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

See below.

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PHOTO ART: Mini-challenge #153 – Kelly

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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What a cute kid, huh? Look forward to seeing your interpretations.

Danny

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LEGAL VERBIAGE
R. McCormack 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 to 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 crafted and you would like to share them, .zip the action set and attach in an additional post or refer to the download site with the applicable action set name(s).

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.

First applied "standard" sketch technique. BG copy, desaturate, copy, invert, color dodge, Gaussian (radius = 5), merge down, copy layer, set to multiply, and merge down.

Second, copy background and pull copy to top. Set blend to multiply and adjust opacity to taste. Merge down.

Third, add layer mask to top layer and paint eyes back in. select background and adjusted brightness contrast until I liked the color in the eyes.

Flattened and saved.

Catia

What a doll! She looks like she should be topping a Christmas tree (little angel).

Catia--Your technique gave nice emphasis to her eyes.

Portraits are not my strong suit, but I think this came out ok. I used several impressionist layers. On most layers I customized the settings. These are the general steps I use when customizing. Note these are not the steps for the pic--those will follow.

1. Use image for background almost always (sometimes tinted image)
2. Use family of brushes whenever the choice is offered.
3. Use multiple brush sizes ranging from 3-5 at the low end and leave the upper size alone.
4. Set to blur between 2 and 4.
5. Increase brightness whenever checking a dark spot is too strong/dark.
6. allow HSB to vary if not set that way by default (5 is enough)

Each number represents a layer starting from the bottom and working my way up. I make a duplicate layer from the background for each. I did change the default brush on one or two of these--it was the one where the brush looks like an outline

1. Watercolor--damp translucent
2. Watercolor--spotty brush on rough paper (luminosity 67%)
3. watercolor--soft daubs on fine paper (soft light 47%)
4. pencil sketch --detailed color (screen 40%)
5. paint--smudges on soft paper (soft light 58%)
6. paint--fine brush hairs (darken 65%) remove emboss effect before applying
7. stylize--find edges (soft light 37%)
8. gaussian blur soft sketch (soft light 52%)
9. pattern fill layer in soft light at 75% to add a light texture.

This is a fairly simple combination that seems to work on some images:

Layers palette, top to bottom:

E. Copy of BG, Hide All Layer Mask, selective detail restored, e.g., around eyes, mouth, some hair
D. Copy of BG + Impressionist Charcoal/Default, Darken
C. Blank layer used to clone out some black blobs from layer B
B. Copy of BG + Impressionist Natural/Cloth Scraps, Faded to about 70%
A. Background (off)

Thank you Danny, and your work is really like a touch on canvas.. good effects of using colours and filters..

this one I did with poster edges and ink out lines...

thank you all..
-----
vijayan

1)Duplicate, edge detect, merge divide mode
2)Apply canvas
3)Emboss
4)Hue/Saturation change for magenta,red.

Wow, everyone absolutley beautiful and wonderful submissions on this one. Danny, thank you for posting this little girl:)

1. The first thing I did was to use selective color to get the color I was looking for
2. Opened in Painter Classic, clone, used Dry brush, Just add Water brushes to paint the litlle one. When done painting I sharpened it.
3. Opened in PhotoShop used the Elliptical tool and selected the girl, I clipped a little of her hair and the grass and applied the cut-out filter
4. I then applied Artistic, underpainting, sandstone, and faded. This made it look softer.

Thanks, everyone, I really enjoyed viewing your lovely work!!:) :)

Wanda

Thanks, Don, I think everyone has done wonderful work on this challenge:) :)

Wanda

Nice entries by all.

Trying something new.
I used a combination of Nik filters (skylight, midnight and sharpener), amphisoft, PS7 spatter, adapt.equalize. Used the history brush to paint various effects in.

Most of these filters were applied using various blend modes and masks.

Just lovely submissions by all !!!!

This is a wonderful picture to work with, I enjoyed it very much. I used Lisa's tut for sketch ( http://www.innographx.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=11735#11735 )

Did some minor texture and sats at the end.

Hi Jill,

I really like the results you obtained using Lisa's sketch. The high contrast brings out a pleasant mood effect.

Used Painter 8, but before that used PSP7 to filter out a bit of the noise and hue/sat to boost the colors. In Painter, cloned using oil cloners, then used a scrumbling brush on background, Sargents brush on the girl and then a smaller/less dense scrumbling brush on the body of the girl. Lovely image to start with!

Shari

Shari:

That's a wonderful interpretation. Welcome to the forum. Sure hope we'll be seeing more of your creativity, soon.

The power of Painter is amazing, isn't it?

~Danny~

Danny,

Thanks so very much for your kind comments! Coming from you, I really consider this high praise yet feel a little embarrassed because this was about a 20 minute painting. Wish there was a higher resolution image available as I really, really like to 'work' with the eyes on a portrait.

Shari

I decided to give this one a whirl! Tried using some of Xero-Graphics Set4 filters.

