FIRST MINI-CHALLENGE -or- NEW TO PHOTO-ART?
Click here (http://www.retouchpro.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=4977) for "Information and Guidelines."

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PHOTO ART: Mini-challenge #107 – Wagon

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

The base image can be downloaded by clicking the link below the photo description.

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Thanks to Amanda for providing this photo taken at her mother's Texas ranch bed and breakfast--home of Momma Yomma, you may recall :).

Phyllis

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LEGAL VERBIAGE
Amanda retains the U.S. and international copyright © not only for the original image, but also for any photo-art versions of it. Unauthorized distribution or use of this image without permission are prohibited.

Here's what I came up with.

Phyllis

Phyllis - this look works very well with the image. I really like the subtle colors and the way the wagon first catches the eye.

Amanda, I was licking my chops when I opened up this pic..Love these old vehicles..Thanks for posting it..

Phyllis.. Great pastel version..I would not have considered this treatment for this pic..But it really works for me..

I Thought this old wagon deserved the limelight, so I did some heavy cropping..Then the usual sketch technique with coloration..I then used tablet for major layer masking and then some hand sketched outlining to bring out the wagon against the background..Then one of Bud's wooden matts..

Jerry :D

Amanda - thanks for sharing this picture with us.
Phyllis - I like what you did with the colors/lighting on this!
OK - even though I am very tempted, I am not going to try that 'line art' I've been using too much of lately!
I wanted to get some 'older' feeling to this one ... used sepia, grain, texture..
Bill C

Great work on this one jerry. I love it.

BTW, wich one of Bud's frame did you use ?

Jerry - we must have been posting at the same time. I really like your rendition - great job!
Bill C

Bill and Mikl, thanks for the nice comments..That was a really fun pic to work with..

Bill, your sepia treatment of this pic really made it look like a 1800's version..Really good use of sepia..

"Quote by Mikl"
Great work on this one jerry. I love it.
BTW, wich one of Bud's frame did you use ?

Mikl..As you know, Bud's frames are really well suited for personnal tweeking as far as color is concerned..For this frame, I used "Bud's wooden mattes>blackwood matte" Then as the action was running, I adjusted hue/saturation to try to match the colors in the picture..When the action was finished, the color was not quite right, so I opened the wood layer and added a color overlay "light tan" then adjusted the opacity to allow the grain to show through..With Bud's actions, you have so many ways to get the colors right that even a Bozo like me can make them look good..

Hope this helps
Jerry :D

I'm glad y'all are enjoying the wagon. My son and I are going out there today to drop off our growing-too-large chicks...I'll see if I can get any other good photo-ops!!

Phyllis--Love the sketch! How did you do that?

Jerry--Bringing the focus down to just the wagon was a terrific idea. Wonderful interpretation and framing.

BillC--I like this! It really does feel old that way!

BillC sort of inspired me...old wagon, old cabin, old farmer. All past their prime but still working.

Amanda - "Little House On The Praire" effect - very creative, and I like the blurred look! I look forward to more of your pics!
Regards,
Bill C

Amanda
You were reading my mind..I considered an old west background but havn't come up with one yet..

Your scene and painting effect are really exceptional..Really nice manipulation and filtering..

Jerry :D

That's right, Jerry, I was.....:devil: :shocked:

I promise I won't tell what else I saw in there!!!

SBEO, reversed, overlay blend. Flatten, anisotropic diffuse set to overlay - sharpen and flatten. Added SPLAT! frame.

Phyllis, nice job, looks kind of liked an etching, but colored.

BillC, great texture effect.

themanda, excellant manipulation.

Blacknight, nice job and great colors.

For mine, the first time I looked at the image it seemed perfect for a black and white.
First thing I did was remove the power lines and the old windmill frame thingy. Converted it to black and white, added a subtle amount of lighting, added a Splat matting and a chrome frame.

Ken

Jerry, love your treatment of this pic...nice use of neutral tones and the frame choice is perfect.

Bill C, great “old photo” feel with those simple browns and grays.

Amanda, awesome! Love the way you made good use of the old log cabin from previous mini challenge. Your composition is just excellent! How did you get the soft blotchy painted look? What filters?

BK, excellent effect on sky, trees, ground, and wagon. All parts are good in themselves and work very well together!

