, that will probably get me to remember more.

I remember, it wasn't a b/w gradient I started with, it was my fake satin curtains (search for "satin curtains" to see that one).

Thanks Doug,
I'm getting closer, I still would like to get the very nice colorations that you did. I will keep trying.
Thanks for the tips.

Your's is nice on it's own.

These remind me of 70s scifi book covers :)