Creative Portraits: Pink Flower in her Hat

[Kraellin]

mitch,

interesting effect. you rotated it a bit. fascinating how that changes the picture here.

danny M,

straight out of Life magazine, circa 1940-1960. great!

Con,

nice lighting. great soft look.

Craig

[DannyRaphael]

Originally Posted by 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]

Hi, Mitch:

Glad to see you joined in the fun on this one and hung in there until you got over the hump getting the upload to work for you.

Congrats not only on the pleasing results, but on adapting a PS action to PSP on this one. That's a rare skill.

Well done in both cases.

~Danny~

[Kraellin]

adapted for PSP and modified a bit to get the chalk/pastel effect.

indeed, i'd be interested in knowing what you did and what version of psp this could/would work with.

Craig

[Steve Conway]

Nice photo to play with.

Steve

[Mitch]

Hi Craig,
I'm not sure if I can explain myself clearly,and it will be a bit long winded: but i'll try. I didn't translate the action into a script(PSP speak for PS actions) but did each step manualy - so it will work for PS and all PSPs.
1. Load image - make a selection of the figure.( in this case magic wand the background and invert selection.) Save the selection to disk.

2. Selection none, then duplicate the image. Use your favourite b/w sketch procedure (I use Thredgeholder pro from little ink pot ) At this stage I use Lighten/darken to remove unwanted detail. As in the lower left corner.

Now the interesting bit.
3. Fill the image with your chosen background colour.
4. Go to Layers - Properties and alter the blend mode to DISSOLVE.

5. Duplicate this layer - and alter the blend mode on this one to OVERLAY.
6. In PSP goto layers arrange - and move the last layer down. now activate the top layer. You should now have three layers - bottom one original image. middle one - blend set to OVERLAY. Top active layer set to DISSOLVE.

7. Load your previosly saved selection from disc.
Now the fun bit. Click on the eraser, set fairly large circle and strength about 40- you can experiment with the settings.
The more you rub the more colour will come through. the lighter your touch the lighter the effect.

Background colour affects the colour balance of the picture. Ill try to upload some examples.1 no colour fill.2 gold from Superbladepro.then light and dark gray.
Phew!!! All done.
Regards to all.
Mitch.

[Kraellin]

Mitch,

thank you.

i dont have thredgeholder pro, but i did pick up the free plugin and used it in one step. but, it's not quite the same as yours. i believe i get the basic idea, however and gave it a shot.

Craig

[Mitch]

You're welcome Craig.

I'm releived that someone was able to decipher my novice explanation and get it to work.

I wasn't brave enough to use black as a background - it makes for zingy colours, and as with all of them look better on larger size pictures. -Great!

Regards to all,
Mitch.

[Kraellin]

thanks mitch.

one question for you on thredgeholder pro... in your first image in the collection of your steps, you have a color edges sort of thing. the free plugin only allowed me to go in black and white and adjust luminance and blur, i believe. so, the question is what does the pro version have that the free version doesnt?

also, i took a slightly different avenue. i did the selection of the background and saved that out as a new image AND reversed it and saved that out as a new image. i then combined the two as separate layers in one image. that allows you to work on the background and the foreground separately and rather than use the eraser tool, i just adjusted opacities on the various layers and then saved out various combinations i liked as new images.

also, thank you for the technique. i've been playing around with it and doing variations. quite interesting

Craig

[Kraellin]

you've inspired me, mitch here's another piece. on this one i added a layer of a texture i created and did some overlays and dissolves and a burn. i also hand colored her eyes and then erased that area in the other layers to let them show through.

Craig

[Mitch]

Hi Craig,

The colours in pic1 come from the base layer as do all the others. I did this one without a colour fill (step3 in my lame explanation ) When you rub through, the colours come through the white.

Thredgeholder pro has sliders for contrast and threshold on luminance saturation and hue. I cant remember the freebie but I don't think there's a great deal of difference. I sometimes adjust the contrast with PSPs auto contrast adjutment to give darker lines.

I liked the textures! You're certainly moving this method forward. I thought I would join in. I followed the basic method, but instead of filling with a solid colour - I filled with a pattern. First cracked paint then paper#3. I think I should have rubbed through a bit more on these but I like the pastel effect on lighter colours.

Regards to all,
Mitch.

[Mitch]

Last one for now. (it's addictive )

All steps as above, but instead of filling with a solid colour, filled with a pattern- Watercolour paper.

