Roses...

[patriciakay]

Judy your painting is fantastic.... I love it....oh I really,really want to paint like you one day....thanks for the inspiration...

Patricia....

[klassylady25]

A rose by any other name would smell as sweet....

Beauty in all things.

[patriciakay]

Hello Candice.....Wow what a beautifully colored, delicate painting you have done...its fabulous...

Patricia...

[Steve Conway]

Main programs are PSP 9 and Gertrudis with many plugins.

Always see a lot of PS tuts here, but not many for PSP. If there was one for smudging in PSP posted here, point me to it if you will.

I'm game to try this, but I ain't no free-hand artist ...that's my brother who teaches art history at a college here.

Wasn't really that interested until I saw John's work. That's fantastic!

Steve

Originally Posted by patriciakay

Steve...Yes do try smudging....its great....I didnt know there was anything called smudge painting till i joined Retouchpro...I thought it a great tool and used it mainly to rid flower petals, from blemishes...liked the effect and started doing the whole flower...what program do you have??? In some programs there is a smear tool too and that works well for me with the smudge tool...

The main thing is that we all get pleasure from what we do.....

Patricia.....

[Steve Conway]

When is a smudge not a smudge...when it's....this...

Steve

[Steve Conway]

OK......last one of the roses....promise!

Steve

[Kraellin]

gave this one a shot also. thought i'd break away from filter forge for a while and get back to psp only for a bit.

i forget all the steps here, but i do recall using digital camera noise reducer on a very high setting. the settings were done to act as a blur rather than a true noise reduction.

i also cropped the image, not because i thought there was anything wrong with the original, but because i like to print these things in a 6 x 4 format and that's the aspect ratio i cropped to.

there was a bit of hand smudging on this to reduce some of the side leaves left over from other actions that now just looked like noise. so, i erased that by smudging and did a bit on the main leaves as well to soften those up.

also changed the lightness/contrast a bit somewhere in there.

craig

[Britsdad]

I like that variant Craig, I don't know why, but that little bit of wood grain bottom right is really beginning to facinate me, it seems to draw my eyes, and on yours it stands out well.
John

[patriciakay]

Steve...More lovely pics from you...I like the second one a liitle more than the first...
Been trying to find a tute for PSP9 for smudging...no luck yet but will keep my eyes open...My favorite program to smudge in is Project Dogwaffle then i like Twisted brush, I can smudge okay in photoshop too but I find it quite hard in PSP9 so you must be good if you are doing it in there.....

Craig...Lovely...like everything about it and the lighting is just right too...

Patricia...

[Kraellin]

thanks john you know, i hardly even noticed the wood grain in the original pic, but when i got to working with the image i noticed it also and in a couple renditions i tried, it just really popped out. so, i tried to keep a bit of it in the final.

thanks patricia i've worked on a LOT of flowers and this is definitely one of my favorite original pictures. and it's always easier to get nice results when you adore the original

as for tuts on smudging in psp (any version), throw away the smudge tool and use 'push'. lower the hardness to at least half and use small strokes on a blank layer. this allows you to 'cheat' quite a bit and get better results. one of the cheats is that you can blur or gausian blur this layer to smooth things out nicely and give a more finished look. you still have to do a lot of hand work, but frankly, that's one of the pluses in smudging. it's just relaxing as the dickens.

for a little variety in your smudging, lower the density a bit also. opacity can vary at any time depending on what you're doing. you can also vary the brushes quite a bit and i've built a couple of my own for this. i have one 'comb' type that is kind nice at times as it gives a varied depth to the strokes. but, the default brush works fine also..

the reason the push tool works better in psp is that with push you are more closely approximating the way a real paint brush works. it's like dragging a brush full of paint rather than smudge, which is more like dragging a clean brush over existing paint. so, with push, you get a longer stroke of the same thing, while with smudge, you get a stroke that fades quickly.

and by the way, i loved the smudge work on the roses.

also, get palms1 to talk to you about smudging. she's our resident expert.

craig

[cazubi]

Beautiful roses. Really nice work going on here. Craig and Steve I like what you did to your roses.

I used Painter and the Sargent cloner brush for the painted effect. In PS I added texture and a little bit more smudging. I add a layer above the image and fill it with 50% grey and set it to overlay. This is the layer that I smudge until it looks like part of the under painting.

Cathy

[cazubi]

One more. I just gave the same image a vintage look with a sepia tint.

Cathy

[Kraellin]

thank you, cathy i take that as high praise receiving it from one whose works i've admired so much.

craig

[DESI6N]

Nice site you have here!
Here is my rose attempt - great photo!

[jaykita]

Cathy, love both your paintings!