Creative Interpretations: Two by Two Horses

[CJ Swartz]

Originally Posted by Janet Petty

... the hardest part was trying not to have hard, crisp edges that made the horses look cutout (especially the part where the mane was). Janet

That is often one of the hardest parts to handle, and to my eyes -- you've handled it just right. Your emphasis on the horses is an excellent choice also. Good work! But this isn't surprising, since your work is typically good!

[byRo]

Janet, that's just perfect. from me too!

(now I'll have to do it again, without the bgackground just to see.. )
Rô

[Neve]

That's a beauty Janet and I'm bowled over by the rest too. They're all marvellous.

[ahutton]

Sort of an engraving technique involving buzz, PMAG hand drawing, cutting and pasting, grayscaling, lightening and darkening..you know the drill.

I refused to post the full image terribly reduced, so the full size image can be seen at http://www.mcwhirterfamilyofmercer.com/horses.jpg

I've just posted here a detail from the larger image.

Amy Hutton

[Janet Petty]

Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful, Amy. I love it.

janet

[catia]

Cloned out the other horses in PS7. Saved and opened in PSP9. Ran One step photo fix and USM. Ran edge preserving smooth and brush strokes. Saved and opened in PS7. Cloned out some brush strokes that I didn't like and added a texture layer. Flattend and ran a floating photo action I have.

Catia

[SWEngineer]

Wonderful variety so far. Mine turned out kind of pointillistic.

BG (hide the background horses)
A: copy BG. Select sky - Add noise - ColorPencil. Select Grass - Spatter. Select Horses - DryBrush.
B: Painter8 DullGrainChalk Clone of layer A on a transparent layer. (ColorBurn, 75% opacity)
C: Curves layer to lighten a bit
D: Burlap texture with a mask. Mask filled with RenderClouds & 2X differnence clouds.

-Mark

[Xaran]

My take on this one.

Removed background.

Xero Line Art and Photo Brush - aged photo.

Christine

[ahutton]

Christine, just lovely...what settings did you use for Lineart?

Amy

[Xaran]

Amy,

I used drawing mode at about -20 on the top slider.

Christine

[JustChecking]

Amy - incredible
Catia & Mark - wonderful diversity
Christine - wunderbarful

[byRo]

Amy - it was well worth the effort
Christine - oh how I wish I could download from Xero , very nice indeed.

Meanwhile, I set myself a little challenge - to do an embroidery / tapestry / cross-stitch rendering. Took some work but I learned a lot!

[Xaran]

Originally Posted by byRo

Christine - oh how I wish I could download from Xero , very nice indeed.

The set (3) with lineart in is less than 1MB to download. I could zip just that one if you like to make it even less.

Christine

[Janet Petty]

Ro, you what, made the horses into a cross stitch pattern? Oh dear, if my sister-in-law sees this, she'll have me making patterns for her from now until.......

Seriously, that is amazing. How'd you do that?

Janet

[byRo]

Originally Posted by Janet Petty

How'd you do that?

As I remember.....
I made two 4x4 patterns (attached), one for the background weave and one for the cross-stiches.
-Duplicate and resize to 25%, work on the small copy now...
-Separate horses from background (make mask), run Filter>Artistic>Cutout adjusted to give something like a stitching pattern. Problem is there's still too many colours.
-Save for web, type GIF decreasing the number of colours until it looks "right".
-Open GIF file and return Image>Mode to RGB, and resize 400% using Nearest Neighbour.
-Copy this back to the original with the mask
-Above this layer make an empty layer and fill with cross-stich pattern, blending overlay with a copy of the mask you made earlier;
-Below insert an empty layer and fill the the background weave.
-Tweak to taste.

(I know somebody's going to say that there's some plug-in for all this, but like I said it was a sort of a personal challenge)

Nice birthday present for you sister-in-law?
Have fun,
Rô