Creative interpretations: Portrait - Richard, the smiling kid

[DannyRaphael]

Happy looking kid, probably because he knows he won't have to pay for his own groceries for another 13 years or so!

Here's a chance to apply your color correcting skills while you're at it.

Happy creating!

~Danny~

[Cheryl H]

I really like the look that virtual painter's air brush gives to children's portraits--when it works. It looked awful on this pic, so the experiment was on to see what would give me that look. Before I went to bed last night, I was certain I'd remember what worked in the morning--yeah right.

Air brush is in there somewhere, along with lucis art, impressionist, nik, fantastic machine's paint engine (I'm finding it a great followup to impressionist), and flaming pear's melancholytron. When I was all done, I ran buzz (2.0) modified ink stack on an earlier layer and blended at low opacity to put a little detail back in. There may have been a little "kitchen sink" along the way Obviously, I'm in experiment mode working on a new look for portraits.

[DannyRaphael]

Cheryl: I'm finding the new Virtual Painter filters work good on some images and not on others. It's kind of a hit and miss kind of thing.

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The basis of this one:
* Duplicated Background and applied Impressionist: Conte/Smudged Monochrome
* Duplicated Background again, dragged new layer to top of layer stack and desaturated. Then I applied Photoshop's Colored Pencil filter. Layer > Add Layer Mask > Hide all and airbrushed in detail around mouth and eyes.
* Duplicated Background again, dragged new layer to top of layer stack and desaturated. Layer > Add Layer Mask > Hide all and airbrushed in a little more detail around mouth and eyes based on the original image.
* Duplicated Background again, dragged new layer to top of layer stack and set blend mode to Color.
* Merged all layers into a new layer.
* The couch he was sitting on was a horrible distraction, so I lassoed a chunk of the top-right section of the image, put it on a new layer (ctrl+J). Ctrl + click on the layer (to activate the selection) and used move tool to position behind him. Added a layer mask and blended in the new section.
* Experimented with Color Balance, Hue/Saturation and Levels adjustment layers for color and tone manupliation.

~Danny~

[Duv]

Not only did I find the couch distracting, I was having a tough time with the positioning of the head. I decided to do Impressionist Charcoal/Background Color/Brush 25/Coverage97/Pressure200. Despeckled twice and cloned out remaining white specks. Rotated 9 degrees and cropped tight. Applied PS Watercolor to finish.

Cheers
Duv

[LQQKER]

Interesting renditions everyone.

Cropped the image.
Straightened, built ear, removed chair and fixed BG.
Used a curve adjustment for color.
Ran Nik skylight and contrast.
Used Flaming Pears Mr. Contrast and Laquer to build texture.
Ran color balance.
Embossed.
Simplified lightly.

[Duv]

My fave so far on this one LQQKER. Good job! I love the close crop.

Cheers
Duv