Ken, good idea to remove that little tower (what the heck is that thing anyway, Amanda?). This looks like a b/w photo from the 30s or 40s. Works well with this subject.

Phyllis

Not very original, looks like a few actions but, this time, no action used.

1. dup bg : copy 1
2. on copy 1, Find Edges, Soft Light at 100%
3. dup copy 1 : copy 2
4. Graphic Pen (15,95, right diag), Soft Light at 75%
5. adj layer Hue/Saturation
6. adj layer Brightness/Contrast
7. texture, Canvas

Phyllis love the colors.

Jerry nice western picture like the texture

Ken nice black and white nice frame

"" Ghost Town 3D ""

Jerry :eek: :eek: :eek:

Nice work submitted while I was buried in the "Ghost Town"..

BlackKnight..nice combination of filters..They compliment this picture very much..

Mikl.. Thanks for the steps..You produced a very nice painting effect..Good job.

Kenb..Your b/w treatment works well with this photo.. I really like the frame you used..Do you really use SPLAT a lot ??

Jerry :D

Jerry...OMG!!!:bow: :bow: :bow:

That is FANTASTIC. How long did it take you?

Jerry, WOW ! Marvellous !:thumbsup:

These are all so wonderful! I don't know if I can comment on them all! But there are a couple that are outstanding!

Phyllis, how did you achieve that wonderful color gradient in your first one?

Jerry, you're ghost town is absolutely incredible. Neat idea, and I love the presentation!

Originally posted by jerry
[
Kenb..Your b/w treatment works well with this photo.. I really like the frame you used..Do you really use SPLAT a lot ??

Jerry :D [/B]

I really like Splat, I use it a lot for texturizing, nothing better in my book and I liek the frames too, you also have the opportunity to make your own frames from within photoshop and save them in the splat format.

Ken

Thanks Folks for commenting on the ole Ghost Town.. It was really fun to work on..

Amanda.. I worked on that version in two seatings of approx. 2 hours each.. It was a lot of trial and error to find things that looked right.. My wife kept saying "try this" or "try that" till it looked like something.. Then she said quit playing and go do some yard work.. Go Figure.. She dosn't understand that this photoart is important stuff..

Jerry :D :D

This is my second version of this one.

Ken

KenB - I really like that mask with it!

Jerry, ghost town is great idea and well-executed!

Ken, nice use of brushes...looks great!

Tyeise, to get the gradient I used a circular rainbow gradient on a separate layer set to color mode and faded opacity a bit. Also painted with large brush set to color mode to accent different areas with the colors I wanted.

Phyllis

Beautiful work, folks. BillC, I love your's!

I'm new to converting to black and white so I thought I would practice on this using curves adjustment layers and masks. I wanted to make the grass soft. And I thought the tree in the left corner was distracting. And I wanted to keep the details of the wagon prominent without any sharpening. I also wanted to maximize the tonal range without looking too bleak.

I would really appreciate any constructive ideas!

Bill

Bill, great job. Looks like a high quality b/w photo that you might find in a top photographer's collection.

Phyllis

That's very kind of you, Phyllis. The light bulb came on during the last week or so that it's not what method you use to convert to B&W--channel mixer, greyscale, desaturate--it's what you do with it afterwards. Just like a color image, different parts need different strokes. Thanks.

Bill - very clean - nice conversion to BW...I agree with Phyllis - professional looking.
Kind regards,
Bill C

Bill M, excellent work. This bw looks like an original. Bravo !

Second try :
- grayscale, levels...
- Ancient Photo Digital Focus atn

3rd try :
- grayscale, levels...
- Ancient Photo Digital Focus atn
- Antique Engraving atn, Normal at 60 %

Don't realy know wich one I prefer.

Billm.. Very nice b/w rendition.. As previously stated, looks very professional. Any hints on how to start to do a conversion like that?

Mikl.. Nice sepia effect.. I really like the first one better.. The second is a little washed out on my monitor.. Nice Work..

Jerry :D

In Photshop I got rid of the powerlines and that tower thingie, added a copy on a second layer, opacity 70% and drop shadow.

