PHOTO ART: Mini-challenge #40 – English Gentleman

[DannyRaphael]

FIRST MINI-CHALLENGE?
See below for "Information and Guidelines."

Here’s another “mini-challenge” to play with in the Photo-based Art category until the next offical challenge is posted here.

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PHOTO ART: Mini-challenge# 40 – English Gentleman

This image of a street performer in historical get-up was taken this summer at a festival in Tunbridge Wells, UK by RetouchPRO member Leah. Leah, who kindly submitted it for this mini-challenge, retains the copyright © and unauthorized distribution or use without her permission is prohibited.

Let's see what you can do with this one.

~DannyR~

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INFORMATION AND GUIDELINES

Unlike “official challenges” for this forum which can be found here, this one will be self-contained within this thread. It is intended as an opportunity to engage in this artform until the next official challenge is posted.

The rules are more-or-less the same:
* It’s a challenge, not a contest -- intended to provide opportunities to experiment, share methods and/or techniques and, most importantly, have FUN.
* Everyone who participates is a winner.
* There’s no expiration date.

GUIDELINES:
1. Use any method, application(s), style(s) you like:
. * Convert to sketch, grayscale, abstract, watercolor, oil painting, pen-and-ink, Conte crayon, impasto, van Gogh or any style of your choosing
. * Add elements from other images (collage) or replace the background
. * Hand painting? Tracing? Freehand? You bet. Always appreciate entries of this nature.
. * Apply filters from your favorite application(s) or tweak it with 3rd party plug-ins
. * Feeling animated? How about a bird popping in and out of his hat?
. * Any or all of the above

Bottom line:
How you create this masterpiece makes no difference. Whatever floats your boat as long as you follow guideline #4 in the process.

2. When done, reply to this thread and attach your work (don’t forget the 100kb size limit).

Note: Multiple entries OK if you’re so inspired.

3. By all means include some verbiage on how you achieved your masterpiece so others will benefit from your skills and experience. Make it as descriptive as you like. Grammar and spelling will not be graded. Priority given to content, not how it is written.

4. Have fun.

[JLC]

I'll start! This was done with the art history brush and a few filters(emboss and texturizer) to give it texture.

I kept the man in the background because he just seemed really interesting to me.

Thanks for letting us use your great picture, Leah!

Jennifer

[jerry]

Hi folks
Leah thanks for the nice photo to work on. I thought this gentleman had a lot of character..Tried for the old portrait look using one of trimoons glaze techniques.
Thanks
Jerry

[JBCaffrey]

This attempt uses Trimoon's sketch effect combined with BuzzPro.

[pstewart]

Jennifer, great color, great background, great texture. Excellent job!

Jerry, great job of turning a snapshot into a classy oil portrait, especially with the background replaced by a dark moody one. It looks like you may have used a distort--displace filter here to get that brushy texture...did you?

Jim, really looks like a painting...especially lower right corner. Love the texture and the colors and the way it fades off onto the paper/canvas.

Phyllis

[pstewart]

Here is something new that I tried. If I ever made a woodcut again, I would remove excess detail before adding the wood and depth, but since I noticed my error after I'd already saved it as a jpeg, it's too late to fix this one. But I do like the woodcut effect. Here are the main steps, not counting blending modes and tweaking:

Working with a b/w dupe, found thick edges with a KPT filter (but poster edges should do it just as well) and set contrast high to get make it all black or white with no shades inbetween. Redid contrast to make it light gray and dark gray. Applied the craquelure filter with all sliders set to zero. Overlaid it onto the wood and adjusted saturation, brightness, and contrast.

Phyllis

[DannyRaphael]

Excellent, excellent entries so far! I was hoping folks would remove the non-essential background elements.

Jennifer:
Very, very painterly. As Doug once said in a review, "I can almost smell the paint!"

Jerry:
Great glaze treatment. Trimoon will be pleased you've picked up his method so quickly plus put your own spin on it.

Jim:
Yet another winner. Subtle use of Buzz really worked on your rendition.

Phyllis...Phyllis...Phyllis:
How utterly creative. This is awesome. Appreciate you sharing the actual and workaround steps. This method will make a great alternative to some holiday gifts I would normally have had to PAY for!

Great stuff!
~Danny~

[siodhach]

VISION …

A Naval Officer’s worst dream … the Vision of His Ship Surrendering to the Sea.

Basically this was done around the Pencil2 Filter …

Don

[pstewart]

I was experimenting with the Techtures plug-in from Andromeda that I got in that package I told you about in the software forum: http://www.retouchpro.com/forums/sho...&threadid=4132 .