Steps:
1) Xero Radiance (Random until I liked the effect)
2) Screen layer of eyes (2x)
3) Flatten
4) Duplicate layer
5) Reindeer Adaptive EQ on top layer
6) Top layer = screen
7) Mask out sikn tones on top layer
8) Flatten
9) Xero Simplifier
10) Save

Later,
Jeff

Jeff:

Glad you gave this one a go, too. Interesting results this time from your bottomless toolbox!

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Sheri:

I know what you mean. Sometimes I can spend 3 hours on something and it looks not so good. On others I get lucky and whip out something pretty decent in less than a half hour. Go figure! :)

Sorry, we're stuck with 100KB limit on pics, so we do what we can. Good practice for when we get an image with a decent number of pixels to work with.

~Danny~

1. Duplicated image
2. Desaturated
2. Inverted image and change blend mode to color dodge
3. Gaussian blur 20 pixels
4. Add noise as desired
5. Add layer mask and paint the eyes back in

Xero line art with settings of -59, 3 and monochrome checked. (This really is one of my favorite plug-ins)

Sepia Tone

Unsharp mask.

Christine

Just a simple one.:)
1 neat image
2 clarify 5
3 more collorfull
4 edge effect enhance more
5 neat image

Hey, Pinobot:

Welcome to RetouchPRO. I've been admiring your handiwork here and a couple more creations you posted. You've got a great touch and unique style.

RE:
2 clarify 5
3 more collorfull
4 edge effect enhance more

Are these Nik filters? I don't recognize the names.

Again, welcome. Look forward to seeing more of your work.

~Danny~

Hi, i use PSP8 and just got into photography again. Mainly because of my father, he collects photographs of fishingboats and wants to pull them of the web but most of them being are in a terrible state. Incredible how much is changed in just a few years.

The original is so beautiful it's a shame to do ANYTHING to it.

I didn't want to get too far away from the original so all I did was to run it through Virtual Painter's oil paint filter set on SUBTLE for everything but the focus, which was set on INTENSE with a fine canvas texture.

Then I softened it a tad.

Watch out when she gets to be a teenager!

Amy,

Nice soft painted look.

I wish I had the full version of Virtual Painter. I only have collage and watercolor. I think it came with PSP7.

Catia

Amy--you did a beautiful job with VP oil. The soft look compliments the little girl's photo wonderfully. I agree--she's going to break hearts.

Auto Contrast etc
Neat Image on original image
Smudged Hair
Duped bottom Layer
2nd Layer - Buzzed (No. 3)
Paint Alchemy/Canvas Style/Zig Zag
Blend Mode - Soft Light
Duped 2nd layer
3rd layer - Overlay - 50%
Merged All

Wow, Neve, your creation is simply fantastic! I have Paint Alchemy and still trying to figure out how to use it. Your image is soft and so romantic, so dream-like. I would love to try out your technique! And you always do such good framing.
By the way, what's "Neat image"? Thanks for any help you can offer.

I couldnt resist this one, my watercolor effect (so what else is new? :grin: )

For this cutie petutie I did the following:

1) Eye Candy: Swirl: Whirlpool .31/Smear .03/Twist 9%/ Streak Detail 32

2) Eye Candy: Weave: Ribbon .10/Gap .10/Shadow 27/Thread 50/ Thread Length 24/ Smear Ribbons.

3) Impressionist: Style:djrOIL24/ Background: Image/Brush 25/Coverage 58/Pressure 85.

4) Saturation adjustment layer

5) Curves adjustment layer

The second one is done with a Trimoon Art History Brush. Added some Noise to smooth it out.

Cheers
Dave

Thank you Jaykita very much! I used Neat Image Noise Reduction

http://www.neatimage.com/

because as I recall the original copy was very noisy. Glad you liked the result. I use PaintShopPro for frames generally but did this one myself.
I add a large border, fill with a colour, add some texture, add a drop shadow top and bottom. i.e. to the inside edges.

Had a delay answering you as I'm upgrading motherboard etc.

Cheers and keep up your great work as always too....! :bigthmb:

This is actual brushwork in ps7 with the use of the "select-color range" feature and the eyedropper to pick up colors from the original image, and a default paintbrush (which i modified a bit.).

Decided that the little girl needed a little a nice dreamy look as she looked very comfortable on the grass.

Highlighted hair
Cast light on the side of her face
Enhanced eye colour
Added some light mist
Added a cooling filter

Thank you Danny, and your work is really like a touch on canvas.. good effects of using colours and filters..

this one I did with poster edges and ink out lines...

thank you all..
-----
vijayan


I like the colouring of your picture, gives a different look to it. very nice work

Done at work no time to post how I did it, sorry.

wizzard7 - A very nice interpretation of a very beautiful picture, although it is slightly disturbing that the girl in the original picture has a black eye.

Hard to tell for sure but you might be right about the black eye.

wonderful photo!

0) resize to 900 in width
1) copy background
2) virtualPhotographer, aged photo b&w, some noise
3) decrease opacity (anything between 50 and 85% will do, in attachment is 75% version)
3) copy the layer from step 2
4) imp->chalk sketch->half-finished (brush 25, brightness 60, contrast 50, bg-image), blend-hard light

wonderful photo!

