Pretty picture by A.Pagnacco.

Create!

~Danny~

This is a great pic! I'll be playing with it for a while. Here's my first impluse.

1. convert to cymk
2. duplicate black channel
3. convert back to rgb
4. duplicate background twice and load black channel as a selection
5. on lower duplicate, impressionist (03 CH hazy gauze)
6. on upper duplicate fantastic machine--bad chalk) set blending mode to color dodge at around 25%
7. merge down
8. invert selection
9. impressionist--03 CH hazy qauze
10. deselect
10b (forgot this one) added a canvas glaze layer
11. add HSL and brightness and contrast adjustment layers
12. pattern fill layer in soft light.

Let's see.
Painter 8 for strokes
Photoshop-texture and chrome filters
Soft blend
Apply image-green channel
Find edges-fade
h/s
b/c
Back to Painter to soften filters

Nice image to work with

Nice photo; but, it seems to have been photoshopped already. :)

A lot of jpeg artifacts so I ran it through Neat Image first.
Opened in PSP8 and ran One Step Photo Fix. Then ran Edge Preserving smooth and Brush Strokes. Added a little texture.

Catia

Looks like this is going to be another of those threads where I wouldn't be able to pick a favorite. Lovely work everyone. :happy:

Here's my attempt using Art History with a frame added.

Peter

Lovely find Peter, super photo, and as you had a attempt( good one at that) with the ahb thought i would go down that road as well

Palms

Very nice photo.
All works fabulous.
Watercolor variant

Palms, Alex, and Peter, you have all done nice, original work on a gorgeous subject. I'm impressed.

Janet

Another vector simplified blend. :)

Alex another winner there :bigthmb:

lkroll i do so like vectoring simplification ( wow didnt need the dictionary for that ! ! ! ! hope its spelt right;) )

Palms

Janet, Palms thank you.

Sunny Italy

Steve C.

Excellent work on this picture!
I used some layers of Impressionist + the pattern stamp tool.
Sylvia

some not-so judicious applications of the impressionist filter.

Couldn't improve on any of the above so just went the other direction...

Beth

What a great photo, Danny! Thanks for the play

Oils and Acrylics in Painter. Back to PhotoShop for tweaking