Guidelines? Give 'em a rest on this one!

The gory details optional, but appreciated if you're so inclined.

Still, limit your submissions to no more than two (2).

= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =

PHOTO ART: Mini-challenge #155 – Lighthouse Waves

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.

= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =

Beautiful image, but not sure I'd give up the safety of my home for this "ocean view."

Danny

= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =

LEGAL VERBIAGE
Rob 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.

Done with Paint Engine.

Catia

Paint Alchemy and Paint Engine used very effectively on these interpretations.

Well done, Don and Catia.

This one is made out of reticulation and find edges..
thank you//
---
vijayan

I love the waves in this pic.

Catia--paint engine was a great choice. The motion in the strokes was great with the waves.

Don--I love the energy in the waves and the sky. Great combo of filters. Your results lately are tempting me to add the nik stuff to my collection.

Vijayan--interesting combo of effects. I like what it did to the pier--that was a tough part of the pic for me.

I couldn't decide which of my attempts I liked best, so I'm going to post 2 this time. This one is my dark paint process.

1. first layer set is flaming pear's mr contrast, the original, and a dup of the mr C layer blended together.
2. second layer set is flaming pear's melancholytron, the original, and a dup of the melancholytron layer blended together.
3. blend the 2 layer set (2 on top of 1) with another copy of the original and merge all to a new layer
4. dup the merged layer and run flaming pear's lacquer. Reduce opacity on the lacquer layer.
5. Merge all and add texture.

Second submission

I used impressionist layers for this one. I'll list the effects used, but I did do quite a bit of playing with the options on each one and didn't keep track of the changes.

Each number represents a layer working from top to bottom. Each layer is a dup of the original background.

1. stamp textured gouache
2. stamp--sponge daubs fine (luminosity 70%)
3. natural--tied grass mosaic (soft light)
4. paint--craquelure surface (multiply)
5. original (color)
6. gaussian blur soft sketch (soft light 70%)
7. find edges (soft light 30%)
8. pattern fill layer (sfot light 70%) to add texture

Very nice Cheryl. Your entries really capture the feeling and spirit. :thumbsup:

Lovely, everyone, I love viewing the different interpretations! One can learn just from viewing:) Cheryl, you make me wonder why I'm struggling with Painter Classic:(

I painted this scence in Painter Classic, using different brushes. Applied texture, Raw Silk. Improvised frame from PhotoImpact.

Thanks everyone...

Wanda

Thank you for your nice comment. You have a really nice one, Don, even though I know not what you speak of in your technique:confused: it rendered out beautifully:) :)

Wanda

Don:

This is one of your better ones of late. The textures are outstanding.

- - - - -

Wanda:

Always a treat to see your works. You'll have to do a tutorial one of these days on your Painter methods.

~Danny~

Thanks you guys.

Wanda, your painter work is outstanding everytime I've seen it. I got the painter 8 on the low cost deal for photoshop users and it has me totally stumped. That gives a pretty good idea of how much work you are putting into your photoart.

Don--the second entry is interesting, but I still like your first best.

Danny, Cheryl, you are too kind, but much appreciated:) Cheryl I used Painter Classic, which is considered a Painter light program. I'm sure it's not nearly as difficult to use as Painter 8. With your talent I have a feeling you're going to conquer Painter in no time. Can't wait to see your beautiful work:)

Wanda

All very nice submissions. Usually I don't participate in the photo art side, because I'm not that artistic. I don't think this one turned out to bad. My technique is as follows.

1, Flaming Pear Organic Edges
2, Microsoft Impressionist Plugin
3, Splat Resurface Plugin


Ken

Kent--great texture! It looks like I should be able to feel depth if I touched it--like thick acrylics maybe. Neat effect.

Thought this needed to be a storm!:bawling:

Okay.. First I made a new layer.
Filters Render Clouds..Filter Add Noise.. about 30% Guassian Monochromatic.. Filter Motion Blur to make look like rain..
Layer on multiply mode gave great Dark Stormy feel. :depressed
Then I duplicated the layer Fliped Vertically and horizontally to darken up the white caps of the water. Then I erased some on that layer to un-darken :rolleyes: the other areas. Duplicated image. Flattened.. Dry Brush (a personal favorite)... duplicated layer.. Fresco.. Lowered opacity to about 19% and then changed to darken..

The end.

Hope it is liked

All of you had great interpretations of this, so I figured I needed something a little different.

