Photo-Based Art - - Creative interpretations: Marble Flowers

Swampy · #1 10-07-2005, 07:19 PM

I've had this photo on my hard drive for ages and always felt it could be painted, manipulated or otherwise changed in some challenging ways. Have fun with this.

I went wild!!

1. Created a pencil sketch.
2. Put a bright colored tile pattern under and reset blending mode and blending optins.

Swampy · #2 10-07-2005, 07:40 PM

I just had another go using PSCS's replace color tool set to Color mode. Added some texture too. Colorizing in primary colors is very easy with this new tool.

Neasa · #3 10-08-2005, 05:45 AM

I'm running off to work on this right now. They're beautiful in the original, wonder where they come from?

Neasa · #4 10-08-2005, 06:43 AM

This was fun! I first used the Auto photo fix in PSPX then hand tinted with green & cream in Painter IX using tinting brush at 2% opacity, then just fiddled with smoothing edges (a fav application of mine), adjusting hues, etc.

Finished it in watercolor.

Swampy · #5 10-08-2005, 07:00 AM

Neasa, very pretty and very subtile. I never would have thought of green and cream, but it is effective.

Cassidy · #6 10-08-2005, 07:45 AM

Thought I'd have a play too. A rough colour, a water colour, a pencil sketch and a screen with reduced opacity

kiska · #7 10-08-2005, 08:57 AM

Here's a sketch technique I'm trying. Color supplied by photo filter adjust layer.

philbach · #8 10-08-2005, 02:49 PM

I used a displacement filter, Find edges and various blending modes.

Swampy · #9 10-08-2005, 03:09 PM

Cassidy: I like the color selections!

Kiska: Lovely! Your edge effect really sets off the center roses and leaves.

Phil: Wow, The what did you use for the displacement? That's really wild, but I like it.

philbach · #10 10-09-2005, 04:41 AM

Well I am fiddling with the distort/displace filter trying to learn how it works. In this case, I forgot what I did. At any rate I took the original photo "marble flowers" and then ran a threshold on both the Red and Green layers. I blurred the picture with Gaussian blur and saved the file as a photoshop file and used it for the displacement map. I then ran the displacement filter on the original file using the map. The results are something like the enclosed.

Since I am retired I do this sort of thing when I get tired of the rocking chair. Ha.

Swampy · #11 10-09-2005, 08:18 AM

Phil, I like the effect as you just posted it. Threshold on red and green layers, huh? I'll have to remember that technique. I need to investigate displacement maps more. I have one of water that I downloaded from somewhere that I've used a number of times in creating backgrounds for ads.

Kraellin · #12 10-09-2005, 09:32 AM

well, i had to jump into this bed... flowers, bed...never mind.

Craig

Swampy · #13 10-09-2005, 09:48 AM

Craig: Subtile, but effective. How did you maintain the gray?

Kraellin · #14 10-09-2005, 12:25 PM

dee dee,

thanks, but if i knew how i did it, i'd have to kill myself

i can tell you some of what i did, but when doing artistic things like this, i do and undo and add so many different things that i never try to keep track of the workflow. but...

i duped the background.
duped it again and set top layer to mutiply and saved off as a new image
did this again only using burn this time.
again, using overlay.
again, using screen.
i then put all these new images back into the original (yeah, easier ways to do it, but i like doing it this way so i can save off the pulled images separately )
then, i just began playing with blending modes and ajustment layers. i think there's a contrast/lighten layer in there.

oh, and the first thing i did was to actually clean the original image up. there were a number of spots here and there and quite a few aliased lines that needed smoothing up. i also ran something to sharpen a bit and that may be why i had the aliased lines.

i also added some blank raster layers. in one, i filled with a 50% gray fill. in another i tried a gradient fill. not sure if i ended up using those layers or not.

and on another blank raster layer i just started painting with an airbrush in different colors. i was not particularly careful with the spraying on purpose. the reason for that is that i then set this layer to a blend mode that erased the spray that went over the edges. sorry, i forget which blend that was.

basically, what i did in theory was, i only painted the lit areas. i accomplished that by using blending modes that would highlight the brighter areas and darken the dark areas. this gave me a very high contrast image of light and shadow. with the new raster layer i then painted the lit areas with mostly appropriate colors.

ah, and here's the final step, mostly. with the image in high contrast, and colors painted, i took the original cleaned up image and made another layer of it on top of eveything. i set this to about a 50% opacity with a blending mode of hard light. that brightened up all the dark areas without paint and highlighted the painted areas for contrast.

i'll tell ya, i sure wish these paint programs would save off the work history in a separate file or script. it would just be so much easier than relying on my poor old memory

Craig

Swampy · #15 10-10-2005, 06:58 AM

Lots of new techniques there, Craig. Thanks for passing them along. Like you, I can spend hours just playing with an image and learning new things.