Sorry the original is not brilliant, lots of jpeg stuff. But hey it could be used as a texture????

A mixture of styles from me so I wouldn't know where to start describing it.

Have fun. Oh yes Happy New Year too.


Peter

Tried to hide the pixelization with grain; did some cloning too. Had to reduce the size to fit the spec here. :)

Hi Peter,
Happy New Year! Good wishes.
Attempt to Pencil Sketch

Used virtual photographer and neat image on this image thank you Peter

Palms

"My slant on life"...my life as a slant model by Angle Write, sold in better book stores.

Lasa

A very quick version done only in Photoshop.
MargaretM

Another one from me in the form of a high key ( well maybe)

Palms

A leaning lady.

Steve

LK doesn't matter about the size - still good
Alex - nice pencil thing going there
Lasa - Its not on Amazon yet, you got a scoop on them there.
Palms - Thats really smooth how many goes with neat image to get it that way???
Margaret - Like that one
Steve - Sorry no flowers for you but this is OK (as usual of course)

Peter

I used Impressionist kentec:cezanne & djrOil 24 and Virtual Photographer:copper.

LK doesn't matter about the size - still good
Alex - nice pencil thing going there
Lasa - Its not on Amazon yet, you got a scoop on them there.
Palms - Thats really smooth how many goes with neat image to get it that way???
Margaret - Like that one
Steve - Sorry no flowers for you but this is OK (as usual of course)

Peter

Not sure Peter wether it was one or two but i think one before using vp and one after

Palms

JimJam love what you did please tell us what you did and the settings so we may try :)

Here's mine: salt and pepper filter, Buzz, VP, and playing around with saturation and smoothing and adding back some colors.

Amy

halftone..color.
Lasa

(didn't reduce well at all should show a wavy halftone)

Thank you ydelle!

To begin you will need to have two free plug-ins #1 optic Verve Labs Virtual
Photographer and #2 Impressionist.

You will need also two custom styles plug-ins installed into Impressionist the
first is on page 1 post #4 djrOil24 and the other on page 2 post #17 kentc found in this thread
http://www.retouchpro.com/forums/photo-art-tutorials-techniques/8328-impressionist-plugin-custom-styles-member-posted.html .


Open your image and duplicate it twice,on the first dupe open the plug-in filter Impressionist >style #kentc:cezanne use Background Image and no other changes and apply keeping normal blend mode at 100% opacity.

On the 2nd dupe layer ,the top layer, reduce opacity to 36% with Overlay blend mode. Merge the duplicate layers then erase the eyes,mouth,ears and the tip of the nose with whatever opacity you want, I used 56% in my original post.
Merge all layers and you should have the same as the first image posted here.

Duplicate this layer and apply Virtual Photographer filter under the B/W effects copper to the top layer ( click off the Effect window in VP ) @100% opacity Darken blend mode then merge these two layers to get effect of image two, apply the same Virtual Photographer filter to this in normal blend mode @100% opacity then duplicate. On the top layer of this set you will apply Impressionist filter style #djrOil24 Background Image no other adjustments, apply and erase eyes etc. then adjust opacity to your liking in normal blend mode ( I used 48% ).

And the last step is optional, you can add a pattern layer above this such as Artist Surfaces > Course Weave @60% scale, Soft Light blend mode @34% opacity. Your result should look like the third image here. If I did this right.

Added a gradient to this one.

I just might be on a creative roll here. Do you think? Used layer styles Antimatter and dlewin-stones bijou.

Peter - wonderful pic to work with. Thanks for getting this started.

Lasa - very cool effect and nicely executed. Well done.

JimJam - Glad to see you were so inspired by this one. You're definitely on a roll! I especially appreciated the thorough writeup you did on the Impressionist settings.

----------------------

After isolating the woman from the background and using Levels to reveal a lot of shadow detail, I used Photoshop's Dry Brush on one layer and a couple custom Impressionist presets with which I'm experimenting on other layers to get the painted look.

The intense colors were achieved by merging the final result onto a new layer, sharpening it to the max (Unsharp Mask 500,250,0) and using a layer mask to selectively apply the effect.

Happy 2007 to the RetouchPRO photo-art gang! :)

~Danny~

Thank you Danny and thank you to everyone who created custom style plug-ins for Impressionist.