[Peter S]

Took this on hoilday in Greece in 2001.
I've tried several things with it but not satisfied. What would you do. Need some ideas.
Have a play

[lkroll]

Some saturation/color adjustments, texture blends, and bumpmapping too.

[palms1]

Tried a tutorial i found using Photoshop watercolour filter, then couldn't make my mind up on which to post so, have posted both. Nice photo


Palms

[Swampy]

Wonderful photo, Peter.

I wanted something a little "dreamy" and you'll never know how I struggled to get this far. Soft focus painterly looks are really hard for me.

I did a very rough selection in QuickMask mode using various opacities. I used 100% on the facial features, 30-70% on the rest.

Applied a couple artistic filters (dry brush was one I remember)

Texturized a pink background with a plain white filled layer below. Added a (black) mask to the pink texture and used the "fuzzball" brush on the mask to paint (white brush) back in the texture then ran a gausian blur on the mask.

I couldn't have done it without my Wacom tablet!

[Peter S]

Some great renditions here, lots of ideas for me in only 3 posts so far!!!

Soft focus painterly looks are really hard for me.

Swampy no there not, check out your own post.

Thanks all

Peter

[Swampy]

It was a labor of love, Peter. It took me four hours and I know the "painting pros" could have done it in a quarter of the time or less....sigh. I love the challenge, but It's hard for me to relax with that stylus in my hand.

Thanks and hugs for the encouragement.

[lkroll]

...all the PM's came out alright, so I'm sharing these steps with the masses too; cool links to know.

...The exact steps I'll never remember (alway adlib a little on every rendering I do), but I will clarify some things that I can. I did lighten the overall piece a bit before running Impressionist with KentC's Cezanne preset on a separate layer. I then adjusted the opacity down to around 85 or 90 (can't remember) and also did some selective erasing to get the facial features back. I then flatten and dup the layer and run Paint Engine (used this as the link since they also have some cool presets here) with @Wetter2 preset (well, it can be found on this page) and blended the opacity to around 20 to 30. This step lubricates/liquifies the overall painting just a bit. I also do some selective erasing for a few details to show through. Now the the texture step. I open the result in GIMP and run GIMP's bumpmap filter for the relief (don't know of a Photoshop equivalent to the bumpmap step unfortunately, though Photoshop should have it; I just have a heck of a lot more experience with GIMP; unfortunately, not all Photoshop filters work in GIMP (i.e., Impressionist and Paint Engine). I also did some selective smudgding. Then I duplicated the layer and ran DCSpecial's 1969 filter on the top layer and adjusted the opacity to taste (this step saturates the colors a bit); I then flatten and duplicate the layer for a total of three layers, run Cybia's Alphaworks Eliminate White on the top layer. I ran a GIMP Artistic>Apply Canvas on the center layer. I adjust the opacity of the center layer down to taste and flatten. Done. The afore step gives the illusion of paint on canvas by allowing the canvas texture through on the lighter colors, but not so the the more opaque ones. Pretty cool trick.

[raniday]

Peter, this is a wonderful shot. Is it the original? Maybe I'm wrong, but this looks as if it has already been PhotoShopped a bit.

[Peter S]

raniday Peter, this is a wonderful shot. Is it the original? Maybe I'm wrong, but this looks as if it has already been PhotoShopped a bit

It was a scan from before I had the camera so I just did a little lightening and some clean up of noise. Well spotted (so was the original)

Peter