FIRST MINI-CHALLENGE?
See below for "Information and Guidelines."

Here’s another “mini-challenge” to play with in the Photo-based Art category until the next offical challenge is posted here (http://www.retouchpro.com/challenge/index.html).

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PHOTO ART: Mini-Challenge #30 – Chinese Pavilion

While browsing a gallery at PBASE.com I came upon this lovely photo taken by Pete Tully. Pete graciously granted permission for it to be used as the subject for a mini-challenge. I know it will be treated it as though he retains the copyright ©, which of course, he does. :)

It has all kinds of potential and I look forward once again to seeing the creative spins you put on it.

Good luck and have 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? A takeout delivery?
. * 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.

I don't particularly like working with architectural photos, so I tried to make it a little more organic. (Next building Danny gives us I promise to turn into an amoeba, I swear!) It's supposed to be enveloped with dragon breath.

Phyllis

Beautiful, Phyllis!!


...and I can feel the heat! ;)

I tried to make this old an uninviting ... with a lot of fooling around.

Don

Don, you succeeded in making it "old and uninviting." The ominous gray sky alone makes me want to go home, and that building now looks like it lacks support and is gonna crumble any minute. Reminds me of a drawing I saw once of the unfinished "Tower of Babel" aiming toward heaven but not gonna make it!

Phyllis :)

I tried to give this sort of a "Shangri la" feeling...or at least my impression of what Shangri-la might be like.

This was done with the Pattern Stamp, Healing Brush, and Paint Brush all set to "Dry brush on towel" and alternating between the Impressionist and normal modes. I did this on my LapTop using the touch pad which makes it somewhat like finger painting without the mess.

Jim

Very wekk done, I really like your effect, very shang rah la.

Copy background, invert.
Copy inverted layer, Eye Candy V3 Antimatter Filter.
Put antimatter layer under inverted layer. Blend mode to Difference.
Blend mode on inverted layer to Color.
Copy inverted layer, blend mode to Vivid light, and Gaussian Blur 85 pixels.
Play with Hue/Sat on all the layers except blurred one. varying the hue.

Want MORE fun? Go to your Actions and look in the Default Actions for Gradient Map. Load some of THOSE in and watch the colors change!
:wavey:

Jim -- very mysterious and dreamlike -- very Shangri-la.


WoW!! BK, folks could see that pagoda from the next country! :cool:

I knew that anti-matter was powerful stuff (from Star Trek;) ), but didn't realize it could be so beautiful!

Dupicate layer
sketch, then put color picture on top and made a color sketch.
Sharpen Edges
put a lighting effect(pencil) on bottom picture.
adjusted brightness
slelected white sky with majic wand put a blue and white radient the a render of clouds

Jim, ooooooo...right on! Love it!

BK...shudder...looks like the Chinese had a nuclear accident...wonder if GW Bush knows about this!

PJB, really neat effect...very creative use of filters.

Phyllis

I was rumaging around in the RetouchPRO attic, found this image and thought I'd give it a try.

Don't ask me how I did this, as it is nowhere near the result I had in mind. It just wanted to be a souvenir pin, no matter what I tried to do :)

Pam

Pam, that turned out great! I love the texture...looks like I can reach out and touch the leafy hedges. And the sunny yellow color really makes a difference on this (rather challenging, I thought) picture. Wonderful!

Phyllis

Phyllis,
Dragon Breath is a great description for your entry. You can feel the heat. Great job!

Don,
You achieved “old & uninviting”. It looks like a faded print and I agree with Phyllis that the ominous sky just makes you want to run for cover. Well done!

Jim,
Love the pattern stamp and dry brush results! Looks like you had fun.

Blacknight,
Chinese pavilion in black light…. love the neon colors.

PJB,
Nice sketch results and love the hints of color.

Pam,
Love the texture and you are right it does look like a souvenir pin!

Decided to play a little today....

Open image and adjusted with levels
Stylize - diffuse - anisotropic (to smooth image)
Duplicated layer - changed mode to screen
Duplicated layer - desaturate - fade desaturate
Deleted previous layer
New layer set to overlay
Stamp visible - change mode to burn
Desaturate - fade desaturate - emboss ( to add depth to image)
New layer - brush tool to create a bit of sun through the trees
Used airbrush to soften around image.

Done

~T

I love the "Sun Effect" ~T.

Thanks...I owe it all to the sparkle brush!

~T

TPaul, that's one of the best versions of this difficult challenge yet, in my opinion. I don't really know why, except possibly you got rid of that horrid pink color and the sharp edges. Hard to say why, but I really like what you've done here.

