Great picture by J. Mussleman. Wonder if he got run over just after snapping this one!

Have fun!
~Danny~

<Fluffbutt wanders out of the airplane room and into the bike room,
purrrs at the riders, then sits on the side of the road to wash his paws>

I tried to increase the 'hectic' nature of a bike race, all those flashing pedals and spinning wheels LOL..

Desired to emphasize the color and motion of the riders, and focus on the leaders.

Made a Cutout layer which I then ran thru Graphic Pen also. Used Color Range selection layers to deepen the road color and emphasize the prevalent reds and yellows. Placed Cutout/Graphic Pen layer over dupe of original with Luminosity layer blend, and placed these layers over a dupe layer with Color layer blending. I then ran this bottom dupe layer thru Spatter and then Blur - Motion with a layer mask to reduce the effect as desired.

Bike races/riders are especially fun to work with - colors, shapes, motion -- really enjoyed working on this image.

Meeeow and CJ. You both did a fantastic job capturing the speed and grace of the racers. I thought the pic lended itself to some blur effects. I wanted to incorporate 2 ideas, one, the speed from the perspective of the crowd and 2, the blur from the perspective of the riders. I wish in retrospect that I had isolated the front runners from the pack like CJ had done.

Isolated the racers and appied Motion Blur.
Inverted: Blur: Radial Blur: Zoom
Selected front legs: Blur: MOtion Blur
Feivels: Gothic Glow

Cheers
Dave

Fluff--that came out really nice. It looks the way drawing with oil pastels felt when I was a kid (it looks a whole lot better :tongue: )

CJ--I like the contrast of how parts of the image lost color and the remaining colors were vibrant.

Duv--I can't put my finger exactly what it is, but the blur made some interesting changes to the image.

I started with a modified buzz gloss stack (reduce all except remove to between 2 and 12, remove between 100 and 800).

select black and invert selection.

paint back in with history brush

duplicated and ran different impressionist presets on each layer and blended together. (2 new ones--paper wad and I can't remember)

added a glaze layer and adjustment layers.

After Levels and Hue/Saturation tweaks, basically three layers (top to bottom), all duplicates of the tuned up background.
1. Photoshop Dry Brush (for foreground detail)
2. Impressionist Conte: Contrasty rough (smaller, looser strokes)
3. Impressionist Unsmudged Monochrome, with Color > Strokes setting changed from Grayscale to Image. (broader, fuller strokes). Used for background areas.

Layer 3 created first followed by layer 2, to which a hide all layer mask was added (Layer > Add Layer Mask > Hide All). The more detailed strokes of this layer were revealed by selecting a chalk brush and airbrushing white in the foreground area on the layer mask.

Finally layer 1 was created and another hide all layer mask applied and foreground details (rider faces, bikes, etc.) added via layer mask.

After posting on the forum it occurred to me the colors were a little blah, so I added a Hue/Sat adjustment layer to the top of the layer stack and set Saturation to 50. Now, "Those are some bright colors!" :)

~Danny~

That's quite amazing Danny! Vibrant colors and yet it's one of the few that has retained the intensity on the face of the front rider. Well done!

Cheers
Dave