FIRST MINI-CHALLENGE -or- NEW TO PHOTO-ART?

See below.

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PHOTO ART: Mini-challenge #141 – Soccer Anyone?

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 legal verbiage.

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I'll be watching my kids get into soccer this Fall. I've already suffered a couple bruises practicing.

You might need to clone over the ref cluttering the background. BTW: For the benefit of the conspiracy theorists, "No, that's not me in poised to blow the whistle."

Hope you get a kick out of this one! (bad, bad, joke)

Danny

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LEGAL VERBIAGE
Ken E. 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.

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FIRST MINI-CHALLENGE -or- NEW TO PHOTO-ART?

New guidelines (subject to fine tuning):
* For each mini-challenge, post up to two (2) interpretations with attached images of your interpretation(s). ## SEE BELOW.

* For each include enough step-by-step detail to give someone a reasonable chance to recreate (or approximate) your results. That way all of us can learn from each other. Obviously it’s impossible to explain things like “individual brush strokes,” but do include such details as filters used, plugins used, blend mode detail, etc.

* Preferred format:
1)
2)
3)
etc.

on individual steps vs. writing it out in paragraphs. Step-by-step is easier for newbies to follow.

* If you used a technique or tutorial described elsewhere, include a link it if possible.

* You may include an additional post with a screenshot of your Layers Palette if that’s easier than writing out the details.

* If you used one or more Photoshop actions, you can .zip the action set and attach in an additional post or refer to the download site, with the applicable action set name.

Focus on quality, not quantity – and sharing your techniques. Unique and/or creative writeups will be preserved and noted in the "Best of Photo-art" forum.

In addition...
* Questions about technical matters or method clarification are welcome.

* Compliment works you truly admire. Don't feel compelled to comment on (or feel guilty about not commenting on) every single image.

## If you would like to do more interpretations, here’s how to do that:
- Post them at a public site, such as www.pbase.com and include as many links IN A SINGLE POST as you would like.
- If you create subsequent versions and want to include them, you can edit your own posts to add/change/delete links to outside galleries. It's not necessary to add additional posts to the thread for each link to a gallery site.

Danny, very attractive photo to work it , and thank you for posting this thread.
I just did apply a filter>sketch>reticulation and adjusted levels only...
A kind of out of focus old BW picture...


thank you very much.

_______

vijayan

Okay, Danny, you flushed Leroy out. Pretty devious.

This is my Leroy Neiman look. He is the great action sports artist. My technique does not truly imitate his style, it's just inspired by it.
1. Convert to lab color mode
2. Select the lightness channel
3. Filter>render>difference clouds
4. Convert back to rgb
5. The image should be dark now, so duplicate once or twice and set blend to screen. Adjust opacity.
6. Difference clouds is random, so I run this several times and pick the best parts from each image using the history or clone brush.
7. Parts of the image that are very dark will come out white. So you can lighten them before running these steps, or afterward use the history brush set to soft light or overlay to bring back a little detail. Faces are the realy hard part. I'm still working on this technique.
Bill

Bill:

When I saw this pic, I immediately thought of Leroy. Thanks for sharing this technique. The potential is enormous.

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Don:

Thx for the links. Always appreciated this guy's art.

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Vijay:

Yours just proves that creativity does not have to be complicated.

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I was experimenting again. When I do, I record the steps into actions because I have such a lousy memory.

The action used to render this version is available for download in the next post. It seems to work fairly well on images with a fair amount of detail -- not so good on portrait closeups.

The key (I think) is getting the right mix of lines on layers D, D1, E and E1. I used layer masks extensively to tune those up.

~Danny~

This action was written using PS7. It uses the Diffuse > Anisotropic setting = it will probably get an error message in PS6.

If the error is "command not available," click CONTINUE. There just won't be any output in layer D.

PM me if you have problems with or questions on this action.

~Danny~

I guess I'm a girly-girl--I have no clue who Leroy Neiman is. If he's a sports type person, I never will either. ;)

1. Replaced the background. (my first time ever for doing this--it wasn't as hard as I thought it would be)
2. Made 2 duplicates of the revised image.
3. Ran Noise--median on the lower copy.
4. Ran Sketch--photocopy on the upper one with fairly high detail and set to soft light.
5. Merged and boosted the saturation.
6. Created a hue/saturation adjustment layer and lowered saturation then painted the boys back in.

Original message from Photomauler
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Hey Vijayan, You seem to be an interesting character, may I ask what other forums you participate in, and why you took such a long layoff here posting as vijayan. If you don't mind, where did you study your english at? You have some interesting interpretations, can you lead me to some more of your work in the past? Thank you.

Hi Don,

Thank you for the message and nice comments.

1. I mainly participate in the main forums challenges like Restoration and Retouching and sometimes in the other two also. Iam very much interested to participate this forum and enjoy these challenges, but being a family man I will be bussy with my routine works .

2. I had my school level educations and did my digree in Fine Arts.
As a citizen in a third world country, I also learned English as a medium in the school levels but I was the one always experienced the " back bench sitting".So I use my English language only as a source of communication.
Iam an Indian residing at Trivandrum, it is the capital of Keralam ( Land of coconut trees ) is about 500 km long costal state at the south west tip of INDIA .

3.The links are there in the challengs mentioned in thr reply number-1.

Thank you Don...

and Don your submissions are very interesting..

chery it is a good work very much incorporated the atristict thoughts.

and Danny. ( original --- yours just proves that creavity does not have to be complicated ) Thank you for this great words , and I do belive in your observations. I find assistance from the Mac's built in programmes only. there also lot to learn and play. All depend up on your canvas , approach and your taste. So I think the descriptions should be only a link to the source and one can easily go to the source and find some thing to their own taste. One should not be a copy of others..
Allways a single touch will be nice and worthy..

