For your creativity...

Becky, taken by Mark Revelator.

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~Danny~

When I saw this, the red stood out. I made it stand out even more!

Duplicated Red channel into layer set with blend mode = dodge. Added mask to bring out detail in left hand.

Duplicated eyes into layer with blend mode = screen.

Did some more color adjustment.

-Jeff

Used Xero Graphics line art filter on duplicate layer, then a new white layer with noise added mode - soft light.

Colour layer to give the sepia tint.

Christine

Beautiful, Christine!

Very nice image to work with!

Jeff - very nice !!!! to say the least.... I like the overall look you got with this.

Christine --- oooooh that was my first thought with this image! Wonderful! very, very nice.


I went for a B&W with a touch of color look.

Great submissions so far. Each gives a different personality to her face.

Mine isn't too much different. I played with it in a filter called Lucis Art for while. Then decided that the shirt was the dominate element rather than her face--added a HSL layer and reduced saturation, paint on masking to return color to her face.

Christine:

Glad you found your way over to the Photo-art forum. Welcome. Hope we see more of your works soon.

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Hey Jill:

Nice to see your smiling avitar. Don't be such a stranger. :)

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Cheryl:

I've gone back and forth on that Lucas plug. The demo effects look pretty interesting. How do you like it overall?

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Jeff:

Very creative approach. I seldom think of messing directly with the channels. There's a lot of opportunity there for that sort of thing.

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I was all over the map on this one... It consists of layers rendered by:
* Dry brush
* Find Edges
* Msft Impressionist (various effects)
* Paint Engine - arctic
* Paint Engine - impressionist 2
* A grayscale version of the original
I combined bits and pieces of each using layer masks.

~Danny~

Danny--that's a nice charcoal sketch look.

I'm not quite sure what I think of Lucis Art yet. It's a little pricey for what I'm able to get out of it so far. My results aren't anywhere near as good as their samples (but I haven't tried it on that many pics yet either). I was most attracted by the sculpture filter and find it works well on fewer images than I'd hoped. There's less control over the filters than I'm used to from other products.

On the other hand, I'm finding the exposure filter is performing way beyond my expectations (it works best on low settings). In addition to lightening shadowed areas and bringing out the detail there, it can really make the details pop throughout the image. Exposure will probably be the one I use the most and will be useful for retouching as well as "artifying."

I just used thresholds to make the black and white image then cloned in the spots that got left out in thresholds. Next I mad a gradiant and placed that on the iamge along with a pattern.
Bob

Very artistic entries by everyone.

Mark captured a nice picture.

Jeff- I like your simplified style and heavy contrast.
Christine - Sepia works very well with this image.
Jill - Nicely done.
Cheryl - The hint of color really brings attention to the face.
Danny - I really like what you did this image. Very painterly rendition.
rispencer1 - You've managed to capture the essence of the image with very simplified lines. Well done.

Enlarged the image before working on it.
Used curves to bring out some color
Ran Sho to bring out some more detail on the subject.
Ran curves again to bring out the post texture.
Blended the two with a mask.
Used several Nik filters to help with the color and detail (skylight, midnight, contrast, classical blur and monday)
simplified the image to whiten the background and painted portions of the image back in with a low opacity brush.

I used my XP#3 Action on this. Then on top merged a composite copy and applied USM at .3 (3x). Changed the blend mode of this layer to Screen and lowered it's opacity to 50%. I think it's kind of an artsy approach.

Mama Shan

red shirt xp (http://www.shanzcan.com/retouchpro/redshirt.jpg)

I love the other effects you folks submitted, but I went for the romantic. I simplified the image with Paint Engine's Poster7 at half strength, then I did an PSP8 enhance photo, then added soft focus and put it all on quality paper.

AmyHutton

I haven't done many of these...been a bit too busy as of late, but when this one came back up, I thought I'd try her.

This is done with a sketch technique I've been trying via an Action. I then went off and kept adding to it with various blend modes/layers until I got what I liked. I also had to mask back in on her eyes.

