Creative Portraits: Pink Flower in her Hat

[Bill M]

What a great image to work with. All treatments are beautiful. I am really impressed with Danny's first and jaykita's. I could never work with Painter.
When I saw the original, I immediately loved the classic pose and face, and I clearly saw in it early advertising.

[DannyRaphael]

I could never work with Painter.

I felt the same way when I installed Painter 7 a couple years back and gave up. Painter 8 and, now, IX, are quantum improvements in terms of ease of use and functionality.

Believe me: If I can get my arms (slightly) around Painter (I'm working at it and still have a long, long, long ways to go), having seen some of the artwork you've created with Photoshop I honestly believe you'd have Painter turning summersaults in short order. Really.

When I saw the original, I immediately loved the classic pose and face, and I clearly saw in it early advertising.

Your vision is amazing and inspiring, as is your execution, Bill. This is some fine work.

[jaykita]

Originally Posted by DannyRaphael

Your vision is amazing and inspiring, as is your execution, Bill. This is some fine work.

I agree totally with Danny. This is AMAZING WORK.
Bill, thank you for the appreciation!
You say you could never work with painter??? You mean you've done this all in photoshop???? Could you please please please give us a few tips on how to???

[palms1]

I just don't know where to begin i really like all the post's on this subject and need a few weeks to try them all out just to mention a few, Danny i think your ahb inspiration is really good and will have to have a go at that (bookmarked the page) and bill please give us some info on how you done yours if it is ps , and the ones done with painter etc are really inspirational especially xaran's but unfortunately or fortunately (because of the time spent on the pc) i don't have painter

Palms

[Janet Petty]

Bill, your interpretation of "Pink" is outstanding.

Janet

[Bill M]

Thank you all for the kind words! You all know from experience that there are hundreds of undocumented strokes and undo's amidst all the trial and error, but here is the basic path I take to accomplish this look in Photoshop:
1. The image needs to start out fairly flat, so I apply either contrast masking or Shadows/Highlights.
2. I then make three black and white sketches from the many different actions, filters, plugins, etc.
3. I overlay the three and play with blend modes and masks to make a pretty good one.
4. I take one of the three and apply (in this case) cross hatch brush strokes.
5. I then distort that layer. For this one, I used my super secret (don't read further if you don't wish to be in danger) distort/glass/blocks/ 3 and 9. Play with the scaling for effect. There are other distorting ideas that can also be effective, particularly if applied locally rather than at once on the entire image.
6. Next comes a flattening and a thousand clone strokes to clean it up.
7. For color, I overlay another copy of the original, play with blend modes, etc. to not only get color back, but to fill in some weak areas with texture that were blown out of the sketches.
8. For this image I then used the new Surface Blur tool in my trial version of CS2 to clean up transition areas between, say, the hair and cheeks. The Surface Blur tool is the coolest thing in in the new release!
9. I then apply some Impressionist/Stamp/Dry Rag to a duplicate layer and play with the blend mode (usually Darken, Lighten, or Soft Light).
10. Another thousand clone strokes and touchups and, voila, it was ready to turn into an ad. I got the paper and text for that from the awesome site at the Library of Congress: http://lcweb2.loc.gov/ammem/index.html
I hope this helps, it's impossible to remember everything.
Thanks again, Bill

[Con Looymans]

Hi Danny,

Please find attached my attempt.

I've simply replaced the background and used the lighting filter

Regards

Con

[byRo]

Yet another try...

Pre-processed in PS, (colour, contrast, crop)
Painted in Painter, (cloned)
Post-processed in PS. (enhance brush strokes, lighting)

Rô

[Neve]

Great result Ro, what brushes did you use?

[byRo]

Originally Posted by Neve

Great result Ro, what brushes did you use?

In Painter, cloned with oily cloner, low resat, high bleed.
But the strokes only appear in the PS post-processing.....
- duplicate layer;
- emboss, auto-levels, high-pass, auto-levels, contrast +++;
- apply this as soft light +-50%;
- apply Render>Lighting with directional light and texture set to 10%.

(hmm, maybe I'd better do a tutorial)

Tweaking the settings you can get anything from light strokes to dripping paint.

Rô

[Janet Petty]

Really, really nice Ro. And you have had Painter how long?

Janet

[cazubi]

In PS after some hue/sat adjustments, I ran a filter (Nik Color Pro Stylizing Filters) called Monday Morning Violet, then ran paint dabs. Opened in Painter and used Water Rake cloner, soft cloner to bring back detail. Back to PS to add Wow media texture. I think I have forgotten some steps. I went into the creative zone and lost time and thought.

Cathy

[byRo]

Originally Posted by Janet Petty

...And you have had Painter how long?

'bout three weeks - spent the first two just reading the instructions!!

Rô

[Kraellin]

it just amazes me all the looks one can get and all the talent that get them. very nice!

and what a picture. i've been playing with this one for hours, but i decided to try out some new plugins...well, new for me. one of the last applied is a snowfall plugin. fun stuff

the basic treatment was two layers, each with higly conflicting contrasts and lightness. one used an 80 contrast/-80 lightness, while the other reversed those values. there were one or two blending layers, a difference and a burn, if i recall correctly, to darken the background and some noise filters to add or reduce noise as desired. added a couple different illumination effects, the snowfall, and voila'!

K.

[Mitch]

Hi all, I used a PS action by Howie Mudge for this one, adapted for PSP and modified a bit to get the chalk/pastel effect.

Regards to all,
Mitch.
[IMG]c:HatPinkRose.jpg[/IMG]