Mine is very interpretative of the lighthouse against the sea, and the colors.

gory details:
Filter Farm (recolor & distort)
Microsoft Impressionist (loose detail)
Touch-up
Organic Edges

Thanks,
Jeff

Thought I'd try my hand at the art... but maybe I should stick to retouching! ;)

- New layer with Flaming Pear Boss Emboss blending mode luminosity with an opacity of 30%
- Virtual Painter Gouache
- Virtual Painter Colour Pencil
- Flaming Pear Melancholytron with uniform sepia

I think that the pencil strokes sort of look like rain and the sepia gave it a stormy feel. The colours were very vivid after the colour pencil filter.

Cheers
Tony

Tony:

I'd say you can play in the photo-art sandbox anytime you like. This is a very creative interpretation.

Hope you see more of your creations in the future.

~Danny~

Tony, I like this! It really does have a stormy feel to it.
-Jeff

Hey, Jeff:

I missed your interpretation. That's very cool -- a very refreshing twist.

Welcome to the forum, too. Let's see MORE from you as well.

~Danny~

This one greyscaled in Photoshop as a copy then blue tinge added.
Thrown over into painter 6 and the red lighthouse cloned back in.
Back in Photoshop...added a lense flair then cloned out the circles back in painter. Bit of contrast and "voila" ...a stormy old night!

Gary.


http://moonfizz.com/lighthouse_challenge.jpg

Sorry...forgot to upload it as an attachment :o:

Gary.

Oh Gary, that's really cool! I really like the lens flare effect! The border and text give it a cool postcardy sort of feel :)

Stormy Seas

Who builds a lighthouse there? :confused:
Image doctor-smart fill
some cloning
color correction
neat image to get rid of banding
soften brush for artifacts.

some hue adjustment. desaturated water, desaturated red on house a bit, paint brush on sky and colored pencil / gaussian blur / texture grain on water

sorry i didn't keep better track, just added stuff until I got a certain look.

I wanted blurry but still capturing light direction and I wanted more powerful waves, and I wanted lighthouse to punch out of the middle, with muted sky, and textured pier walkway that was not focus but interesting if your eye wandered....

Hope you like it.

SMETZ99:

It's always a pleasure to welcome someone with your skills to the Photo-art Forum. I'd say you met your artistic goals with this interpretation.

Hope to see more of your creations in the future.

~Danny~

Thanks, now that I've found this gem of a site, I plan on staying around and learning / practicing with all of you.

Wonderful submissions here! I always enjoy lighthouses.

Desaturated the image then did a blur, from there a smart blur edges only.
Then ran anisotropic on the lines. Changed blend mode to soft light.

Added pattern, embossed, then added texture.

Ran Anisotropic again......

I'm in South FL, so I wanted a hurricane effect for this one.

I darkened it a little bit and clarified it in Paint Shop Pro

Then I played with Paint Engine's "Glow wind" filter until it looked like a "level 5" hurricane.

I know this isn't a recent image, but I hope I'm not violating rules by trying my hand at it. Newbie to this forum.

Too big to upload so go here:

http://www.fractographics.com/RTP/lighthouse.jpg

AmyHutton

Welcome Amy.

Nice version. Really looks wet and wild, just like I remember Florida hurricanes. :)

Don't worry, there are no time limits here. Good photoart is timeless. :D

Catia

Amy,

You can upload a smaller version of your image so that you don't have to worry about keeping the link alive - use Save for Web to save as jpg in Photoshop (not sure if you use Paint Shop Pro, Painter, etc.) and click the "optimized" dialogue box to "optimize to file size of 100k" - usually a High setting of about 60 will work, but you sometimes have to lower the "quality" setting to meet the 100k limit. Using the 4-up display, you can see what the optimized version will look like at various settings.

Links may not last as long as this forum will last, and if you upload your file -- everyone can see it in the future even if you change your website.

Just a suggestion. :)
CJ

Unusual colours and fun to work with, thank you.

Duped BL - Photo Wizz/Luma Neg/Mode Soft Light
This revealed the doors (in the shadows) etc on the Jetty building.
50% opacity - merged and duped BL again.
L2 - Smudged water, waves and sky with a dry brush.
Buzzed 80% opacity - Mode Normal.
Merged.
Applied a mask, texture.
Filled the bg with a gradient
and applied same texture.

Beautiful photo. So many diff renditions, each one fabulous and unique. Great work, everyone!
Here's mine, incl layer palette.
P.S. Amy, i wasnt able to view yours.

Here's my try, seeking to really add energy to the waves:

Elements2: Cropped. Reduced noise in blue channel. Masked curves to lighted the dark shadow on the lighthouse. Flatten. Smuge tool on the sky to further reduce the noise.

