Creative interpretations: Parrot

[DannyRaphael]

Pretty bird, don't you think? Bet he (she?) has lots of things to say.

1 : any of numerous widely distributed tropical zygodactyl birds (order Psittaciformes and especially family Psittacidae) that have a distinctive stout curved hooked bill, are often crested and brightly variegated, and include some excellent mimics
2 : a person who sedulously echoes another's words
- parrot adjective

Who says you don't learn things by doing this challenges?

~Danny~

[Cheryl H]

I did a lot of experimenting and undoing on this one, but around 90% of the finished image came from this: Dup the background and ran VP air brush. Duped that and ran buzz simplifier. Duped that layer and ran a modified buzz ink stack. Blended those 3 layers together. Decided the background had gone too dark. Made a new background and ran the same steps on it--added a little nik midnight. Masked the bird back in. Topped with a pattern fill layer in soft light.

[kiska]

Parrot posted. Work order:
BG layer
Filters: Poster
Ink outline
Glass
Action: Gouache, Dave Jaseck
Glow, Feivel
Select BG, pattern,screen
BG, H/S, normal,60%

kiska

[Cheryl H]

Kiska--awesome job on the parrot! Great style for this image.

[Duv]

I agree. Nice job Kiska! Cheryl, giving this beautiful bird an irridescent glow really works!

I did a Find Edges, sharpened, then copied and pasted back into original. Duplicated and Multiplied twice. Made a curves adjustment then ran Xero Radiance.

Cheers
Duv

[doosume]

I've named the bird Elvis!

I duplicated image and turned it b&w - lowered b&w opacity to mute colors. Merged layers. Created another duplicate and did a Gaussian blur. Applied filter, Difuse, lowered opacity. Picked out highlight colors and repeated last steps. Created a vignette around the bird. Painted with a small brush around the bird and adjusted curves, hue/sat and blending modes.

Velvet Elvis!

[kiska]

Thanks, Duv and Cheryl. Ya'll's parrot portraits are right on.
Answer to Harry's request for parrot details. To the best of my feeble memory. I use a mac. You will ave to translate key strokes. Hope this is not overly simplified.

Open image
Copy bg to layer (com+J)
Filters:
poster-your settings
Name poster lay & copy (com+J)
Ink Outline on copy
Com+J (this lay now has poster&ink combo)
Glass
Com+J-top lay now has all 3 filters
Actions: these were free on the net. If you want I will attach, IF that is proper as they are not my creations. don't know.
Dave Jaseck gouache painting
Com+J
Feivel's gothic glow
Com+J All lays now combined AND separate to use individually or to manipulate as you like. Or if you want each filter or action to stand alone, make a dup of bg before each filter/action change.
Select the parrot (I think I used color range)
Save select
Com+J select to own lay
Go back to top combo lay
Load parrot select
Invert select
Save
Com+J this inverted select (bg) to own lay
Move parrot select above bg select
Make bg select active
I used a pattern and blend modes for this new Bg.

I hope that's it or close. kiska

[Peter S]

What a Pretty Polly


Peter

[lkroll]

Didn't do that good of job of extracting the parrots off of many thumbnails that I could find, but still having fun with my new toy for creating this one. Attached is an extremely low quality crop. Here's the hires full version.