Thank you Danny very very much...

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vijayan

One more Soccer in Water Colour.
Used Filter > Artistic > Watercolour and adjusted levels in Red, Green and Blue untill I get this tonal pleassure...

Thank you

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vijayan

Cheryl H.....

Great effect, like it very much! Got the feeling they were playing for "Real!"

I tend to come and go in spurts; while I still have some drive, I will work on these renderings. Retinex equalization, Impressionist and Sat/Color enhancements. :)

Motion Blur then masked boys to remove blur followed by merging all layers to new copy before running the unsharp mask

this stuff is just way too addictive!

ok, the first of these is a simple charcoal with a blend mode of luminance to the background.

the next is a duping the background again and adding a brushstrokes layer with another blend of luminance over the charcoal and then copy merging those and pasting as a new layer.

and the last is duping the background again and doing a colored pencil with another luminance blend. then i copy merged this one and pasted as a new layer below the last copy merge/new layer and blended those with a hue mode.

boy, trying to keep all that straight is weird ;)

craig

Side note; I stopped giving precise steps long ago just for that very same reason. I do so many subtle adjustments and smudges that it makes it too much work to explain; I'm a doer, not an explainer. :lmao:

lk,

and another amen to that! we've got to get these software writers to put an extension in these file types that remembers all the steps within the image file itself and that others can access and read while they look at the pictures.

craig

lk,

and another amen to that! we've got to get these software writers to put an extension in these file types that remembers all the steps within the image file itself and that others can access and read while they look at the pictures.

craig

Would probably not fit the 100K limit though Craig. :lmao:

Duped original,Ran curves on duplicate, selected the players and ball from background; Filter: Distort-Diffuse Glow (Graininess-9/Glow-6/ClearAmt-15 guesstimate),Faded DG filter to taste,Copied working layer -- tried a few layer blends -- liked Overlay,Ran a bit of GBlur,Added some noise and ran Filter:Brush Strokes-Angled Strokes,Ran Filter: Brush Strokes - Spatter,Changed Layer Blend from Overlay to Luminosity -- liked this more abstract quality,Made merged copy layer, Ran Radial Blur - Zoom 16% on merged layer and set layer blend to overlay,lowered layer opacity to 70%--stopped keeping track about here -- added layers, changed layer blends, spherized the ball and put on several layers, spherized the players and ran zoom blur on their layer. Kept trying to emphasize the movement and/or the colors -- changed mind several times about which and then tried to do both again... There's a bit of postered edges, and even a layer of halftones...

It's an experiment. :tongue:

Extracted the boys
Cloned out the ref
Lens blur on the background layer with a gradient mask
Oops. Blurry boys bled out from behind sharp, extracted boys. Undo lens blur.
Cloned some surrounding image into boys on background layer
Again with the lens blur.
This resulted in first attachment.

Then...
On the background: Impressionist/DJR muckup 2M

On the boys:
Impressionist/DJR muckup 2M (modified somewhat)

Over that: Impressionist/Chalk rough textured abstract (modified a bit)

Over that: Impressionist/Pointillist embossed daubs (modified quite a lot - used a sort of splotchy brush instead of the round one, changed sizes, etc.)

Fiddled with layer opacities until it looked good.
Bumped saturation a bit.

dc

Haven't been around in awhile so I had to have a run at this one.

Sainta must have thought I was a GOOD BOY :D this year cause he had a Wacom Table under the tree for me and I've been trying to learn Photoshop Elements since getting the table. I've been using Paint Shop Pro v8 ever since it can on the market so I already new a little of what I was in for. Boy what a learning curve. :bawling:

Ok on to what I did Hmmmm keep in mind I'm new to photoshop so I may not get all the terms right. I did a color sketched effect made a couple of dupl. layer added some noise then bumped up the saturation a little on the other layers I started changing the blind modes and working with opacity for each layer till I had the look I wanted. Next came the Matte I had worked a tutorial night before last or maybe it was late last night and applied what I had learned from it to this image. I'm not much for adding mattes or frames to image but I thought what the heck it's all I can do!!! LOL

Keep in mind I've only been working with Photoshop Elements for 5 or 6 days so it's not much. Maybe you guys and gals can help teach me something? Think so?

TwoLaidBack

Did a simple one, as this soccer picture is awesome !

Extracted the background, and did a slight shading, and that looked good enough !

Chance

Very nice work Chance_1.

TwoLaidBack

Here is my version: http://www.jereme.com/clients/challenges/soccer.jpg

I wanted my image to have a high impact look like a poster. The extraction took a while, but it was worth the effort, I think.

I would love to attach my image directly to my messages, but my filesizes are always too big and I don't want to compromise the quality. :-/

Good work and very creative Jereme. Welcome to RetouchPRO. I'll look forward to more inspiration and creativity from you in the future.

Janet

Soccer or football?

Steve

Thanks Janet. I like it here a lot so far. There are a lot of talented people to provide inspiration here.

Steve i like your posting is it the same as in part of your Trevor posting ? and if so was it done in Paint Shop Pro ( shucks if it was ) As for is it soccer or football i probably would upset too many people with what i would (and do call it ) !! ! !

Palms

Thanks Palms.

Nice eye there! Yes they were both done using Buzz Pro. And then some layering and a bit of brush work.

Steve

Steve i like your posting is it the same as in part of your Trevor posting ? and if so was it done in Paint Shop Pro ( shucks if it was ) As for is it soccer or football i probably would upset too many people with what i would (and do call it ) !! ! !

Palms

Palms, forgot to answer your question re. Paint Shop Pro. Yes they were both done in Paint Shop Pro.

I threw in the football vs soccer question just for a silly. That question won't ever be resolved. That's like someone who says "I am lying." Are they lying or telling the truth? 8-)

Steve