Creative interpretations: True Love?

[DannyRaphael]

All of us with children will face (or have faced) this crossroad someday. If you haven't yet, might as well start getting ready!

~Danny~

[DannyRaphael]

Started by rebuilding the image so the happy couple wasn't dead center (bench extended to the right).

Three layers arrived at pretty much by trial and error:
* Top: Impressionist Pencil Sketch: Detailed Colored (used layer mask to selectively apply
* Middle: Modified (stretched) original image set to Pin Light and about 70% opacity
* Bottom: Impressionist Chalk Sketch: Half Finished using original image as BG.

[DannyRaphael]

Another "happy accident"

Top layer: Levels (to suit)
* Hue/Saturation (Saturation turned down a bit)
* Virtual Painter - Collage (Lighten)
* Virtual Painter - Oil Painting (Color)
* Virtual Painter - Watercolor

[svsg]

very nice painted look. Great Job!

[GOLDCOIN]

Danny, Really really like the first one........

[Andrew B.]

Interesting photo to work on. Here is pretty much what I did:

1. Basic color correction
2. Gamma increase
3. Simplified with my India Ink method
4. Crop
5. A few smudge tool strokes here and there to get rid of jaggies
6. Shifted color with Color Balance
7. Texturizer

[catia]

Nice work Danny and Andrew.

This was done in PSP8. First, I cropped it and then did a brushstroke or two.

Catia

[jch71566]

Wow, a lot of great work here.

Danny, I really like the 2nd one -- great green colors.

Andrew, yours seems to eliminate everything that does not need to be there; awesome.

Catia, the abstract quality is really cool!

Here's mine. I extended the bench off to the left to get the characters off-center. Used some smart-bluring to get rid of details. Vingnetted using "Meloncholeytron" (sp?). 2nd layer with a 2 pixel gaussian blur, blend mode to darken. 3rd layer with "Sumi-e" filter, blend mode set to screen, opacity 43%. Cropped and resized.

Viola!

[svsg]

Jch, Great work, I am going to try replicating that effect.

Mine is a sketch. This procedure works well for most images in Gimp.
1)Dup,desaturate, reduce the o/p levels (pull the right slider towards left till the image becomes barely visible.Pull the left slider towards right a little to make visible the totally dark parts of the image).
2)Dup . Add a value of 3 to all the pixels(either with curves or by having a black(3,3,3) layer in addition mode. Put top layer in divide mode.
3)Keep blurring the top layer till a good outline is formed.
4)merge.
5)Dup and put the top layer in multiply mode,blur the top layer. merge down.
6)Repeat 5 till the image attains the desired darkness.

svsg

[jch71566]

Svsg, really cool sketch!

I hope it will work for you to reproduce mine. I didn't like the composition of the couple on the right with the bench extending to the left -- so I tried recomposing in the opposite direction and repeating my steps. The output was OK, but was lacking much of what is in the one posted here. I must have forgotten a step somewhere.

Anyway, good luck!

[LQQKER]

Interesting photograph Danny

This is one of those instances where I wish I had a higher resolution photo to work with.

Danny - I like your first attempt. Simple yet effective
Andrew - A simplified version which shows just enough. Nice!
catia - Although the texture of the brush strokes is interesting, it's difficult to tell what the picture is about (unless that was your intention). It may have been more effective if you would have painted a small amount of detail back into the picture.
jch71566 - A interesting painterly effect.
svsg - nice sketch

I adjusted the colors a bit using hue & sat and cropped the image.
Ran adapt equalize using layers, applying what I needed via mask
Used a few Nik filters. Monday & skylight.

To keep the features I painted in some detail then ran noise to keep the image somewhat smooth. Used a lot of masks and layers.

[catia]

LQQKER,

Sorry this didn't "float your boat" as Danny likes to say. It is an interpretation. In particular, I believe there is more to love that external detail and/or beauty. I was looking for something a little deeper in the interpretation.

For example, the large amount of bench space to the left in the original image gave me a feeling of lonliness; so, I cropped it out. This gave me an image with distinct, bold lines from the top left down to the middle, across to the right and down again to the lower right corner. Two bodies, together, bold, and secure. Love..

Catia

[LQQKER]

catia - I did say "unless that was your intention."

I realize that art is subjective. I merely made, what I thought at the time, a helpful suggestion.

I apologize if I offended you, it was not my intent.

[catia]

No offense, taken. Just explaining my humble logic.

Catia

[ahutton]

The background was simply too much for this image. So I cut them out and placed them on a black background. Then I hit the whole thing with Harry's filter Color>BW Limiter Pro, the did a one step photo enhance and softened. (PSP8)

Young folks this age see everything thing in their lives as black and white. I was trying to emphasize the seriousness of youth.

AmyHutton

She who dies with the most filters wins.

[peejay]

Originally Posted by Andrew B.

Interesting photo to work on. Here is pretty much what I did:
3. Simplified with my India Ink method

7. Texturizer

This I really like. Could you explain in more detail, especially the India Ink and Texturizer steps?

[DannyRaphael]

Originally Posted by peejay

This I really like. Could you explain in more detail, especially the India Ink and Texturizer steps?

Hey, Peejay...

Welcome aboard. I've been waiting for Andrew to reply. He's ususally pretty responsive to questions. Perhaps he's offline for a few days.

On the Texturizer part, I'd say that's achieved using Photoshop's Filter > Texture > Texturizer filter. We'll have to wait for the India Ink description.

Thanks for asking. I'd be interested in knowing too.

~Danny~

[Leah]

On the India Ink, Andrew has a technique using the Flaming Pear India Ink product. You can find India Ink here, and also check out Andrew's description of what he does with it. Never tried it myself, so that's the limit of my knowledge...

[Andrew B.]

Sorry for the late reply. I was not paying much attention and didn't notice the request for help. If this happens again, feel free to send me a private message that alerts me to read the thread.

I see someone has already posted a link to the India Ink method. If you need any additional help with this, let me know. The main thing about this method (as with every photoart method) is the results depend a lot of the picture.

As for Texturizer, this is the Texturizer filter in Photoshop. I'm not sure which texture I used in this image, but my guess is it was sandstone, which I backed off to a level where I could just barely see it.

[peejay]

Thanks Andrew, I am off to practise!

pat