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# 47 – Music Rose

This is another marvelous picture taken by Jack Zucker, who also took the jazz guitar picture used in Mini-challenge 39.

The devil is in the legal details: Jack retains the U.S. and international copyright © not only for the original image, but for any photo-art versions of it. Unauthorized distribution or use without her permission are prohibited.

Thanks, Jack, for letting me use this great image.

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? Clamation Raisens doin’ a little toe tappin’?
. * 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 sent this "note" and "rose" overseas.

Marlene
www.thedigitalspectrum.com

Just colorized it, reduced saturation then picked one of the shades of the rose for background. Then chose a standard circular mask and distorted it to fit the diagonal.

This is a beautiful image, and the variations of it are lovely also --

Chuck -- I really like your composite -- the toning of the sheet music, the use of the rose as another layer of vase, the idea of the "morning after" is interesting -- perhaps some thoughts running through your mind... hmmm.

Marlene - intriguing image -- makes you wonder who placed it there, and where it's headed.

Art -- I love the sepia tone effect - a nice surprise!

I decided to do another polar vase (Distort->Polar Coordinates), then masked to show some of the bloom from the duped layer beneath fitting inside the vase.

Four verrrrrrry imaginative and beautifully done roses! This group gets better every day!

Chuck, your "morning after" is absolutely brilliant. And the composition and coloring work perfectly! Pat yourself on the back...since I can't reach you from here. :)

Marlene, very romantic image! The texture looks like a knitted pouch...with a love letter inside? Very intriguing and well done. How did you do the fabric texture?

Art, love the simple old-fashioned looking color and framing. That frame is inspired. What a great idea! Thanks for telling us how to do it...I want to remember that trick.

CJ, your vases are always gorgeous. I have tried to make them but mine never "fit" as well as yours do. Was the polar vase your own idea? In any case, I love it.

I made two very different versions. This first one is done entirely with three simple KPT filters, including the final sharpen with their "equalizer." (It's the only way to sharpen...does it in a way that you don't get haloes. It also creates misty soft focus as well.)

Phyllis

This one looks sort of like a notecard I guess. I did the painting look with KPT Effects "pyramid paint" with opacity faded. The frame is made by making a dark gold frame-shaped layer at 35% opacity, then running the Photoshop distort-->displace filter set to "tile" and "wrap around" and loading the "crackle" texture. Ran it twice, second time turned 180 degrees.

Phyllis

Four verrrrrrry imaginative and beautifully done roses! This group gets better every day!

Chuck, your "morning after" is absolutely brilliant. And the composition and coloring work perfectly! Pat yourself on the back...since I can't reach you from here. :)

Marlene, very romantic image! The texture looks like a knitted pouch...with a love letter inside? Very intriguing and well done. How did you do the fabric texture?

Art, love the simple old-fashioned looking color and framing. That frame is inspired. What a great idea! Thanks for telling us how to do it...I want to remember that trick.

CJ, your vases are always gorgeous. I have tried to make them but mine never "fit" as well as yours do. Was the polar vase your own idea? In any case, I love it.

I made two very different versions. This second one is done entirely with three simple KPT filters, including the final sharpen with their "equalizer." (It's the only way to sharpen...does it in a way that you don't get haloes. It also creates misty soft focus as well.)

Phyllis

Phyllis, thanks -- the "polar vases" are something I first made a few years ago when I was trying to figure out what some of the filters that I never used did -- when I tried Polar coordinates, all I could get was a polar vase. :) I made one that I liked, and kept it; when I'm trying different effects and come to polar coord. -- it's always the first thing I think about. (I need to read up on how to use that filter someday... ;) ) If you haven't been able to make one, you probably just haven't gone thru enough iterations -- just keeping doing it over and over until you find something you like. Now, isn't THAT a definitive explanation for the use of a specific filter! :dizzy:

I will try again
Ok!
Marlene you must be a young mother or a very loving grandmother, becaused you cudeled yours. very nice

Art. Yours is really nice how dod you get the curvey lines.

Chuck! you are a true romantic and thats not weird. NIce blending.

CJ yours and Phyliss's entry were awsome and Phyliss second one was great but I am lost, was the title of the third one lost in space, Ha Ha I cant pull up a picture.

Art Really delicate application, how you do the curvey lines.

Ok here is mine kind of stupid but I thought it was cute.

I have been having trouble attaching files and it keeps telling me they are to large. The size is 500 x 625 pixels, i haven't had trouble till now.

Help!

Phil, "stupid" is in the mind of the beholder, when it comes to art. I agree with you this time...it's definitely "cute." And very imaginative!

Thanks for alerting me that one of my pics didn't upload correctly. I have resent it. Scroll back or click below for rosecurl:

www.retouchpro.com/forums/attachment.php?s=&postid=35204

Phyllis

Phil - it IS cute -- I never would have thought of it.

Phyllis -- I Love the curl - the black background really sets it off, and makes the curled music sheet look silvery.

Phyliss I still cant pull it up. Maybe there is a problem with the sight.

We just had an 80th Birthday party for my wifes aunt and the rose jogged a possable birthday card to my mind.

Thinking of dreams I thought of clouds.

In Photoshop 7 there is an exxtract tool so I extracted the rose and her face.