Jerry-- Thanks for the kind words. As far as hints go for b&w, that would be like taking hints from a musician who plays by ear when your studying classical piano! But I can at least tell you what I tried to do. I'm sure there are great books out there that I should be reading.
After studying great b&w photos, it seemed that grey is the enemy and contrast is your goal, but without large blotches of black or white. So using curves adjustment layers (about 10), including the eyedroppers, I maximized contrast everywhere on the image. I then sat back and studied where it was too harsh or too distracting or just too ugly.
The following three small thumbnails, I hope, will illustrate that sequence. The top is just desaturate. The middle is full contrast. The last is the final product. What's amazing is that not once was sharpening used. I'll try this flow for a while and see if it works again.
Best regards, Bill

Part 2-- The wagon photo did not have one channel superior to the others, so I just used desaturate. But the following photos show the opposite:
The top is right out of the camera.
The middle is desaturated.
The bottom is the g channel only.
Makes a big difference. To me the bottom one actually captures the depth of the red better. The middle one looks like pink should look!

Originally posted by Bill M
So using curves adjustment layers (about 10), including the eyedroppers, I maximized contrast everywhere on the image. I then sat back and studied where it was too harsh or too distracting or just too ugly.Bill, I want to repeat this back in different words so that I know I understand what you're saying... If I followed your images correctly, the first thing you did was a curve to add lots of contrast to the entire photo. Then, you created another curves adjustment layer and used the eyedropper to run over areas in the photo you wanted to change, noted the corresponding range on the curve, and adjusted just that area of the curve until the area looked like you wanted. Then, created another curve adjustment layer and did the same for a different area, etc.

Did I understand that right? Did you use any masking in your curves adjustment layers?

Thanks, Jeanie

That's pretty much it, except I used a mask on every single adjustment layer. It took the ten layers and masks to achieve the middle look, and that is where I flattened for the first time. Then still more masked layers were used to reach the final look. I believe every mask was a black inverted mask where I would paint with white to bring out the small correction I had made. Never could I get anything useful from a curve applied to the entire image. Each little area of the image, such as the shadow under the wagon or the front of the wagon, required its own individual treatment. The rest of what you say is true. It's trial and error and might seem tedious, but it was fun.
Bill

Fascinating Bill! Thanks for the explanation.

You might be interested in this Color-to-B&W conversion method by Russell Brown (http://www.russellbrown.com/body.html). Click on the "more tips" button and then scroll down the tips until you find "Seeing in Black and White" - there's both a Quicktime movie and PDF file (http://www.russellbrown.com/tips/pdf/colortoB&W.pdf) explaining the technique. I've found it to be quite flexible - esp. when you get to the last "But wait, there's more!" section. ;)

Jeanie

Thanks, Jeanie. I made an action from that a while back, but (LOL) the results of moving the sliders appeared to my ignorant eye to be random. I guess I don't have an instinct for color interplay, so just light and dark is about all I can handle for now. :confused:
Thanks, Bill

Wow Bill M
You and Jeanie have been really busy today.. I really appreciate your explanation of your technique.. I really admire those B&W pics with the great contrast but never had a clue about how to approach them before.. I guess I am going to give it a shot now.

Thanks again for your help

Jerry :D

HMMM.. I wonder if a "Black & White conversion" thread would be helpful.. Hint Hint..Your the teacher..:D

Just wanted to say what great work all of you have done on this one, this has been a great thread to watch.

Bill M, your b+w is perfectly done, kudos to your touch in the "darkroom".

FYI, Danny Raphael has a great action that allows you to see and compare almost all the b+w conversion methods available at one time, including Russell Brown's. The action and explanation of different conversion techniques are here:

http://www.retouchpro.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=4769

Scroll down to "III. Photoshop Action to illustrate above steps"

Pam

Thanks, Pam. Yes, I have Danny's action.
Jerry, I think a black and white thread is a great idea. I'm not ready to start one myself though. This time next week you'll have as much experience with it as I do! Everything I know is above in this tread. I never cared about b&w until my daughter gave me an Ansel Adams calendar for Christmas.

But here's my thoughts:
--there are many books on Ansel Adams
--there are many books on b&w photography
--every book on digital photography mentions it
--many people do it and have galleries on the web

If anyone has experience or references on the subject, by all means let's fire up a thread now. With my usual bulldog tenacity, I'm going to see if there is a code to break on this, at least that suits MY taste. I think we all know the several ways to basically convert, but I want to research what to do after that.
Bill

Phyliss, nice colored pencil, I like the gold tone top of trees.
Jerry I love the way you featured the wagon and the second sub illusion.
Bill C your has a very nice softness effect.
Amanda nice composition, I think I would like the farmer and wagon a little sharper then the rest .
Black night I like thre painting effect, works well.
Ken nice B&W and frame.SEc one erffect is different.
REtmiki nice hand coloring.
Bill M yours reminds me of an Ansel Adams zone system graeat tonal range.