I did most of this painting with those textures, tweaking with PS7's displacement filter to suit, but first applied "accented edges" filter and faded it a bit.

The first thing I did after cutting out the soldier was to straighten him up...he was leaning forward too much for a portrait pose. Also, before merging layers I duped him and turned him all white with hue/saturtion then applied a generous gaussian blur to put a light between him and the background.


Phyllis

[DannyRaphael]

Glad to see you're putting Techtures to such good use so quickly, Phyllis! This is a facinating technique and terrific result.

When you get a few minutes would you go into a little more detail about how you went about using the textures to get this effect, e.g., did you only use one texture? Did you apply all textures to the same layer or separate layers (if > 1)? What do you look for in textures? What benefit does Displacement bring to the game?

~Danny~

[jerry]

Phyllis
Your Woodcut and Portrait are just sooo good..really good stuff..

Quote:
Jerry, great job of turning a snapshot into a classy oil portrait, especially with the background replaced by a dark moody one. It looks like you may have used a distort--displace filter here to get that brushy texture...did you?

Phyllis, the filter I used for the texture on my portrait was with Paint engine (bad chalk). I then adjusted the slider way low.. Then I applied a small amount of PS "drybrush" and played with sliders.. The rest was done with layers removed with a wet brush..

Don
really great rendition of the stern sailors face with the frigate biting the dust..I really like that one..

JB
your portrait is really nice.. I toyed with trying to get the texture smooth like you did but I couldn't get a painted look..Mine still looked like a photo.. Nice job..

Thanks
Jerry

[pstewart]

Originally posted by DannyRaphael
Glad to see you're putting Techtures to such good use so quickly, Phyllis! This is a facinating technique and terrific result.

When you get a few minutes would you go into a little more detail about how you went about using the textures to get this effect, e.g., did you only use one texture? Did you apply all textures to the same layer or separate layers (if > 1)? What do you look for in textures? What benefit does Displacement bring to the game?

Well I'll give you as much as I can recall. Keep in mind that this was my first time trying Techtures so I was figuring out how to work it while using this picture as a guinea pig. I don't recall which Techture I used, but there was just one...one of the cloud set. I applied it to a blank layer, then increased contrast till it became blotchy, then use distort--displace (size 5 on wrap around and tile settings) a few times, turning it 90 degrees inbetween to make it look sort like "brushy" blotches, then pulled back the contrast to shades of gray and overlaid it on the man, fading it out to suit, adding color back into the blotches with a color mode layer of the original placed above it.
I used the same blotchy layer again to make the background, reversing it and turning it 180 then laying it over itself at 50% opacity, and colored it a slight bluish shade. Last I added the gaussian blur dupe of the man to cast a white "shadow" behind him.

Phyllis

[Toad]

Wow! What great entries for this challenge. To single out any of them would be to do a diservice to the others - I have to say that I am more impressed by the high level of quality from all of these entries than in any other mini challenge so far - in the lofty 2 or 3 weeks that I have been a member here...

Give yourselves all a pat on the back - EXCELLENT work!

Best
Toad

[CJ Swartz]

Duped image layer, applied Dry brush to top layer - then applied layer mask and used gray to bring back eye and mouth features a "bit" – I liked the immediate maturing of their features – makes them look more real figures of history to me rather than impersonators. Duped that layer and applied Stylize->Find Edges filter, reduced opacity of top layer to about 64%.

To mask the obvious modern aspects of the background - Selected background and ran medium Gaussian blur, then dry brush several times – ran Levels adjustment to darken it and emphasize the two subjects in foreground.

Having looked at the other entries, I agree with Toad -- high caliber entries. Phyllis -- your woodcut is the first I've seen -- great concept. Jerry, JLC, Jim -- such good work! Don -- your addition of his sinking ship is an excellent idea -- it does answer the question of "what are they watching?"

Added a vignette effect -- thought it let the officer almost "step out" of the background.

[DannyRaphael]

CJ:

Dry Brush + Find Edges? Excellent and very creative. Had never thought of doing that. The vignette effect subtly ages the pic without being distracting.

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Here's my swipe:

For the "how to" start with layer 7 (the original image) and work "up" for the general idea.

Layer 6 was a 2-pass development. After completing layers 5 and 4 above it, I went back to 6 to add additional texture. I just kept mucking with it until it looked "arty enough."

LAYER STACK:
1. Merged layers 4,5,6,7; airbrushed with black on layer mask to let layers 2, 3 show through. Used Blur tool to soften the guy in the back a bit.