0) resize to 900 in width
1) copy background
2) virtualPhotographer, aged photo b&w, some noise
3) decrease opacity (anything between 50 and 85% will do, in attachment is 75% version)
3) copy the layer from step 2
4) imp->chalk sketch->half-finished (brush 25, brightness 60, contrast 50, bg-image), blend-hard light

imp->chalk sketch->half-finished is one of my favorite Impressionist styles. It worked nicely here.

imp->chalk sketch->half-finished is one of my favorite Impressionist styles. It worked nicely here.
oh, that's for sure... i love especially its effect on recoloured photos, when you put the "image" as background... yet coarse, the results can get pretty impressive :nod:

btw, thanks :)

:wavey:

:bigthmb: JC...what a lovely result! I can't thank you enough for your details ..I tried it on two photos (one family, other of friends) and both turned out beautifully. I used Photo Wizz instead to get a sepia tone. The photo of my friends was on the blurry side and not the best but with this make-over it turned out quite differently and successfully.

GIMP: Used Photocopy filter set to Value on top layer to create 90% of the effect. Some additional saturation/color adjustments. Used Xero's Fuzzifier filter and some smudging for cleanup. :)

Addendum:

Also used the old version of GIMP (1.2.4) for it's Adaptive contrast filter to give it more of a painted contrast look. Also used Xero's Pastellize filter on a separate layer set to Divide with adjusted opacity to give the overall image that glow effect. :)

nice ikroll :) do you mostly use the gimp?

had a go at this one too, based loosely on pinobot's use of neat image. that gave me some ideas and went crazy from there.

Craig

Craig,
wow! it is... wow! and those eyes... brr...
great, great, great effect!

Nice effect Craig...I think it looks scary though. She could be the start of a new halloween thread.

Cathy :eek:

thana, cathy, thanks :) wasnt sure i was even going to post it. glad i did now :)

Craig

I saw this lot and decided to have a go.


1 duped
2 did find edges on bottom layer
3 added layer mask to top layer and did a radial gradiant on mask
4 added some canvas texture to top layer then an artistic brush effect (can't remember which)
5 flattened then added the spatterd border with the action that comes with Photoshop

hope its liked

Peter

1 duped
2 did find edges on bottom layer
3 added layer mask to top layer and did a radial gradiant on mask
4 added some canvas texture to top layer then an artistic brush effect (can't remember which)
5 flattened then added the spatterd border with the action that comes with Photoshop

hope its likedVery creative technique, Peter. Nicely done.

i like that as well, peter. it's got sort of a colored pencil look to it.

Craig

Very nice work going on. I just purchased Buzz.x and have started playing with it. I used a creations 2 action, and then modified it, then added paper texture and a WC border.

Cathy :classic:

JustChecking, let me add my admiration for your photo...absolutely great.
Alan

Wow, some beautiful renditions!
~Nancy~

I had never seen this thread, and I've enjoyed browsing through the wonderful paintings. Such a pretty child, makes the task much easier. My attempt was done in Painter IX, using mainly Captured Bristle brush & Just Add Water.

Here's a larger image
http://www.pbase.com/image/51784934

cat, great depth on the eyes. I could swim in them.

Beautiful Cat. As always, your work is superb!

Janet

Trying out modifications to my pencil drawing.
Alan

Thanks, Kiska and Janet! :wavey:

Wowsers! Alan, Cat, great renditions! I just tried pumping up the colors a bit in LAB, sharpened an edge mask, noise reduced a surface mask (masks by TLR) and added a bit of localized motion blur to the hair.

Cheers

Dave

Alan
Great job - please let us know your steps.

Peter

Thanks, Peter. I sent the tutorial by message. Hope you have as much fun with this technique as I do.
Alan

Had to try out my new watercolor technique on this lovely young girl.
Alan

Thought I'd try a close crop in B&W.

Dave

great work Dave and Alan. Alan do you use painter for your water color work because I would love to know how you did it but I don't have painter.
ydelle

Ydelle, hi. No, I don't have painter. Instead I used the Impressionist plugin with the dappled water style. I also used a simplifier and a white layer with a black mask on my pse3.
Alan

Is there a tutorial to try it out. I know I will Never get it like yours. Your just to good, but I would like to see how you came to the final picture and how close I can get -if you don't mind.
ydelle

...hosts the Impressionist filter (http://www.trimoon.com/html/downloads.html). Get it while you can ydelle

Thank you but I already have it Danny sent it to me. I just thought there was a special formula that I could work on and experiment with.
ydelle

I try to imitate linocut graphics.
1. Edge filters
2. Andromeda EtchTone filter
& a lot of cutting, pasting and erasing

Welcome chillin. I like your interesting interpretation of this cute little girl. Different takes on an image are always enlightening.

Janet

Thank you Janet

Chillin...welcome...Your dark and dramatic look is fab...

All previous renditions of the photo are great...such imaginations you all have!

I am still trying to water color smudge...Photoshop CS2 with Pams water color smudge tool..Into Painter for a little blending...had to stop then as i think i would have been messing all night!!!!

Patricia... :wavey:

Very nice smudge Patricia. Love the intensity of the eyes.
MargaretM

Thank you Margaret for your kind comment....

Patricia... :happy: