Creative Portraits: Subtle Expressions by Dana Lane

[DannyRaphael]

Image for this thread: http://www.retouchpro.com/forums/attachment.php?attachmentid=48362&d=1184959699

...graciously approved for artification by photographer,

Dana Lane
dalphoto@comcast.net
http://www.flickr.com/photos/dalphot...7600120184539/

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Great shot, Dana. Thanks for permitting its use as an outlet for our creative energy.

[DannyRaphael]

The general approach using Photoshop 7
* Smart Blur - to simplify a bit
* Levels - to emphasize contrast
* Insane amounts of Unsharp Mask to distort colors
* Impressionist plugin for the arty look
* Stylize > Emboss for some simulated depth
* Curves and Hue/Sat adjustments

[dalphoto]

Danny,

I like what you did with this.

[Alcar]

Danny, you've inspire me to take a crack at this fine photo.
Alan

[Steve Conway]

Lovely lady.

Steve C.

[Gilbert]

been a while since we had a good looking gal.......
levels, painter, Photoshop lighting a bit overdone

[DannyRaphael]

Originally Posted by Gilbert

been a while since we had a good looking gal.......
levels, painter, Photoshop lighting a bit overdone

Outstanding job on this one. A home run for sure. If you're not doing this type of thing commercially, you should seriously consider doing so.

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Alan: Glad to return the inspiration favor. The way you cropped and manipulated the size/shape of her face is quite creative.

[Cassidy]

This lass looks lovely in a Cross Hatch Filter

[Swampy]

Great photo, Danny. I'm not real good at portraits, but I wanted to have a go at this lovely woman. Tried to give her an "old world" feel.

I really played with this, but used the lighness channel from LAB as an overlay set to screen mode and adjusted the opacity. Saved as TIFF and took it into Painter to paint with an oil bristle brush. Soft cloner to bring back eye detail. Back to Photoshop for some tweeking

[Steve Conway]

Here are a sketch and a more radical rendition.

Steve C.

[dalphoto]

Gilbert, I really like the way you handled this one. I'm in the process of batching up my shoot to send her some shots, can I send that to her as well, I think she'd like it very much (credited of course!)?

[LQQKER]

Very nice capture.

I realize this isn't very painterly and some may question if it's actually photoart.
Filters used were Nik, Redfield AE and amphisoft along with typical photoshop filters (contrast adj, hue & sat, color adj, layer styles, etc)

[Gilbert]

Danny.....your comments greatly appreciated
Dana.....be my guest

[palms]

Lovely photo thanks to Dana for letting us "mess around" with it

i played with filters on the first one, then noted everyone was doing paintings so attempted a ahb as well

Palms

[pavel123]

Dana, thank you for the photo.

Photoshop/Painter.

[lkroll]

Toadies, Supersmooth and some smudging; enough said.

[Kraellin]

i like that, lk. almost looks like firelight lighting.

i did mine in Paint Shop Pro first to touch up and crop the image. i then used a filter forge filter i've been working on called 'ghost rider' to produce the final.

[GeorgeNC]

First Post =) Thank you!

[Swampy]

Nice frst post, George! Welcome aboard and I look forward to more of your work.

[DannyRaphael]

Originally Posted by GeorgeNC

First Post =) Thank you!

I especially liked how you did the edges, shadows and background. The edge/background work added to your very pleasing manipulation. Well done and welcome aboard.

Tell us how you did the edges: Plugin? Action? what?

[DannyRaphael]

Originally Posted by Kraellin

i then used a filter forge filter i've been working on called 'ghost rider' to produce the final.

You simply ROCK with Filter Forge. It's an amazing tool.

[GeorgeNC]

Originally Posted by DannyRaphael

I especially liked how you did the edges, shadows and background. The edge/background work added to your very pleasing manipulation. Well done and welcome aboard.

Tell us how you did the edges: Plugin? Action? what?

Thank you Danny ... Soon as i get home from the day job i'll have a little more time and would be happy to share my edge/background work with anyone who might be interested ... In the mean time maybe you could direct me to a lesson or protocol for taking large photoshop images and formating them for up-load here at RetouchPro. I lost quite a bit of original detail and color ... makes me think i have much to learn about digital minipulation and uploading. Wouldn't it be nice if one could have an "Action" in photoshop that would do all that work with just a click or two? "Click" and the resize would be ready? Hmmmmmmm =)

[GeorgeNC]

Originally Posted by Swampy

Nice frst post, George! Welcome aboard and I look forward to more of your work.

Thanks so much for the warm welcome ... You've been very kind in returning my emails with respect to photoshop questions. Means alot for the "newbies"

Best, George

[lkroll]

Like the dark mood of your version Craid. Cool smudge too George and welcome to RetouchPRO.

[Kraellin]

You simply ROCK with Filter Forge. It's an amazing tool.

thanks, danny it's a pretty amazing tool. i do find that, like with almost any filter, you can get good results, but it's still no perfect substitute for hand work.

thanks, lk i think my color wheel is a tad off on this one, but close

[Kraellin]

dana, lovely photo, by the way and thanks for posting it.

i wonder if i could get your permisson to also use it on filterforge.com in their forums for folks to work on?

[GerryB]

A wonderful picture.
1. Dupe
2. Desaturate
3. Dupe desaturated layer, inverted it and changed blend mode to color burn.
4. Gausian Blur to bring out the lines and merge down.
5. Dupe Background layer again.
6. Dry Brush Filter (5, 10, 1).
7. Change blend mode of pencil line line layer (above) to Soft Light.
8. Created white matte and a black matte layers.
9. Added a 5-pixel 50% gray stroke to each to simulate a cut matte.
10. Created a frame Layer.

This time I created the matte layers and the frame layer above the picture layer instead of below as I usually do.

[Peter S]

Another great picture Danny, thanks a lot.

subtle-l.jpg


Slightly better quality version link:-
[img=http://img236.imageshack.us/img236/4237/subtlehqz1.th.jpg]


Peter

[sylvia1065]

I played with highlight/shadow, cutout, high pass, etc. etc...
Sylvia

[jaykita]

Hi! I'm rediscovering painter's oil pastels, and thought i should post something. It was a pleasure painting this lovely lady!

http://upload.pbase.com/judy2810/ima...180/medium.jpg