[raniday]

Here are some random photos from Stock Xchange that might be fun for us to play with, either individually or combined.

[skipc]

first look...skip

[Swampy]

Just playing

Opened the flower and repositioned the yellow area and used a Transform to cover the canvas. Selected the yellow area the inverted and did a heavy radial spin on the purple areas then g/blured the whole thing.

Opened both the "words" and "pretty girl" files, resized both to match the flower file and saved both as Photoshop files.

Used both the pretty girl and words files as texture maps on the flower file.

I didn't like the bright yellow so did a HS adjustment to reduce and shift the yellow from the flower.

Added the bevel and border

An interesting exercise in composition with such diverse subject matter.

[lkroll]

Hey Catherine,

I first used GIMP's Retinex filter to enhance the contrast. I then ported the whole thing in Photoshop, and converted the image to 16-bit. I did an Auto level and did some magic to convert the image to Pseudogrey (used a perlscript from Alex Wilson; can find the link here; way too complicated to tell you all how; yes, I'm a techy). Lost a few levels due to JPEG compression, but I still have over 1200 tones; click here for that version. Unfortunately, due to size requirements, the compression further reduced the number of tones to 257; still looks good though (attached). Not by me, but this method has been dubbed Metallic B/W.

[Swampy]

Interesting, iKroll. The compressed version is pretty intense, but your linked version adds back many of the missing shades of gray.

[garazon]

Originally Posted by raniday

Here are some random photos from Stock Xchange that might be fun for us to play with, either individually or combined.

Thanks Catherine, great choices!

I tried to come up with something that combined them all but my creativity level is sorta low I guess! Besides, skip and Swampy did outstanding jobs already on combinations!
And lkroll that really did a job on bringing out the goosebumps! Interesting reading on the page you linked to, but I happened to click the gallery link and found the round snakes image, my head is spinning and won't stop!

Anyway here's my play, went for a softer, smoother look.

[Swampy]

Nice soft black and white, G.

Yes, the challenge is in finding some way to composition all elements since they are so unique. Girl and flower, girl and type, type and flower, two might be easier, but three is a real challenge.

[Janet Petty]

I had so much fun with this one. Thanks Cat for the post.

Janet

[raniday]

Hi folks, this is what I love about these threads, the diversity of artistic vision........ Skip, that's so vibrant and dramatic! Swampy, all I want to do with yours is print it out REALLY large and hang it on my wall. That bit from the flower's center fascinates me, along with the depth and texture.
Ikroll, what do you do for a living, write rocket science manuals? I hardly ever understand what you're saying, but you come up with some good stuph.
You're right, Garazon, Skip and Swampy set the bar very high, but I also like your dreamy version. I've been experimenting with that lately myself.
And Ms. Janet, looks like we've caught her in the shower! Very cool and creative.

[skipc]

I thought it was unusual that the yellow portions of the flower aligned so perfectly with the eyes, so that was my point of demarcation using layer Difference mode...skip

[Swampy]

Hehheee, Janet. Yours adds new meaning to the term "wet look". Very creative and well done.

[Cassidy]

1st image (flower) colour
2nd image (script) softlight

Photoshop: did stretch after images

[Janet Petty]

Cat, you picked some great material to work with.

I'm having so much fun.

Janet

[TwoLaidBack]

Well when I saw the thread "Pretty Woman" I just had to grab muh hat and see what it was all about.

It turns out I ended up doing two different images with these. The first I used the text and pretty things face to over lay her over the text once I had that I colorized the top layer her face blue. Next I merged visible and did the torn edge and burned the edges at this point all I had left to do was apply the page curl.

The second image I did I applied a sketch effect to it then started smudging the sketch. once I had that looking like I wanted I colorized it light blue. I added a new layer above the sketch and applied a balls & bubbles effect with the blue bubbles I had made up and saved as a preset. Now all I had left to do was add the matte and frame.

TwoLaidBack

[kiska]

I combined 2 images in Photoshop and added some heavy texture.