I made a same size canvas filled it with clouds and colorized it

I then dragged and dropped each item in the background, placed it and used blur tool to blend

Photoshops new text tool works better then the old one and I have 320 fonts so I selected Lucida.

Roses.

very nice touch Frank.

Frank, I love your colored roses--a great idea and very well done!

Phil, lovely idea and great choice of background. And thanks for reminding me about that extract filter in PS7. I am so used to doing it the hard way that I haven't used it, though the tutorial I read made it sound great.

As for not getting the pic to come up, try emptying your cache. Your browser might think it's doing you a favor by caching a non-existent pic, and might not know how to refresh it since it was corrupted the first time. Just a thought...browsers can be pretty tempermental. :)

Phyllis

I finally got it up and its great. How did you get the music lines on top of the rose. Did you use a drag method.

I love looking at all the great jobs you all do.


2 layers with just rose
1 layer with rose and notes with white background taken out
new layer with a with oval out line and a pencil2 filter put on.

Phil asks: "How did you get the music lines on top of the rose."

That is what happened when I ran KPT3's video feedback filter on a certain setting, and I just liked the look...still just experimenting with my new KPT package.

PJB, very nice effect, nice arrangement and framing! Now PJB actually lifted the notes from the white background and placed them over the rose manually...good job too! You could achieve the same KPT effect I got on my rosecurl pic by doing this and using a distortion to curve the lines of music. You really have more design control when you do these things manually, but it's still fun to play with filters just to see what surprises you get!

Phyllis

here's my attempts at this one. for the first one, first I duplicated the layer then I tried out a couple texture filters, then adjusted curves on the different layers, then flattened the image and did a final curves adjustment.

Second try: this one was working from where i finished with the last one (I was going for an antique look on this one). I duped the layer, applied my new favorite filter (Old Photo) which turns the photo to a sepia tone. then i used the eraser at about 20% opacity and a couple different brushes to get back some of the color on the rose.

- David :)

David -- my favorite is the sepia toned version. Nice!

thanks CJ, I liked how that one turned out more than the first one.

- David :)

David.....How unusual, my vote is for the first one. It would make a wonderful background, with a little more fade.:)

[QUOTE]Originally posted by ugot2bkdng
[B]The colors are great Frank. How did you do that??

chuck

Not really sure, can't remember exactly! :( I normally colour correct infdividual channels rather than "master" in Photoshop. Read some good colour correction techniques. Being new here, I'm not sure what has already been mentioned, I might be going over old gound. There is some quite good stuff here,

http://homepages.ihug.com.au/~larrykin/pshop/contents.html

Also I like David Rowley's stuff, simple but good tutorials. (I even bought one of his cd's!). This half tone effect sometimes works well. Sometimes it's too much, you'll have to fade it.

http://www.davrodigital.co.uk/tutorials/half-tones/halftones.htm

Frank

Chuck, I don't think so! You're being modest! As I said, I only started this year, but it is coming, albeit very slowly. :( Photoshop is such huge programme to learn. The basics are not too difficult but I think you could on learning it forever. Last year I had to take an early retirement due to ill health and at that time I couldn't even spell "computer". Never really used one in my life. So it's been a very steep uphill learning curve, apart from digital cameras and Photoshop I've also had to try and master cooking, house work etc. :tongue:
Frank

David, I too vote for rose #2...love the antique fading and the softness.

Frank, thanks for sharing those links!

Phyllis

Thanks Phyllis and Goldcoin!
Frank - those are some interesting sites, especially the first one, that's a good color correction tut on there.

- David :)

Kendal I like the second one best as well really soft touch.

to PJB fro PJL hi nice submission, effect and color is pretty.


Hey, this is fun. There is so many different ways to express one self.

pjb: "I love looking at all the great jobs you all do."

Couldn't agree with you more. Another great group of pics.

Had to jump in -- looks like you're having a great time!

Had to jump in again.

Oooooo... Danny, I really like that first one a lot!

Phyllis

Well, I was supposed to be going through bills today, but no - I HAD to start playing! ;)

I have two variations on this challenge. Not really trying to emulate a traditional art technique, just playing with filters.

For this first one, I used my kaleidoscope action a few times and transformed/layered the different kaleidoscopes. Then, merged all and applied the Dreamy Photo filter. Duplicated the layer and applied a Mosaic filter. Twirled the mosaic layer and changed the blending mode to Lighten.

Jeanie

For this one, I duplicated the background layer and ran the DreamSuite Mosaic filter on the new layer. Then copied that layer and ran the Photoshop Distort->Glass filter. Copied that layer and ran Distort->Diffuse Glow; set the opacity to 45%.

I think it looks a little like a rose frozen in ice.

Jeanie

What wonderful entries everyone. Jeanie, love the rose in ice. It's always such a treat to see all the different interpretations. So much creativity is good for the soul:)
I was trying for an antique greeting card look. Painted the rose in Painter Classic. In Photoshop applied several layers of different colors, then taking it off with a wet media brush. I think I had 11 layers at one time. I then flattened. Placed this image above the original. With the eraser set at a low opacity, I erased to allow a bit of the music to show through. I then used the special effects brush, scattered daisies, adjusting the opacity. I wanted it to appear quite subtle. I then wrote a verse to go with the card. That's about it. Thanks everyone, thanks, Danny.
My small contribution

Wanda