Anyhow...here it is.

Lovely portrait, and everyone's submitted a nice range of looks. My favorite is rlspencer1 graphic look.

I decided to go for the low-key portrait effect, and did a Levels adjustment to darken the original. Then I brought back some of the light to the face and neck, trying to light just the mask of her face.

Took a layer and ran Sketch->Graphic Pen, using the warm tones from the background. Did a few layers and layer masks on top to heighten the effect.

CJ,

I love this! It's kind of the opposite of my high-key approach to keeping the red.

-Jeff

Another interpretation:

http://www.retouchpro.com/forums/attachment.php?attachmentid=11519

...using the method described HERE (http://www.retouchpro.com/forums/showthread.php?t=7746).

This one didn't take much effort, but I'm posting it anyway because I'm so pleased with the free Xero plugins. I seem to have been the last person on the web to find out about them... :ditsy:

This is the Radiance filter, with settings of 128/50/128/255 (see, I did at least have to play with the settings :happy: ). This is my new favourite filter - you can use it at full strength for more of a photo-art look, or reduce the opacity to give... umm... radiance to portrait retouching.

...I'm so pleased with the free Xero plugins. I seem to have been the last person on the web to find out about them... :ditsy:

Leah, nice, ummm, radiant look! Perfect for a pretty lady's portrait.
BTW, you're NOT the "last person on the web..." because I'd never heard about Xero plugins until you mentioned them. :wink:

Thanks for the info.

Yet another one.

This version was heavily touched, and I know I don't remember all of the steps. Here's the basic approach:

* Adjust contrast (flatten it a bit)
* Increase saturation of Sweater & Lips
* Select skin-tones, and apply blur in a darken mode to smooth out splotches
* Select background & Post, and colorize to light red
* Apply MS Impressionist to background & post
* Increase selection area & diffuse

-Jeff

This picture automatically made me think romantic and mysterious. It may seem dark but I think it adds to the mood.

I made a dup of the image and coverted to grey scale, masked out the shirt and lips. I did a brightness/contrast adjustment, a color hue/sat adj and on the org image made a %50 luminosity copy which I brought to the forground.

Charcoal sketch in psp6.

For whatever its worth, these are my steps:
Layer 1- Original, i increased saturation and moved levels middle slider to around 1.50.
L2- Dup L1, then used a modified impr color pencil filter. After that, stylize find edges, edit-fade-color burn.
L3- Dup L2, paint daubs 3,7, simple.
L4- Dup L3, multiply blend.
L5- Select all copy merged, paste. High pass 250, edit-fade-hue.
L6- Dup L5. Then i used a smudge tool which i created which was round and hard-edged. I smudged the whole image quite thoroughly in small circles, trying to keep the image sharp. Next a lighting effect for texture , and lastly dry brush filter.

Here's my 2 cents worth.
I tried to find an alternate way to get rid of facial blemishes without losing too much detail. So here's what i did:
Reproduced the original (image 1) as a duplicate copy (image 2). Applied filter - noise - median to it. Then saved image 2 as a pattern with edit - define pattern.
Worked on original image 1 with pattern stamp tool using a hard edged round brush and normal, low opacity about 45, flow 50%, airbrush disabled, aligned, impressionist.
No other filter used.

I liked what Jaykita did with the clone pattern trick. I wasn't very successful duplicating it, but I did find you can get cool results changing the brush & opacity used for the clone stamp.

Here I've used a charcoal brush size 24 at 68% opacity for the larger areas & smaller size, less opacity for facial details. I duplicated this resulting image twice. Ran Stylize->Emboss with high & medium settings each copy. One set to hard light, the other to linear light. Adjusted opacity of each & added layer masking to get some good textures without messing up the face. Before starting, I did some basic retouch on the original to reduce the darker shadows in the face, adjusted color, etc.

I'm sure anyone who has actual talent with a brush could really make this something special. Until they do, you'll just have my hack job to ponder the possibilities. Thanks for the inspiration Jaykita!

