Yeah, I know it's almost summer in the U.S., but it's still a pretty picture! Photo by Chor W.

Enjoy...
~Danny~

I would love to live somewhere with such beautiful fall colors. These kind of pics make me drool.

I combined (did it manually) my cymk masking trick with an old action I call vague impressions.

1. convert to cymk, dup black channel convert back to rgb
2. make 3 dups of background
3. load black channel as selection
4. lower layer--impressionist--geometric--chaotic chrome
5. middle layer--impressionist--geometric jaggy glass--blend mode=lighten
6. upper layer--impressionist--crayon--distressed fresco rubbing 2--blend mode=soft light
7. top with a pattern fill layer in soft light at 70%

That is really lovely Cheryl.

Christine

thanks Christine. Gotta love impressionist :nod:

thanks Christine. Gotta love impressionist :nod:

Ya got that right.

How in the world did you come up with THAT terrific combination of settings? I'd poked around the Geometric styles and had pretty much written them off as useless. It's like discovering mold yields penicillin! :)

Well done.

Wow!, Cheryl, that's brilliant!.

I watched an artist do a picture - he had some art paper, dry, onto which he drew a basic outline drawing, reasonably heavy (not sketchy like some artists do for guides).

he then soaked the paper, dabbed it dry with cloth, then wet a seasponge in watercolour paints, and either dabbed it or stroked it onto the paper.

His results were almost exactly like yours. You should be proud of yourself, well done!!

Here's my attempt - I've started using a top layer of just a black line drawing
(copy layer, desat, find edges, adjust levels to remove lots of rubbish,
select white, delete, deselect, preserve transparency, fill with black)

Trying to add an edge-y feel to the pix, like some watercolourists do.

Thanks for the nice photo to work with Danny.

Nice job Cheryl. I looked at the result before I read your description and thought to myself, " Now there is a nice impressionist painting." :)

I like yours as well, Fluffbutt. :thumbsup:

My version is a little different. I used Paintshop Pro. First, I ran One Step Photo Fix to increase the contrast and adjust the colors a bit. Then I ran the edge preserving smooth filter followed by brushstrokes.

Catia

Cheryl, you are so creative, coming up with all these different approaches. Seeing your wonderful images has given me the encouragement to try combining all kinds of approaches.

Fluff, that's an incredible image. I love it!

Patricia

Fluff...

That turned out very nice. Good balance of detail and arty-ness.

Did you know that after applying Levels that changing the blend mode of the Find Edges layer to Darken or Multiply causes the white to "drop out"? That can come in handy sometimes.

- - - - -
Catia:

This one turned out great. Very painterly looking.

We've missed you. Welcome back.

~Danny~

Danny, thanks, yes, I knew that tip.
The reason I like the black-only-with-transparency layer is I swap between layer modes a lot, just to see the final effect. With white there, the layer is opaque in the other layer modes.
One trick I do like is to keep the greyscale values (don't do the 'fill black'), then set the layer mode to colour burn. You get a dark outline that fades off nicely. About 50% transparency blends the whole lot into the sub lkayers very well.

Thanks tho, appreciated.

Oh, how I miss the autumn colors of Ontario. As beautiful as Vancouver Island is, it doesn't have the cold snappy temperatures to turn the colors vibrant. I was surprised how turning up the Unmask Sharp changed the fence from red (color picker) to blue.

Unmask Sharp: 200/50/0
Impressionist: djrOIL24 image 25/45/104 (will I ever use another style?)
Xero: Seasons (makes sense) -37/78/-25/211
Noise: Add 20%
Fade: 39%
Stylize: Diffuse: Anisotropic
OOps. I hiccuped and did it again.

Cheers
Dave

Trying for a different time of day and mood - used Craquelure, Blur - Zoom, layers with modified hues...

Everyone has done nice work on this one (hard not to with such a gorgeous starting pic)

Fluff and Cat--I particularly like the combinations of blur/smudge and detail you two used.