Creative interpretations: Colourful Parrot

[Neve]

Another taken at a Bird Park! Enjoy.

[SWEngineer]

Great picture Neve. Thanks.

I tried this using the now or soon to be famous Painter WetOils10 cloner. I was having fun pretending to really paint by working with TracingPaper off almost from the start. As it progressed, I didn't like the background and adventered of to try adding my own freehand in a new later. In doing so, I made a real mess. First struggling with selecting the painted image I wanted to keep for the top layer. Then, after flattening (dropping layers in Painter terms) I discovered the strong texture from the background strokes showed through under the bird and badly unaligned with the bird's contours. So I redid most of the cloning (on top of the already completed image from my 1st cloning go-round) with the background brush - Oils>ThickWetOils10. I sure don't recommend anyone copying this technique.

Anyway, the final result isn't too bad and I learned a few things along the way. So, here ya go...

[CJ Swartz]

Neve, great capture -- color (colour) and sharpness of the eye!

Here's a couple of kaleidoscopic impressions of this gorgeous bird.

[Neve]

CJ - beautiful k...scope! As for the taking of the photo...pure luck It's a "hit and miss" affair with moi.

SWE - It's not as drastic as you think, although the background is too strong, the bird has shaped up well retaining it's bold colouring.

My grandson (9 yrs) had a go at this too this avo. He thinks Painter is "cool" and already printed off the parrot and one of a duck (photo he took last month with my camera). Hope it's okay to display his rendering here? He thinks that's "cool" too - one word says it all these days

[Janet Petty]

Tell your grandson fits in here quite nicely. His work is as good as any. Give him a hug and tell him how special he is.

Janet

[jaykita]

Originally Posted by Neve

My grandson (9 yrs) had a go at this too this avo. He thinks Painter is "cool" and already printed off the parrot and one of a duck (photo he took last month with my camera). Hope it's okay to display his rendering here? He thinks that's "cool" too - one word says it all these days

Son, you did great! Unless granma cheated and showed you how to do it! Just joking. Obviously runs in the family, this talent!

[Neve]

Yep....I showed him a few strokes for certain by example, then deleted and he was raring to go. When he'd finished it, I then showed him how to overlap the blue feathers.....he was rapt. He wanted to do more but Gran's not familiar enough with settings to show anyone else correctly. HE was the one showing me how to use shortcut keys more efficiently...that's my boy!

Thanks Janet - he's a VERY huggable child. He'll be gone by Saturday. Meantime it was swimming on Monday, golf yesterday, archery today....gran needs a rest already

[jaykita]

Painter 8 cloning tool - oils-detail oil brush10. Canvas texture in ps7.

[jaykita]

Here's my watercolor effect- a bit of impressionist filter, virtual painter, ps watercolor filter. Texture-sandstone.

[Neve]

Both are wonderful results Jaykita in such different styles, I'd be hard pushed to select a favourite!

[PamSav]

These parrots are all beautiful ! I'd give my vote to Jakita's first example though, and, of course, to the brilliant effort by Neve's grandson !!

[Neve]

Thanks Pam! Mason, my grandson, is chuffed with folks ACTUALLY saying something nice about his pic and says thank you! Taking him on a scenic flight tomorrow night, so he's excited about using my dig cam again!

[glikster]

Duped the BG.
Loaded the Blue channel and made a new alpha channel from it.
Used Levels to increase the contrast and painted out extra areas.
Loaded that channe and ran PS: Artistic: Watercolor - 14, 0, 1.
Ran PS: Artistic: Dry Brush - 2, 1, 1.
Loaded Red, Green and Blue channels and ran Imp.:Natural: Crushed Herbs.
Faded Red to Overlay and Green and Blue to Darken.
Loaded and inverted the Red, Green and Blue channels and ran the same filter.
Faded each to a lower Opacity.
Duped BG and brought to top of layers.
Ran PS: Blur: Smart Blur - 40.7, 74.4, High, Edge Only.
Ran PS: Other: Maximum - 1, then PS: Noise: Median - 1, then PS: Blur: Gaussian Blur - 1.
Color Range on black with fuzziness of 20.
Filled with 50% grey.
Inverted. Set layer blending to Soft Light.
Loaded the alpha channel and created a layer mask.
Duped BG and brought to top of layer stack.
Created a layer mask and painted in rough shape of Parrot and branch.
Ran Dry Brush (same settings) and Imp.: Natural: Crushed Herbs to layer mask.
Set layer blending to Linear Burn.
New layer, filled with black.
Ran PS: Texture: Texturizer - Canvas, 100%, 8, Bottom Left.
Set layer opacity to 29%.
Hid Textured layer and stamped visible.
Ran PS: Sharpen: Unsharp Mask - 120, 2.7, 0.
Faded to Lower Opacity.
Ran Imp.: Paint: Free Daubs with background color black.
Faded to lower opacity.

I think that's it!

Oh, and ran that Unsharp Mask again.
And Used the Green channel as a layer mask, but selected whole mask and filled with white and faded to about 35% or so...

That's really it!

[JustChecking]

Originally Posted by Neve

My grandson (9 yrs) had a go at this too this avo. He thinks Painter is "cool" and already printed off the parrot and one of a duck (photo he took last month with my camera). Hope it's okay to display his rendering here? He thinks that's "cool" too - one word says it all these days

we sure have a BIG competition growing up there



cropped, resized, and some more of AHB mess... the impressionist layer is copy of background...

[Neve]

Hi JC - Terrific result you've achieved, well done! It was one of those rare photos that turned out well School holidays are over here and grandson's back at school this week so we wont see him again for a couple of months now. On his behalf, thanks for commenting kindly.