Creative Interprethations - Carousel

[Ziaphra]

I consider my knuckles rapped...

[lkroll]

Originally Posted by Swampy

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Ikroll, Great Crop!

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Only out of necessity Swampy; I think you'll like the full res, high quality version much better.

[Swampy]

Here's mine.

I was shooting for a pen and ink with a "wash" look in the colors.

Used my minimum sketch technique, duplicated the resulting layer and set to multiply. Duplicated that about 5 times to get strong black lines and bold colors. Boosted saturation, Merged all and then did a strong surface blure to blend and "wash" the color areas.

[DannyRaphael]

Originally Posted by Swampy

Here's mine.

I was shooting for a pen and ink with a "wash" look in the colors.

Used my minimum sketch technique, duplicated the resulting layer and set to multiply. Duplicated that about 5 times to get strong black lines and bold colors. Boosted saturation, Merged all and then did a strong surface blure to blend and "wash" the color areas.

Very nice. I like this A LOT.

Would you review the steps in your minimum sketch technique for the memory challenged? I don't recall them offhand. (Old age rears its ugly head again.)

[Swampy]

Danny,,,
>>>>Would you review the steps in your minimum sketch technique for the memory challenged? I don't recall them offhand. (Old age rears its ugly head again.)

Minimum Sketch Technique - A quick easy black and white sketch.

1. Duplicate Background Layer
2. Desaturate the copy
3. Duplicate the desaturated copy
4. Invert this duplicate and set the blend mode to Color Dodge (the picture will disappear, but the next step fixes that.
5. Run the Filter ->> Other ->> Minimum. Start with a low setting of 2 and tweak until you see something you like. (2-5 is usually good)
6. Merge this layer down to the desaturated layer. If you want color, set the blend mode to Lumanacity.

That is the basic technique. Down and dirrty and most of it can be accomplished with key strokes. (On a Mac... Command+J, Command+Shift+U, Command+J, Command+I) These key strokes will get you to the point where you set the blend mode to Color dodge and run the Minimum filter.

For my Carousel submission I used a setting of about 3 in the Mimimum dialog. I duplicated the Lum layer and set the duplicate to Multiply to boost the colors, I then boosted the colors more with a Saturation adjustment (pretty strong).

On the piece below, I used a setting of 5 in the minimum dialog set the black to very dark, but also brought up the midtone grays for more color coverage.

Lastly, Merged all visible and ran a pretty strong Surface Blur to smudge some colors around.

BTW... At step 5 you could run a Gausian Blur or a Motion Blur rather than the Minimum flter, but I really like the effect of the Mimimum filter best. If you do Gausian or Motion, blur, DO play with the amount slider(s) for different effects.

Enjoy!

[DannyRaphael]

re: 5. Run the Filter ->> Other ->> Minimum. Start with a low setting of 2 and tweak until you see something you like. (2-5 is usually good)

Using Gblur, Radial blur at this point are methods I've known of for a long time, as well as using arrow keys to offset the top layer. Using Minimum is completely new ground, however, and the results are about the coolest thing since sliced bread!

Thanks for making my day. Woof, woof... (That's an old dog barking about his new trick! )

[Swampy]

Yeah! I taught an "old dog" a new trick. Gee, Danny, you made my day! LOL. Glad it works for you.

You can also go the opposite track and set the second b/w copy to Color Burn (picture turns black) and then use Maximum for a different effect. Much depends on the original graphic, but it could be handy for some things. I had the Maximum dialed in at 7 on the sample below.

[palms1]

Swampy similar to Danny i have only ever used Gaussian blur at step 5 and didnt know that you could use anything else ! so have been experimenting and came up with one that i liked using the graphic pen ( then inverting) and have posted in this thread
http://www.retouchpro.com/forums/pho...tml#post139243

for another way of using this sketch have you seen this tut

http://www.photographybb.com/viewtopic.php?t=206

again try different filters for different effects. i even done it wrong ( by accident) and put the filter onto the middle layer and you get different effects yet again

Palms

[Swampy]

Graphic pen does a neat version. I can see the possibilities are endless!

[Swampy]

I wanted to revisit this using the Pattern Stamp tool. I wanted to see if I could get some brush stroke-ish texture in these two steeds.

Used the original for the Pattern Stamp, but tweaked an underlying copy of the original with smart sharpen to remove a lot of the background detail, used a DryBrush filter and added a little motion blur and canvas texture to the background layer and reduced the opacity.

Then started painting with an oil brush at 100% with the Pattern Stamp for the two foreground horses. I think I used one of Ro's oil brushes (Thanks, Ro). After getting that layer pretty well covered with paint (there were some small gaps, but these seemed to play in well with the texture). I went looking through the textures that I had on file and came up with one of flowers (of all things) but it did give the heave brush stroke look I was shooting for. Tweaked the depth and scale in the texturizer dialog box. Then added a bevel/emboss style layer and poked around in the popup for a style that I liked.

The whole thing took about 30 minutes.

[Janet Petty]

WOW Swampy, really cool. I love the style. The 3-D effect is a great bonus as well.

Janet

[Mitch]

Hi all,
Great pictures in this thread!
Thought I would try an oil version.
Background - Snap Art watercolour, followed by Snap Art impasto.
Horses - VP5 Impasto.

I think the snap art filters all add varying degrees of blur which VP5 doesn't.
Regards to all,
Mitch.

[Swampy]

Really rich looking, Mitch!