-Mark

Mark, I like your creation. I'm glad to have been of some help. And thank you for the appreciation.
I tried my hand at airbrushing, and mind you, all 'hand' work. Did it on a blank layer over a layer filled with white. Below was the original. Took me a long time, though since i do not possess a digitizing tablet. Not yet anyway. Got to get one soon now!

Jaykita. I'm still stuck at "stick figures" level in my artisitic development (after 40+ years!). :depressed So keep this in mind regarding my comments. I like your airbrush work too. Considering you did this without a tablet it's quite an accomplishment. I assume from your description you did this in 'tracing paper' mode with the white layer opacity turned way down? (I'm not criticizing, just interested, as I have aspirations of learning a bit how to draw / paint.) Regards. -Mark

Jaykita. I'm still stuck at "stick figures" level in my artisitic development (after 40+ years!). :depressed So keep this in mind regarding my comments. I like your airbrush work too. Considering you did this without a tablet it's quite an accomplishment. I assume from your description you did this in 'tracing paper' mode with the white layer opacity turned way down? (I'm not criticizing, just interested, as I have aspirations of learning a bit how to draw / paint.) Regards. -Mark

Hello Mark. It is a fairly simple explanation. And a fairly simple method too.
I've used the soft round airbrush 50% flow from the default brushes palette, a color picker to pick up colors from the original image (obviously!). I also used the eraser (same airbrush tool) a bit. The smudge tool on very low strength helps to blend in colors. Knowing a few keyboard shortcuts helps a lot for eg. when using the paintbrush tool, if you press "alt", your brush turns into a color picker, and another trick is to use the "[" and "]" bracket symbols to decrease or increase size of brush respectively.
It helps greatly to make a sketch layer of the image (multiple blend). I used the usual photoshop way to make a sketch, and placed it as the topmost layer. I also discarded the white parts till i only had black outlines.
I used a lasso tool to make different selections of various parts on different blank layers and named them accordingly eg face, hand, eyes, pillar, dress etc. All normal blends. I placed my colors on these layers.
The white fill layer (normal blend) is used under all those blank layers which i later merged with the colored layers. I only use this fill layer as an eventual opaque background. You could lower opacity to refer to the bckgr image, yes. But never did I use the clone tool. The sketch layer too is discarded eventually. I didnt blend it in with the painting.The original image was only used for the placement and choice of colors and form and for picking up colors from, and it is the bottom (edited, look below) layer. Again, the original was not used in the final blend either.
Right now i'm working on some other portraits as well, and should be posting them a little later. It is the same technique as explained. I hope to eventually master this. It is not much different from if you had a photograph of the person in front of you and had to refer to it while you painted, with the exception that photoshop makes it that much easier by helping you pick up the exact colors of the image. And thats half the work done, of course! The rest is all brushwork. Do try it. I think it's great fun!
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Edited - Sorry, a correction here. The Background layer is dragged right to the top of the stack and the visibility switched off and on in order to see the progress made. Leave the backgr layer at normal blend.

This is kind of a hash of KPT Pyramid Paint with one of the tutorial techniques I found on this site. As I'm sure we all know, Pyramid Paint is a plug-in that does ummm *mumble* *mumble* *cough* -- actually, I haven't the foggiest what it does, I just picked it at random and it pleased me -- but anyway I ran the image through KPT PP until I got an "impressionist"-y look, then I made a 'blend mask' of misc important edges from the original image, moved that to the top of the layer stack, and blended it with Hard Light. I like the way her eyes turned out -- 'course, it doesn't hurt that she has beautiful eyes to start with! :)

I hope it's alright that I've added a second attempt to this message -- the second effort is a pretty simple direct filter via one of my favorites, FP Organic Edges, followed by some rubber stamp touch-ups on miscellaneous parts of her hair, just because it seemed 'right'.

hello

this is cool to see everyones different technique on a photo

so much fun

if you want to see the full version of photo here is the link

http://toodaloo.smugmug.com/gallery/443280/1/18916407/Original

toody :ditsy: