Illustrative Look (Beyond Ficus)

[jcrash]

I've come across this look in several ads recently that are photo-based but look like an illustration. Taking a closer look it might actually be just an illustration based on a photo, and not vice versa. I'm not sure to be frank. But who knows, you guys are clued-in to a bunch of styles I'm not familiar with, so maybe you know. This one is a Weird Al ad that I saw online. It's hard to tell if there is surface detail because it is so small, but it's hinted at. The hat looks CG, but his face looks photo-based. It's seems to be rendered differently to a typical Ficus-looking photo, colors are different, there's no white highlights, but it still has a distinct sculptural feel. Like a very subtle PWL and coloring.

My questions are: Is this an illustration or a photo, or a combo of both ? Anyone know of a technique to get a photo to look like an illustration similar to this look (obviously not smudgy or painterly)? Or is there an existing technique that you could use as a base to get to this look, that you'd recommend.

[jcrash]

after some more research, I'm finding some film/visual fx resource to be helpful. Crushing the blacks and clipping the whites seem to be helping w/ getting close to the tonal range. The actual illustrative part is still a bit of a mystery although I'm assuming involves heavy of use of the D&B imperfections ala' Amy Dresser. Again any hints or a point in the right direction would be appreciated. I know there's a lot of topics sorta similar to this so apologies if its been answered already...

[superkoax]

nope...this is real...these pictures of weird al yankovic...

i have looke dat them before,.,,here is another one...the effect looks like a blend between d&b and toje mapping...search for tone mapping portraits or hdr portraits in google

http://www.weirdal.com/images/solcdmed.jpg


Gerry

[Syd]

Gerry do you know of any decent, free tone mapping plugins?

Syd

[jcrash]

was able to get pretty close to this look the other day by using shadow/highlight combined with airbrush technique found here http://www.sxc.hu/blog/post/476 and merging w/ the original combining it with a highpass sharpen layer, channel mixer 100% blue set to luminosity (about 50% opacity and 50% fill), highlight/shadow carve layer (50% gray set to soft light), selective color and a hue/saturation layer. Here's a jpg of my layers and final image.

ok looked a bit further. I didn't use tone mapping but I can see how that would be a good option. cool.

[superkoax]

SYD: nope Only photomatix, but it's very good...don't have it, but I have this link here so you can see what he's done with some nature photo's...


http://www.stuckincustoms.com/?p=548

Gerry