Phyllis

Thanks Phyllis! I really like the results of this one as well. I think what is appealing is the simplified edges and the brighter colors. Those basic steps really cleaned up the photo and made for quite a difference. Of course you should get some of the credit as I don't think I would have ever used the anisotropic filter until I saw some of your entries.

~T

filters, filters, filters, love them! Just had fun and tried them all untill I saw something and went with it. Combined image with itself several times using different blending options. i want to try this more.

Don--you've modified that technique and made it your own. It looks great!

Impressionist again. I love what it did to the trees--I'm not so sure about the building on this one.

1. make 6 dups of the background and work from bottom to top
2. Impressionist--watercolor--damp translucent
3. Impressionist--Natural--Wild cave painting--changed brush (screen)
4. Impressionist--Charcoal--stroke sized by brightness--changed brush (pin light 50%)
5. Impressionist--Pencil sketch--soft detailed--changed brush (I like the fat ones better than the skinny ones) (soft light)
6. Filter--stylize--find edges--desaturate this layer. (soft light 33%)
7. gaussian blur sketch layer (desat, dup, invert, color dodge, gaussian blur, merge, dup, multiply, gaussain blur, merge) on top in multply mode
8. adjust saturation and add texture.

As always 'm at the end of the thread so too much great entry's before me so well done everyone!

well, these have been sitting on my hard drive for a while, I completely forgot I had made them!:)
I thought this had to be a red red red red Laquer paviljon. Saturation and hue on the paviljon. This didn't completely get rid of the blue color so I selected them separately and did a seperate hue change on them. Selecting the paviljon and putting it on a new layer. Layer styles with a glassy finish and small drop shadow. Deleted the little side-building and copied the left leaf side to the right. Ran some filter on the leaves but can't remember. Then flatten ans run boss-emboss. I think details were lost because of the compression


gina

here is than my second one, I think an emboss layer to the paviljon too but can't remember and it certainly was a different one than the other.



Gina

Thank you Gina, both are good ; one in a tramandous red red and red, and the other also fine with good effects.

This one is in a wind blast and in a dancing possition.
Like allways I distorted it in all the way

thank you

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vijayan

Vijayan,

you're striving to a chinese tower of Pisa LOL
Whar did you do swerve? or Photoshop filter


gina

Thank you Gina, I have only some effects of Photoshop and it is with mac I just play there only. It is Distort>Shear, and Glass>frosted..

Mauler, Good extention you have made with this Chinese tower, seems like a Red Fort.( not just like Indian Red Fort). But I think it is Pagoda; is a multi storried tower or tomb in typical eastern architecture.
Never can be a Fort.

thank you
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vijayan

Thank you Gina, I have only some effects of Photoshop and it is with mac I just play there only. It is Distort>Sher, and Glass>frosted..

Mauler, Good extention you have made with this Chinies tower, seems like a Red Fort.( not just like Indian Red Fort). But I think it is Pagoda; is a multi storied tower or tomb in typical eastern architecture.
Never can be a Fort.

thank you
-------
vijayan

Looks more like a Chinese Lantern now.

Peter

I love Oriental architecture (and food, and crafts and, and... :-)) Thanks for the fun photo to play with.

Peter -- I think you're right -- you could hang it outside for a party!

Swampy -- this is very nice -- makes a lovely wall hanging!

Why, thank you CJ. :-)

Long ago (and far away as they say) I traveled to Taiwan and Hong Kong. I just loved it. To stand in the National Museum in Taipei and see beautiful art pieces from a period in time when my ancestors were still hanging in trees, was awesome.

I'm a bit late to the party but I think you can tell from the result that i didn't peek before acting.

Was trying for a two tone feel ... lots of red and green. The blue sky accentuates that feeling. I also straightened the perspective and intentionally compressed the image vertically. It seems to make the pagoda more substantial.
Stosh

very nice, guys :)

most of my filter forge filters have been done on a sort of hunt and peck, plug 'n play type basis. i understood some things but a lot was just trial and error and see what comes up, then publish it.

this is the first filter i've constructed where i really felt like i was constructing it; that i knew what i was doing and had a distinct direction i wanted to go in and went there.

it's a sort of luminosity mask filter. i copy out part of the luminance values and send them off one way, alter them, and then bring them back to the main program line. that gets mixed with something else, and voila', a luminance filter.

so, here's some results of that. bear in mind that this was also primarily designed to work on portraits, not landscapes. but nonetheless, it shld work on just about anything. it was also designed not quite as much for photo art as for photo correction and balancing, but there's enough variety to it that it will work for art also :)

also, because i'm working mostly with luminance here, this makes it pretty easy to get a number of different black and white looks.