2. Hue/Saturation adjustment layer set to colorize. Messed with sliders until I found a combination that looked good to me.

3. Pseudo background generated by Clouds followed by Difference Clouds (4 times)

4. Copy of Background layer, Hard Light, opacity 75%. This restores some color.

5. Copy of Background layer + Emboss + Sprayed strokes (for texture), Overlay. Adds little more texture and depth.

6. Copy of Background layer, Hard Light, manipulated with these filters in this order:
* Add noise (5, color, Gaussian). This makes Colored Pencil filter more effective.
* Colored Pencil (4,8,42)
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* Crosshatch (9,6,2)
* Angled Strokes (18,6,5)
* Ocean Ripple (7,5)
* Fade Ocean Ripple
* Dry Brush (2,3,1)
* Fade Dry Brush

7. Background

~Danny~

[Leah]

Toad:
> I have to say that I am more impressed by the high level of
> quality from all of these entries than in any other mini challenge
> so far

Personally I ascribe this to the outstandingly high quality of the original photograph ...

CJ:
> it does answer the question of "what are they watching?"

As far as I recall they were watching the other street performers (as per my other photo to Danny). I suspect the expression of somewhat pained concentration is actually down to trying to remember his lines, but Don's solution is certainly more dramatic.

I'm really pleased to see what everyone's done with this photo. I took it the first weekend I had my new digital camera this summer and was sure something interesting could be done with it, but never quite got round to trying. I've been busy at my sister's wedding this past week and it's been great to come back and see all these outstanding images. Kudos all around...

[KenB]

Here's my version, I removed the gentleman from the background, placed him onto a new background made to look like wooden planks, using splat, then turned the whole thing into a cartoon style image using photoshops, texture, grain filter , set to speckle.


Ken

[DannyRaphael]

Ken:

Very impressive and convincing background construction. If you haven't tried the Lighting Effects filter on this image, it will render variations that will further highlight the creativity of your skillfully crafted BG.

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As Leah hinted there's counterpart to this picture, an "English Lady." She'll be the subject of a future mini-challenge.

~Danny~

[Trimoon]

Uniform Officer of the British Army 1778


I was going to have it framed but all the frame shops are closed

[CJ Swartz]

Trimoon/Steve -- gorgeous! Get thee to the frame shop!
Love that background.


Chuck -- glad my notes were clear enough for someone to follow. I just tried some different effects until I found some I liked -- now it's your turn.

[Trimoon]

Officer of the British Army 1778... In need of Restoration

[Trimoon]

A good one Chuck… I like the soft color and canvas texture.
Texture is a hard one for most, texture can look bad on the wed if not done right, you did it right.

[CJ Swartz]

Chuck -- that worked out really well, didn't it! Excellent job. Good idea of inserting an outdoor background.

[pstewart]

Ken, looks like that guy came out of a comic book... Gentman! The new superhero?

Danny, great job in using filters to get a powerful painting style.

Steve and Chuck, love your use of subtle canvas texture, and the backgrounds are both great choices for an authentic look.

Phyllis

[Trimoon]

Had the old boy framed.
Made the frame in Photoshop.

[pstewart]

Steve, the frame is perfect...even has a light! Very nice job!

Phyllis

[jerry]

Chuck I really like the background and texture of your last entry. Very nice.

Steve, all entries are very inspired as usual..Hang the last one in a museum..

Jerry

[CJ Swartz]

Steve. listen to the voices...

[ecurbh]

Hello all from a newbie (first post here). Excellent entries so far - very inspiring. Here is my humble entry.

First I selected the gent and copied him to a new layer, then blurred the background. I then ran several actions that I downloaded from another thread, including one called Jaseck Ink Sketch. Sorry I don't remember the exact sequence, but I got into it hot and heavy, and forgot how I got there. Anyway, I then added some color back in, boosted the saturation, and added a slight darkening vignette around the edge.

Looking forward to learning lots from everyone around here!

Bruce

[DannyRaphael]

Hi Bruce:

W E L C O M E to RetouchPRO. Glad you found our site and the Photo-art forum in particular. If you've been poking around you'll probably have noticed a number of not only talented, but really nice folks who participate here.

Between the actions and other techniques, tutorials, archived threads and other forums, you're in for a great learning experience. Congrats on posting your first image here and look forward to seeing more of your works in the future.

If you have any questions or I can be of assistance, don't hesitate to send me Personal Mail (PM button). Note the link to the "site map" below my signature, which will give you a bird's-eye view of the site.

Again, welcome. Have lots of fun while you're here.

~DannyR~