I tried for a water coloring, but I think its more of a hand coloring, with accent lighting on wagon

This one is a combo of filters.

Phili, both nice, and unusual looks, but the hot pink one...WOW!

Phyllis

I have been watching all the submissions for this image and have just been blown away by all the wonderful work!

I have been playing with the cut out filter today -- so here is my submission.

Wow...so many Great versions! I enjoyed looking at them all.
Here is mine. Another one of those days that I did not pay attentiont to what I was doing.
Layers, with various filers and brush work.

Jean

I just wanted to say that In the last three months all submissions are awsome.

Some really great Ideas.

What I love is that all are different and all are good and even newbies are submitting great stuff

So to all in the Photo basrd art forum

Clap - Clap -Clap:D

Lots of good work on this thread...

I was playing around with Bill M.'s b&w action and this photo. My version was created as follows:

ran Bill M.'s b&w action, then copied the Blurred Red and the Green history state layers to a new document. Ran calculations to mix the two layers, and masked them with the green channel from the original color image. Then changed from grayscale to Tritone (BL 165, orange and brown).Copied the resulting layer, ran "Charcoal" sketch filter, set layer to "Hard Light" with a fill opacity of about 80%.

I decided to stick with my usual style (blurred background with sketch overlays) for this one. I used all four of the basic sketch styles I know on the top. Each at around 33% and with blending modes adjusted to suit the image.

Bottom Artistic--dry brush + Brush Strokes--spatter (fade spatter to 65)

Next up Artsitic--cut out + Texture--grain--speckle opacity=36%

Next up Artistic--palette knife + Texture--grain--speckle Blending mode=soft light opacity=37%

Sketch overlays + texture

Hi, Chery, very good work and leyers of filters very much supported for a good out put..
I am also trying a bit.. it is Filter > Distort > Diffuse glow and Artistic > Palette and Knife, and adjusted Levels..

A Wagon Glow....

Thank you all...

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vijayan

Vijayan this one is beautiful. The glow effect is excellent. :)

several layers used in Photoshop7. I found the edges and desaturated. I used median noise and poster edges then ampisoft simplified a few times on different layers. Cathy

Thank you Chery..
Tenneysmith, good use of effects..very Artistic ,not Artificial..
thank you..

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vijayan

Tachyon Overlay and DCSpecial's 1969 filter for this effect. Also used Xero's Fuzzifier filter on the blue sky to reduce the jpeg artifacts. Tried to clone out the transmission lines too (missed some, but not going to reupload; perfect I'm not). LOL

Decided to add a Metallic b/w Pseudogrey too. :)

A bit of Lucis, Diffuse, Blur, Clone, Levels.

The only thing missing from this pic, is the man chasing after his horse in the background.

Peter

... Also used Xero's Fuzzifier filter on the blue sky to reduce the jpeg artifacts. Tried to clone out the transmission lines too (missed some, but not going to reupload; perfect I'm not). LOL

... :)

lkroll, love the colors -- love the name "Fuzzifier" filter also :lol: Glad I'm not the only one around here who isn't perfect with cloning ;)


The only thing missing from this pic, is the man chasing after his horse in the background.

:lol: :lol: Love that "image in my mind" that you evoked. I see your trees "have been drinking" again. ;)
Peter,

Love that "image in my mind" that you evoked. I see your trees "have been drinking" again

I think I'm going for that Salvador Dali melting effect with the trees. Maybe I should have put a clockface in there as well. Ermmm thinks, NO don't think, badddd idea thinking.

Peter

A dash of gaus, a dash of levels and a dash of color balancing.

And I just noticed this was an ancient post. But I thought I'd take a jab at it.

Welcome mr/ms Penn. You took an interesting approach. I like the somewhat abstractedness (if that is a word) of your finished piece.

Old posts are cool. They never expire; and you will find others have also revived so-called old posts with a lot of success. Enjoy them.

Janet