Here’s another “mini-challenge” to play with in the Photo-based Art category. See "Information and Guidelines below" if this is your first mini-challenge.

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Confession time.
I've never been to Brooklyn. I don't know if this is a even a picture of Brooklyn. It could be Miami for all I know.

But it is summer... and it could be Brooklyn. Use your imagination and pretend a little, OK? :)

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The transporter is ready. Strap on your helmet.

Keep having enourmous amounts of FUN!

~DannyR~

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INFORMATION AND GUIDELINES

Unlike “official challenges” for this forum which can be found here (http://www.retouchpro.com/challenge/index.html), this one will be self-contained within this thread. It is intended as an opportunity to engage in this artform until the next official challenge is posted.

The rules are more-or-less the same:
* It’s a challenge, not a contest -- intended to provide opportunities to experiment, share methods and/or techniques and, most importantly, have FUN.
* Everyone who participates is a winner.
* There’s no expiration date.

GUIDELINES:
1. Use any method, application(s), style(s) you like:
. * Convert to sketch, grayscale, abstract, watercolor, oil painting, pen-and-ink, Conte crayon, impasto, van Gogh or any style of your choosing
. * Add elements from other images (collage) or replace the background
. * Hand painting? Tracing? Freehand? You bet. Always appreciate entries of this nature.
. * Apply filters from your favorite application(s) or tweak it with 3rd party plug-ins
. * Feeling animated? How about an stoplight that doesn't bother with yellow or multiple cars crossing the intersection?
. * Any or all of the above

Bottom line:
How you create this masterpiece makes no difference. Whatever floats your boat as long as you follow guideline #4 in the process.

2. When done, reply to this thread and attach your work (don’t forget the 100kb size limit).

Note: Multiple entries OK if you’re so inspired.

3. By all means include some verbiage on how you achieved your masterpiece so others will benefit from your skills and experience. Make it as descriptive as you like. Grammar and spelling will not be graded. Priority given to content, not how it is written.

4. Have fun.

Two runs on original image of versions of sharpen - (all from Danny's link) High pass sharpening and high pass sharpening 2. Just kept running them and letting them create new documents from the previous one.

ran one called Painter

ran Medley watercolor

ran the sharpen edges filter twice, because I wanted to accentuate the squares and make it look more like mosaic.

Still wasn't enough, so ran curves and made a gentle S and thought yeah - that's it.

and so that's it.

:wavey:

Here's my version... I cut and pasted a dashboard in from a photo I found online, transformed it to fit into the original picture. Ran Andromada veliciraptor filter to create the streaks on the right side......flipped the image horizontally and ran veleciraptor again to create the streaks on the left side, then flipped the entire image again to return it to the original position. Went into Eye Candy 4000 and made the water drops. Resized and saved.

Nice concept and execution! Great idea!

I can't help but wonder how it would look with a wiper pattern more common to the US car manufacturer's wiper placement , where there is a gap in the middle where two wipers overlap...THAT would make it a show stopper.
:wavey:

BLk Kngt...your rendition has an
old fashion look to it..
Ken...very creative concept...

Opened callenge #13 in Photoimpact v6

1.Lassoed out the car and made 5 dupes.
Which will be the sprites.

2.Copy paste original

3.Draw tool/path edit...created some shapes

4.Eyedropper ...selected various street colors
for these shapes

5.Positioned shapes over the car and using the clone
brush and paint brushes developed the new corner

6.Lassoed out from the original...the fence area
on the far right and some tree leaves and using
transform tool
positioned them in front of the building

7.Draw tool /path edit ...more shapes
for the base of the lamppost...added some paint.

8.Since it would be too tedious to lasso out the
standing figures to create as objects,
especially the cycle figure,
I positioned the car dupes in a line and erased
the areas of the car where they overlapped the figures.

9. The copied photo is saved as frame 1.
Each of the 6 cars is opened on a transparent background
and saved as frames 2-7.

10.Opened in PI Gif animator v4... tweaked the settings.
it had to be reduced 50% and reduced from 256 colors
to 80 in order to get under 100kb

If I were to redo this I would remove the cyclist

tom clegg

Ken and Tom, congratulations on two very clever ideas!

Ken, you really need to clean those bugs off your windshield...LOL!
Tom, my only suggestion is that you could have cut out the car with a modified lasso to get rid of that distracting black outline above it. But I love the way the car just keeps driving around the block...LOL! It would be fun to combine this with Ken's windshield view, then he could sit at the red light and watch the blue car whiz around the block over and over while he waited...and waited...and waited... Now THAT would say NYC for sure!

Phyllis :)

My goal was a childhood memory, thus the sunshine and bright crayon colors.

