Here's an action photo (taken by C.P.) of an Auburn University football player.

Have fun.

~Danny~

WAAAARRRRRRR EAGLE!!!!!!!

1. duped background and ran a modified buzz gloss stack, increased the brightness and contrast to get mostly black and white rather than gray
2. selected black and inverted selection. painted most of the image back in with the history brush
3. ran impressionist
4. inverted selection and ran vp oil
5. deselected and ran kpt equalizer
6. added a glaze layer (texturized color mostly masked out)

Wow, Cheryl. That is a very cool interpretation. Integrating Buzz gloss was brilliant.

- - - - - -

Kiska: Does this mean you're an Crimson Tide fan, not an Auburn fan? :cool: If so I'll see if I can find a UA pic one of these days!

Thanks Danny. I knew what I wanted for this one as soon as I saw it. I just wish it was something new, but I've been stuck in a major rut lately. Must be time to buy a new book to get some new ideas.

Danny, joking or not? I couldn't tell. I am an Auburn grad. 'War Eagle' is the school 'battle cry'. You needn't search for ANYTHING 'tide-ish'.
I was really surprised to see the photo. Didn't think Auburn was that widely known.

kiska

WAR EAGLE!!!!

select player from bg, cut to separate layers
BG- posterize-6
filters-daub-fade
Painter8-bg-chalk
Photoshop-filters-spatter.angle,spray,rough pastels
Player-posterize-4
filters-spatter,craq-fade,overlay
find edges,fade
Copy player, slightly offset
Motion blur on bottom player

That came out great kiska. I love the bold colors.

Thanks Cheryl, you're very kind. I noticed you feel in a rut. I was too, a couple of months ago. I forbade myself to go for the 'comfort food', and try things I never thought about before. Might get your juices going.

My attempt. I'm in a very abstract period, so this is a departure, done mostly with impressionist.

AmyHutton

i've been just playing w/ the pic (i don't have impressionist, so just filters etc.), and i came to the attached result, which i quite like... though, i'm not the one to judge, right? ;-) hope you'll like it

1) i got rid of the background (very roughly as you can see :-| ) and made a copy of the background
2) applied "dry brush" to the bottom layer, with big brush and medium details and texture
3) applied "poster edges" to the upper layer, thick 2, intense 3, and posterize 1; set blend mode of upper version to "multiply" and opacity to 50%
4) merged both layers, and made copy of this merged layer
to get the "movement" feeling:
5) selected just the hand in the upper layer (simply with the rectangle marquee), and applied "radial blur" strenght 10, deselected
6) added mask to the upper version, inverted (ie. filled w/ black), and painted w/ white using big soft brush and airbrush just to uncover the hands
7) in the end i applied "paint dubs" to the upper layer just to make it more "painting like", but wasn't that much necessary...

Danny, joking or not? I couldn't tell. I am an Auburn grad. 'War Eagle' is the school 'battle cry'. You needn't search for ANYTHING 'tide-ish'.
I was really surprised to see the photo. Didn't think Auburn was that widely known.

kiska

I finally got a chance to work on this one (and reply to your question). Although moderately knowledgeable college football-wise when it comes to recognizing rivalries between some well known schools (AU among them), I confess ignorance when it comes to knowing much about the respective school cultures or geographic details. I just liked the pic and recognized the logo on the helmut. I wasn't mocking or trying to stir up anything! I'm more familar with AU because that is the school from which Charles Barkley (of NBA fame) graduated.

Still working on sketch effects...
* Duplicated the background
* Smart Blur / Normal to simplify the image a bit
* Smart Blur / Edge Only, Ctrl + I (to invert the result) to yield major edges
* Diffuse > Anisotropic to soften the edges
* Inserted a new layer below this one and filled it with white to serve as a background
* Back to the sketch layer, added a layer mask and airbrushed black to eliminate background noise and extraeous edges
* Duplicated this layer and Ctrl + I (to invert the duplicate). Then click the eyeball to turn this layer off. We'll use it in a minute.
* Press D to set colors to default values
* Duplicated background, dragged duplicate to top of layer stack and desaturated
* Applied Photoshop's Colored Pencil (6,7,50)
* Layer > Add Layer Mask > Hide all
* Airbrushed with white on the layer mask to start revealing some darker tones
* Again...Duplicated background, dragged duplicate to top of layer stack and desaturated
* Layer > Add Layer Mask > Hide all
* Airbrushed with white on the layer mask to bring back a little detail
* Remember the inverted Anisotropic layer we turned off a few layers back? Time to turn it on again and drag it to the top of the layer stack. Changed the blend mode to Lighten. This will tone down the bold black outlines. Adjust opacity to suit.
* Levels adjustment layer: 70, 1.00, 255 - to boost contrast a bit
* New layer
* Alt + Ctrl + Shift + E: Merge all into the new layer
* Apply Photoshop Crosshatch 7, 1, 1 to soften the edges a bit. Optional: Edit > Fade Crosshatch and experiment with amount and blend modes.

~Danny~

Danny-great sketch! You are forgiven your ignorance of southern football lore. People live and breathe that stuff down here. Charles Barkley is about the best known basketball player from AU. We don't produce many.
kiska

My try at this one. Love the color.

Pigskin or Arkansas Razorback??????

Impressionist Filter and layer Blending

Larger Image (http://www.pbase.com/image/32374217.jpg)

Steve... Great use of Impressionist. Your bold work in the BG sets of the FG perfectly.

On this one, I'm dabbling with a watercolor technique...Started with a sketch layer (Smart Blur/Edges only, Inverted, Diffuse > Anisotropic) and used white to paint over the extraneous lines.

Created a History snapshot of this layer (from the History palette menu, create snapshot / current layer), set the history source (clicked box to the left of the newly created snapshot) and with the History Brush tool selected and a small, stipple brush with Fade set to 25%, restored the sketch lines onto a new layer. The intent here was to give the lines more of a freehand sketch look than you get from Smart Blur/Edges only + Anisotropic.

For some color, I duplicated the Background and applied a healthy dose of Dust & Scratches to smoosh the colors a bit and again created a snapshot of this layer via the History palette's Create Snapshot command. Using various brushes with the History Brush (low opacity), I roughed in color onto a new layer. Since the brush opacity was low, you could still see the sketch lines below the color.

To get some stroke contrast and overlap I duplicated the Background again, applied Image > Adjustments > Hue Saturation and cranked up the saturation a bit. Another layer snapshot was taken and a new layer created (blend mode changed from Normal to Darken). Again, using various brushes with the History Brush tool I painted some additional strokes to beef up some of the shadow areas.

According to a book I got the other day this method of laying down a sketch and applying lighter colors first, and overlaying them with darker colors (for shadowed areas) is one way "real" watercolor artists create their art. I'm not completely happy with the (so-called) watercolor strokes, but I can see promise in the overall concept.

~Danny~

Thank you Mike Finn, for your new action at least to me called ValueMap that is in beta. I ran the defaults in the action and did the following after
1. Dry brush 1.8.2
2. Poster Edge 2.1.2
3. Fresco 2.8.1 and added a little noise.
The thing I like most about te action was the background especially the treatment of the two men on either side of the player.
Bob

Duped original, made typical sketch layer (desaturated-Color Dodge blend-blur to bring back detail), duped that layer and ran graphic pencil (using light blue/bright gold) on bottom of two layers. Used Dry Brush on one or both layers also (sorry, got a bit lost while working - wanted to soften details with Dry Brush and used it a few times "somewhere".) Used Pin Light layer blend and added layer mask to bring out detail in player. Added color/texture layers above to de-emphasize crowd/background.