Painter8. No cloning. Just used blenders. For the lighthouse itself, GrainyWater30 set to size 3. For the waves / water, GrainyBlender 20.
(This likely would be doable in Photoshop et. al. with a smudge tool if you have an appropriate brush to work with.)

Elements2 again: Added canvas texture.

-Mark

great photo :D

and great stuff made of it :nod: ...


-----
in the end i decided to change the blend mode of the top layer from "normal" to "dissolve"... sorry it's not in the layers palette...

:wavey:

Ran pOpArTiST followed by one Adjusted pOpArTisT. Followed this with a Cartoon action.

Cheers
Dave

Dave, good magic... veru Artistic..

thanks
vijayan

Here’s my try at this lovely image. When I first laid eyes on this I knew that it had to be a watercolor. I open the original ran a colored sketch script I made next I dup the layer and added a brush stroke effect using Paint Shop Pro once I had the basic watercolor effect I then started doing selective coloring to bring back the blue in the water and added a little sepia tone to the clouds behind the building.

I’ve just received Photoshop Elements and have tried this effect in it and can’t get anywhere near the same effect. Maybe some others here can help out with adapting it to Photoshop.

Enjoy,
TwoLaidBack

Great Photo, Glad you found it TwoLaid Back like your try, lovely colours,
Couldnt resist having a go

Palms

Thanks Palms,

Nice job on your try as well.

TwoLaidBack

Thanks to TwoLaidBack for resurrecting this thread.

After some hue/sat and curves adjustment on the sandy water, I subjected this image to Xero supersmooth, then Caravaggio, then Impressionist>paint>free daubs (modified). Added a layer mask to hide some of the brush strokes in the sky and darkened it some.

dc

Splish Splash!

Steve

Still working out the kinks with my technique. Very much not happy with the result, but this result is a little better then using GIMPressionist (used Impressionist this time). Not ready to share the preset yet; not until a lot more fine-tuning. I just wish there was a free plugin that can simulate threads/tapestries, but I've not found one (you all know how cheap I am; that's why I usually have to figure things out on my own. :lmao: ). Hope you all like this one anyway. The complete rendering can be found here (http://img500.imageshack.us/img500/2493/155lighthouseandwaves8ai.jpg); I've attached the crop below for both legacy reasons, and, since I only have 100K to spare and this needs to be seen at a higher quality. :)

edit: change of mind.

Posted the preset here (http://www.retouchpro.com/forums/showpost.php?p=111121&postcount=20). If you can get it better then please do and share your solution with the rest of us. Note that I did adjust the jitter of the placement from 10 to 25 (a little more random). All the settings can be adjusted, but I'm getting tired of doing so. Hopfully a hero out there can get it to look better like thread then plastic. :)

This is a great picture and so many great renditions !

This is a water color version !

Chance

Thought I would share with you all the rendering and preset (http://www.retouchpro.com/forums/showthread.php?p=111135&posted=1#post111135). Thread2 will give you the result that you see; Thread1 gives a more potatoe bag stitch. Have fun. :)

thought i would post another one, but have been messing around with some layers and filters to see what i would get I dont suppose it has a name except "been messing around style "

Palms

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

I started by removing the blue background and replacing it with something much darker to set the tone I wanted.

I used levels and curves adjustment layers to alter the appearance of the waves. The boardwalk on the left had too many intricate pieces so I decided to just add another wave to cover it mostly up.

I added some lightning to the background. It's really getting serious now...

Lastly, I think I this is the first time I ever found myself a use for the lens flare filter.

I'm pretty pleased with the results.

I'm not really much for actual retouching. I like the sketch and painting effects that you all are doing. I will have to work on some of those.

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

I started by removing the blue background and replacing it with something much darker to set the tone I wanted.

I used levels and curves adjustment layers to alter the appearance of the waves. The boardwalk on the left had too many intricate pieces so I decided to just add another wave to cover it mostly up.

I added some lightning to the background. It's really getting serious now...

Lastly, I think I this is the first time I ever found myself a use for the lens flare filter.

I'm pretty pleased with the results.

I'm not really much for actual retouching. I like the sketch and painting effects that you all are doing. I will have to work on some of those.

Awesome work Jereme. Look forward to seeing more of your stuff. :)

I started by removing the blue background and replacing it with something much darker to set the tone I wanted.

I used levels and curves adjustment layers to alter the appearance of the waves. The boardwalk on the left had too many intricate pieces so I decided to just add another wave to cover it mostly up.

I added some lightning to the background. It's really getting serious now...

Lastly, I think I this is the first time I ever found myself a use for the lens flare filter.

I'm pretty pleased with the results.Welcome aboard, jereme. Outstanding work on this one. Well done. You have every right to be pleased.
I'm not really much for actual retouching. I like the sketch and painting effects that you all are doing. I will have to work on some of those.I know what you mean. :)

Keep the creativity coming.

BTW: I took the liberty of uploading your creation as an attachment. That way when you modify your website someday making the link obsolete, your work will be preserved.

~Danny~

hmmm, try to remember what I did.
Selective colour adjustments, channel multiply and luminosity blends.
Added a little beacon of light ;)
splatter and drybrush to finish.

My take on the picture ofcourse with my beloved chalk :)
Did the picture in Painter Classic using 2 steps.
1. Rough preparation using a big brush (15 or slightly above if I remember right)
2. Fine-tuning the details with brush-sizes of 6, 3 and 2

Enjoy ;)

Like all the interpritations so far, not sure what you'll think of mine, I like to look for subtle edges that are not really there (if that makes sense) Here it is....John

very nice and i like the edge effect. the solid colors always work for me :)

craig

(if it was meant for me) Not being too artistic I've often wondered what it is about images that grabs me, now I think you've fingered it!...it's the solid strong colours, I think......I couldn't tell anyone why I like an image but I know when I do. :idea: :bow:

Good that you picked up this thread again John...I missed it the first time around...Like your painting and the edge looks great...

Like all the other renditions....all different...

Here is mine...done in Photoshop CS2 with the watercolor art history brush...
Into Flaming Pears, Mr Contrast and to finish an action for the aluminium frame...

Patricia.... :happy:

patricia,

very nice. love the frame. is that one you made or a pre-packaged one?

craig

thought i'd give this another shot. this is done with my filter forge filter, 'high pass variations 1'. i had to compress this to 31 so i hope it comes out ok.

craig

and here's another from filter forge, my 'multiswitch' filter:

craig

All are good in there own right, wow i saw that picture and thought it would be an amazing thread and it sure is!

I saw a few i liked the most.... :bigthmb:

Wow that is cute rendition for sure Catia.

Neve that is wicked! wow thats very good, i love the painted look on the outskirts of the picture.

SWEngineer wow i just love that canvas texture, that looks so real!

Twolaidback i got to say you sure know how to add a mood to a picture, thats very well done, can even feel the tension of the thunder coming with that picture.

Jereme, yours is the thunder and lightening theme i would think of if imagining bad weather, wow you did great there!

No 1: ink outlnes, frosted glass ( layer masks), some smudging.

No 2. I tried to have some kind of 3D effect for waves, didn't quite worked.
Two different B&W sketches (white erased), emboss layer merged in overlay

Pavel

No 3. Darker version.

i like the last two the most, pavel.

craig

Here is my version, I have been playing with Corel Painter ix.5. This is the 3rd version, the frist two where trashed.

Here is one my daughter did in psc2. she was inspired by the one NancyJ did.
I hope this is ok that I post it for her, she is only a teenager and I didn't want her to make a log in.

cathyh, i like the painter one. gonna have to try that program one of these days. and i like the one your daughter did also. she has talent :)

craig

Hello

Great picture.. not very creative here just a selective color adjustment and a few clouds and lightning.

Butch

Beach scenes always make for great paintings in my opinion.

Here's what I remember...

I adjusted the colors, levels, and curves. Then I ran a surface blur and angled strokes. I then did some spatter, faded. Then I did a few artist surface fill layers but I just picked what looked good. I didn't pay attention to which ones but the opacities were 25%. Then I did an unsharp mask. There were a few other things inbetween but I really don't remember what... I was talking on the phone while I did this and I'm just not a chew bubblegum and walk at the same time kinda girl HAHAHA

Reduce noise (twice).
Redfield's Bas relief.
Flaming Pears Zephyr Faded with luminosity.
Added texture with impressionist.
Sharpened.
Frame added with layer styles.

Not much to this one, love whats happened with the waves in the foreground.

Peter

Reminds me of one of my favorite songs and of old memories..

When you see the Southern Cross
For the first time
You understand now
Why you came this way

Off the wind on this heading
Lie the Marquesas.
We got eighty feet of the waterline.
Nicely making way.

Very nice Sweetlight. You certainly put a lot of work and thought into the composition. It makes a good impact on first look and gets more fascinating the more one searches for the details.

Janet