First I made it into a painted-look scene using the sponge filter with increased saturation. To make sunlight streak down through the trees, I found the edges, put them in b/w, then did a radial blur on that layer and overlayed it onto the scene layer. I blended in more color variation with a low opacity radial transparent rainbow.

Phyllis

Ken and Tom, congratulations on two very clever ideas!

Ken, you really need to clean those bugs off your windshield...LOL!
Tom, my only suggestion is that you could have cut out the car with a modified lasso to get rid of that distracting black outline above it. But I love the way the car just keeps driving around the block...LOL! It would be fun to combine this with Ken's windshield view, then he could sit at the red light and watch the blue car whiz around the block over and over while he waited...and waited...and waited... Now THAT would say NYC for sure!

Phyllis :)

Phyllis
thanks for remarks.
I don't quite know why but I only got a partial load on your entry???
tom c

:cool:
Tom C,
I always look forward to seeing your contribution. As always, a clever concept.
Tony

Originally posted by tom c
Phyllis
I don't quite know why but I only got a partial load on your entry???
tom c Me too, Phyllis, and I wanted to see MORE!
:wavey:

Thanks everyone for your comments, these mini challenges are fun to do.

Ken

Here's my try. Started by eliminating the blue car then added Smart Blur to simplify, Find Edges, Ink Outlines, and Dry Brush. Cropped to current dimensions and then finished off by adding a new layer filled with an art paper color, added a layer mask, and revealed the picture with a wet media brush.

Looks like the "birthday boy" in the car. :)

Gary

Tom said:
"I don't quite know why but I only got a partial load on your entry???"

Hmmm...yes, I see what you mean. It didn't upload right for some reason. Here it is again, hopefully intact this time.

Phyllis

JB, I like the dreamlike quality of your rendition...nicely done.

Gland, very clever idea...love the old red car against the b/w. That Birthday Boy sure gets around!

Phyllis :)

What did you mean by the last part of your explanation of art paper. . . . .
Or, maybe I should ask what program you used for your effect.
Very nice work, I really like the effect you achieved.

Platscha...

If I'm not mistaken the method Jim mentioned is described in
this thread (http://www.retouchpro.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=2763).

You can run, but you can't hide! Welcome again to RetouchPRO. Glad to see you're jumping right into the thick of things!

~DannyR~

Originally posted by platscha@cs.com
What did you mean by the last part of your explanation of art paper. . . . .


For some reason, I always think of art paper as having a very light tan or creamy coloration and a dimpled texture.

I just add a layer on top of the image and fill it with color, add a layer mask, and then reveal the image by clicking around the color layer with one of the wet media brushes. Afterwards, I flatten the image and add either a canvas or sandstone texture.

Jim

Beautiful, lovely submissions on this one, thank you everyone:) How I love viewing and learning from everyone!! Again I can't tell exactly what I did. I used MANY filters, find edges, rough pastels, are a couple I used. Also I took out a new layer filled it with textured paper, then took it off using wet media brush, different opacities. I left streaks in it where the paper texture wasn't taken off completely, this was intentional. Thank you JB this works wonderfully:) Thanks for the opportunity to learn!!

Wanda

When I saw Wanda's contribution, I realized why I can't get satisfied on my several tries on this mini-challenge (I didn't bother to post them). The key was the car. There is something not right when the car is in there.

It's surprising that eliminating something or just changing a little makes a lot of difference. 5 out of 5 stars.

Tony

Blacknight, I really liked your rendition. And even started in the same direction as you because I liked it so much. But you already did it so I moved on...

This is what I came up with...

Ken B. cool idea!

Once again I tried my outline-equalize-anisotropic-cutout-vivid combo. This is another pic where it's necessary to add a final dupe of the original with a cutout filter applied, saturation increased, and blended at normal over the other layers. The purpose of this final layer is to fill in the white areas with color. Some pics need this, some don't. This one did.

On the whole, I'd say this picture was one of the best candidates for this technique yet.

Phyllis

Unsharp mask, dupe and desaturate, then erase b/w layer to show through sections of colour.

Does everyone in Brooklyn stand in the middle of the street to chat??? :)

I've been playing around with a filter I'd forgotten about. It's called Impressionist and was included with Image Composer many moons ago.

I made several layers using different settings on impressionist (just playing around). I put the blurriest on the bottom and the clearest (not very clear) on top and played with the blending modes until happy. Next I put a stylize--find edges layer on top of what I had--Soft light around 50%. On top of that I put a desat-dup-invert-gaussian blur layer. Soft light again around 30%. Finished with a light texture.

Also used Paint Engine's @Wetter2 preset to wet the oil a bit before using GIMP's bumpmap filter for texture. :)

Forgot to add that I used DCSpecial's 1969 filter for added color. :D

Ikroll that is bright great colours and what a good find on this old posting, used the ahb on this one

Palms

OK youse guys.........here is one Brooklyn rendering.

Steve

Brooklyn after an attack by "the mad painter."

Steve

Steve that is mad or should it be you are mad :lol: :lol: :lol:

Palms

You folks are nothing but GOOD! :-)

I didn't like the car in the street and rather than clone it out, I just reset the crop to a vertical. (Yeah, I can be lazy!)

Duplicated Background

Ran the Facet filter about a dozen times

Created the canvas texture above the Facet layer and erased through it with a charcoal brush at about 14% opacity.

Added a soft frame

Ditto Swampy yours is super, looks quite victorian, i didnt even know the facet filter exsists, ( had to have a quick look to make sure it was there) and not sure what is does now either but will have to have a mess around with it ! ! !

Palms

Probably yes to both questions. 8-)

Steve

Steve that is mad or should it be you are mad :lol: :lol: :lol:

Palms

Ditto Swampy yours is super, looks quite victorian, i didnt even know the facet filter exsists, ( had to have a quick look to make sure it was there) and not sure what is does now either but will have to have a mess around with it ! ! !

Palms

Thanks, Palms. :-)

There are no adjustments in the Facet dialog. It just does it thing, but I find that one pass is hardly perceptible so I usually repeat it 10-12 times to get a better "artsy" effect. BTW after you run it once you can use the keyboard Control+F/Command+F to repeat the filter quickly. I usually just keep tapping the keyboard 'till I see something I like. If you go to far, you can always go back in your history palette.

Ikroll that is bright great colours and what a good find on this old posting, used the ahb on this one

Palms

I like this one Palms; what is ahb? I guess I'm out of the loop on this one. Could you provide a link for me? Thanks in advance. :)

Swampy, I too am a big fan of your Facet technique. Your image is very elegant.
Alan

Well
Posterised to 6 levels to simplify, ran smudge stick filter. This came out dark so I faded to 50% and used linear dodge as blend mode. Added the spatter frame built in to Photoshop and ear it is.

I don't think this can be Brooklyn, all the films I've seen about there, have kids running around a broken fire hydrant, don't see them here??????

Peter

A chalk illustration using PaintEngine's Wetter setting for the paint layer and a charcoal brush on top of a blue layer.
Alan

Ikroll AHB = art history brush in Photoshop not sure of other software here is a link about it. If you have it give it a go, it is one of my favorite tools with lots and lots of options

http://www.retouchpro.com/forums/showthread.php?t=8209

Alcar really like your chalk illustration, i have never looked at paint engine will have to add it to my list

Palms

..looks like we have a new restauration challenge :D

Ikroll AHB = art history brush in Photoshop not sure of other software here is a link about it. If you have it give it a go, it is one of my favorite tools with lots and lots of options

http://www.retouchpro.com/forums/showthread.php?t=8209

Alcar really like your chalk illustration, i have never looked at paint engine will have to add it to my list

Palms

...I hate acronyms sometimes ( :lol: ). I know art history brush; should have guessed that. I would use it if I had a wacom, but I only have a ball mouse :sad:

steve,

i like your first one! but i'm fairly sure you were on lsd for the 2nd ;)

dee dee,

very nice. it reminds me of something, but cant quite put my finger on it.

craig

Thanks, all. You are most kind.

Craig, it reminds me of something too, but I can't quite figure out what. Perhaps a greeting card rendering? Of course the subject matter is not moonlight and roses, but the parchment tones harken some past memory... LOL

Ikroll use the Ahb brush, although i do have a pen tool ( a cheap one it cost me about £15 ) i still use the mouse a lot because i forget to use the pen tool :lol:

Palms

Here's my version.
I used Redwater's action, Nik's pastel, Impressionist on Fluff Paint: Stevie Acrylics and a faint outline on top.
Sylvia

Several Studio Artist layers combined in Photoshop>

Here's my version.
I used Redwater's action, Nik's pastel, Impressionist on Fluff Paint: Stevie Acrylics and a faint outline on top.
Sylvia

Really fantastic Sylvia. Man I need to get more filters now. :)

LSD eh? Nope, never tried that. Always preferred a good cold beer. 8-)

Steve



steve,

i like your first one! but i'm fairly sure you were on lsd for the 2nd ;)

dee dee,

very nice. it reminds me of something, but cant quite put my finger on it.

craig

Spring is in the air....
Pastel version using PHotoshop and Impressionist chalk filter.
MargaretM

Here's my version... I cut and pasted a dashboard in from a photo I found online, transformed it to fit into the original picture. Ran Andromada veliciraptor filter to create the streaks on the right side......flipped the image horizontally and ran veleciraptor again to create the streaks on the left side, then flipped the entire image again to return it to the original position. Went into Eye Candy 4000 and made the water drops. Resized and saved.

This is very clever. I love it!

This is my attempt at this photo - a sort of "line and wash" watercolor. This is my first attempt here, so I hope the post works.

--Tom Thurston

May be your first time out, Tom, but your version is lovely. How did you get the "wash" look?

This is my attempt at this photo - a sort of "line and wash" watercolor. This is my first attempt here, so I hope the post works.

--Tom Thurston

Very much like this one Tom. Did you hand trace the lines, or use a filter for this? If filter, what filter? This is the look that I would like to achieve (but with filters of course since I'm lazy). :)

You're right, it does look like it could be in Brooklyn. It looks like Park Slope, where I used to live. Now I live in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. I decided to make your summer Brooklyn half Park Slope, and my bridge half Williamsburg. I suppose it's what Williamsburg would look like if all the hipsters would grow up, put down their guitars, spray paint, and rock hair, and buy dockers.

First, I made a duplicate layer of the original and then added a photo of the Williamsburg Bridge on a layer below that. I used a layer mask and just painted in B&W to blend the 2 layers. Then I adjusted the curves on both layers to match, since my bridge photo was taken in the February rain. Since there is a weird glow in summer in Brooklyn (must be because of Radiac) I made a 50% gray fill layer and applied a lense flare filter to that. Then I used levels and layer opacity to settle the lense flare layer into the image.

Quick and simple. Edges > cutout > fidling with levels and whatnot.

One-minute-filter-playaround.
I'll try to translate the filter i've used from Swedish Photoshop.
I used four filter from filter-gallery:
-glas
-texturize
-pastelchalk
-sprayed stroke

Hope that translation make any sence.

Finally I saturated whole picture.

*/ lazze_gurra

Tom Thurston,
I would also like to know step by step how you did.

*/ lazze_gurra

TThurston,

I'm w/lazze_gurra. I'm making a poster and that technique would fit right in to what I had in mind. BTW, how do you like Corel Painter IX.1?

-LF

Several have asked how I did my version. I'm sorry, it's not filters but lots of work by hand in Painter IX.1 (which I like very much). The ink lines are all freely traced by hand using Painter's Scratchboard brush. The color wash is on a separate layer beneath the ink layer, mostly using a Digital Watercolor wash brush with varying levels of diffusion. It actually didn't take all that long for most of the picture. The only real time-consuming part was the all foliage. In retrospect, I think put in too much time there, and the picture would be better with if the foliage was not quite so busy.

-Tom

Several have asked how I did my version. I'm sorry, it's not filters but lots of work by hand in Painter IX.1 (which I like very much). The ink lines are all freely traced by hand using Painter's Scratchboard brush. The color wash is on a separate layer beneath the ink layer, mostly using a Digital Watercolor wash brush with varying levels of diffusion. It actually didn't take all that long for most of the picture. The only real time-consuming part was the all foliage. In retrospect, I think put in too much time there, and the picture would be better with if the foliage was not quite so busy.

-Tom

Yup; still can't beat an hand drawing. I know you spent a lot of time and the result was excellent. I'm the lazy man of this thread (well, Craig and I are competing for the title anyway) :lmao: . :)

i started with this tut http://www.retouchpro.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&postid=33207#post33207
then added the color version behind it and lowered the opacity of top layer

Have enjoyed this thread - Great work from everyone!

Gertrudis
scratch brush large over whole image, then oil brush small to bring out details.

Paint Shop Pro X
Placed original under gertrudis layer, then used weak strength eraser on objects which caught my eye.

Regards to all,
Mitch.

as always, i'm impressed. some very nice works here!

been watching this thread for a while but never contributed. finally decided i could do something with it...not quite what i started out to do, but it will suffice for now :)

there's a heavy gausian blur layer in here, a 'find all' edges layer, lots of blends and copy merges, a contrast/brightness layer, a grouped layer with some lighting, a blank layer with a partial airbrushing and overlain texture (for the street), more blends, and some partial opacities. lost track after the first 4 or 5 layers. oh, and one copy merge that had a VERY heavy digital camera noise removal applied to it.

nice image. thanks, danny :)

craig

My steps:
1. Dup the background layer
2. KPT pyramid paint
3. Set the blending mode of the duplicate layer to Lighten
I see many wonderful artworks, congratulations!
Regards