[byRo]

Originally Posted by Janet Petty

I think the instructions were to "be creative".
Janet

We can see you're having a lot of fun!! Janet "Creative" Petty

Thanks to Fluffbutt for unearthing a goldn'oldie.

-Cropped to get better composure;
-Smudge painted with some special home-made brushes;
-Lighting and levels.
(no Painter, no Impressionist - gotta do it the hard way! )

Rô

[Janet Petty]

The "hard" way looks wonderful to me Ro. And what a romantic spin you put on her, you you.

Janet

[Duv]

Thought I'd give her a haircut and change her eye color. Cropped her and imported to Painter 8, applied Image Hose: Spray Size P Angle R Leaves. Loaded back into Photoshop, Impressionist: Style: djrOil24 (maybe my fave!). Lens Blur on Background and Lighting Effects on both background and foreground layers.

Cheers
Dave

[Fluffbutt]

Originally Posted by byRo

-Cropped to get better composure;
-Smudge painted with some special home-made brushes;
-Lighting and levels.
(no Painter, no Impressionist - gotta do it the hard way! )
Rô

That's a LOVELY soft romantic look (and a little sexy, even - she has those 'come get me' eyes!)

[SWEngineer]

Its hard posting this after Ro & Duv, as my effort looks a bit harsh in comparison. Regardless:

I used ajcutler's rendition to start with. (Nicely done Alan, so good I couldn't help "borrowing" it. Hope you don't mind.)

In Painter8, I cloned in 4 layers using brushes from the Conte category, adding more detail with each layer. Bottom layer - SquareConte22, next was DullConte15, then TaperedConte8, and finally the same brush resized to 4. Save as a PSD file and loaded into Elements2.

Here I duplicated the Square22 layer, set to Multiply, and lowered the opacity. Changed the Tapered8 layer to hard light (making brush stokes and added color more apparent), adding a layer mask to localize the strenght of the effect. Added a light texture.

-Mark

[Neve]

Outstanding results Byro, Duv and Mark
These were a pleasure to view.

[Janet Petty]

I couldn't resist another go at this one. Danny, you can quit holding your breath now. These were done in Painter and tweaked in Photoshop. Thanks for the inspiration guys.

Janet

[Neve]

How on earth did you do this Janet....? Quite lovely.

[DannyRaphael]

Originally Posted by Janet Petty

Danny, you can quit holding your breath now.

Does that mean I can pick my jaw up from the desk, too?

You've been using Painter now for what? About a week and a half? -- and getting results like these? You have certainly confirmed my prediction: "Janet will take to Painter like a duck to water."

WOW!

[byRo]

...just when I was thinking "I don't need Painter" along comes Janet with a beautiful showpiece....
(where's the little green envious smiley?)

Although I did find the second post a little too dark, but that's maybe a question of taste.
Rô

[Janet Petty]

WOW thanks folks. You make my head swell. I showed them to my husband and he didn't do more than grunt and walk away. You make a gal cry.

Done in painter with two layers plus the original. I used a large pastel brush on the first layer. On the second layer, I used oil pastel brushes in several sizes and just worked in large blobs to get colors so they weren't blended except around the eyes, where I worked with very tiny brushes. Used the blend magic, crossed my fingers, saved it, and hoped against hope that it would make the move to photoshop intact. The first time it didn't and I had to start all over again.

In photoshop, I just tweaked the blobs some, tried about a gazillion blending modes and ended up staying with lighten and normal for the merged layer shot. Added texture and lighting twice (just to the dark one) then used heavily blurred masks.

Janet

[CJ Swartz]

"he didn't do more than grunt and walk away" Ooh, you got the "caveman grunt" -- don't worry, Janet, it can mean anything from "Woman did good!" to "uh, oh, she's getting so good at this that it may interfere with my mealtime"

Very nice results, Janet, whether you are a newbie at Painter or an old hand.

Fluffbutt, Mark, Jaykita, Duv, Ro -- all appealing renditions of a very appealing face -- those EYES!

[jaykita]

Thanks C.J.
Janet, very well done! Btw, my husband mostly says "wasting your time as usual". Some men, sometimes, can be real "pigs", grunt or no grunt!!
Here's another one of my poster art.

[CJ Swartz]

Jaykita -- creative, very stylish, and attractive!

I've been trying different things, trying to make sure that I do not diminish the power of those eyes and that expression (Wow!). I'm still working, but here's a couple of tries "along the way".

I color corrected (might not have been necessary since I ended up colorizing the result ) masked a channel to help me change the background, then made a mask that contained mostly only her eyes, lips, and shadowed areas. Eventually, I chose colors from the image (hair and skin) and ran the Notepaper filter, and laid it above my "corrected copy" and used the Darken layer mode (after trying others). I then played with Hue/Sat, and decided that I liked two versions -- loaded here.

Then I added the Red channel to the corrected version, posterized it and used Image-Threshold to make a sketch, placed the layer mode to Luminosity, and brought back a bit of the color.

[CJ Swartz]

I tried to paint in between the lines like Jaykita, but I am NOT going to post my results .

Here's what I used as a guide. Jaykita, there are things that PShop and Paint Shop Pro, etc. can do for us, and there are things that require the skill of the artistic -- I appreciate your stylistic images even more now.