Added step at the end.
Add/remove noise - Despeckle.

Regards to all,
Mitch.

[Kraellin]

i like all 3, mitch. you've got a good touch for this. i particulary like the cracked paint one. that would also make a good background effect all by itself.

i dont think the freebie of thredgeholder has all those items. there are just two sliders and that's it.

i also am a bit confused on some of your last steps. you say:

7. Load your previosly saved selection from disc.
Now the fun bit. Click on the eraser, set fairly large circle and strength about 40- you can experiment with the settings.

but you dont say what to do with the now reloaded image. do you add it as a layer and if so, where?

Craig

[Marthig]

Hi all !
Enjoyed browsing this thread and all the great variations posted and thought there was not much I could add, except making the girl look like a 20/30's glamour star.
The hat reminded me of Lilian Gish, Pola Negri etc (I didn't quite see their movies when they appeared but they were still quite famous when I was very young - ) so I made some photo research and decided to fix her hair, eyes and lipstick to make her look like a "diva" of those years.
Hope you enjoy it. It is such a great photo and the girl is so pretty !

P.S.: I did not explain some of the steps, I made it all in PS CS2. first I removed all color with "desaturate", copy and pasted the layer as a new one. With the smudge tool remade the lips outline to make it smaller as it was the fashion at those times, "plucked" her eyebrows also with the smudge tool, added "false" eyelashes, and a heavy dose of shadow or "kool" something or other as it was called then.
Copied the hair strands on one side and pasted as a new layer, modified its volume or size with the free transform option.
My idea was to color the picture as if it had been a sepia colored one, but then got carried away and used layer blending styles with the different parts from the original jpg. The most useful was the face and neck part which I copied and pasted underneath the one I had already colored.
Well... there were many other steps I made but you will all fall asleep before I finish and as they say, a picture is worth thousand words. If there is anything special any of you wish to know please let me know.

[DannyRaphael]

Originally Posted by Marthig

Hi all !
Enjoyed browsing this thread and all the great variations posted and thought there was not much I could add, except making the girl look like a 20/30's glamour star.
The hat reminded me of Lilian Gish, Pola Negri etc (I didn't quite see their movies when they appeared but they were still quite famous when I was very young - ) so I made some photo research and decided to fix her hair, eyes and lipstick to make her look like a "diva" of those years.
Hope you enjoy it. It is such a great photo and the girl is so pretty !

P.S.: I did not explain some of the steps, I made it all in PS CS2. first I removed all color with "desaturate", copy and pasted the layer as a new one. With the smudge tool remade the lips outline to make it smaller as it was the fashion at those times, "plucked" her eyebrows also with the smudge tool, added "false" eyelashes, and a heavy dose of shadow or "kool" something or other as it was called then.
Copied the hair strands on one side and pasted as a new layer, modified its volume or size with the free transform option.
My idea was to color the picture as if it had been a sepia colored one, but then got carried away and used layer blending styles with the different parts from the original jpg. The most useful was the face and neck part which I copied and pasted underneath the one I had already colored.
Well... there were many other steps I made but you will all fall asleep before I finish and as they say, a picture is worth thousand words. If there is anything special any of you wish to know please let me know.

Wonderful makeover. The lips and eyes are fabulous, too, as is the background.

How did you get the glove to look so natural? That's quite outstanding, too.

[Marthig]

Originally Posted by DannyRaphael

Wonderful makeover. The lips and eyes are fabulous, too, as is the background.

How did you get the glove to look so natural? That's quite outstanding, too.

Thank you so much Danny ! I was not sure if what I did was within the expected effects, now I feel better phew !!
I am glad you noticed the glove as that was one of the "details" I forgot to mention. The gloves, after masking the hand with the lasso tool (my favorite) I filled it with a pattern of greyish stars (I think they are standard patterns in PS) (*) and then used the stained glass filter, setting the lattice cells to a very small size. The gloves were another detail that I felt the image needed to fit the era set by the hat. Hehehe

Regards - Martha

(*) Will check if that pattern is standard and if not will post here the name of the pattern and if I can trace it the link from where I dld it.

OK: It is not standard and here's the link http://veredgf.fredfarm.com/pattern-bomb/ (if this link does not open where I dld it, go to the .../patterns/misc option) They are not for commercial use though. Enjoy