My first efforts at photo art

[bpurvis]

I joined to improve my photo restoration skills, but am getting seriously sidetracked! I started playing with the impressionist plug-in late last week and am going to post several of my efforts to see how I'm doing. Can't really tell you how I did each one -- just played with lots of layers and different types of blending modes. This is sooooo fun!!!
Becky

[bpurvis]

Red flower was my first attempt. Then I played with the cactus.

[bpurvis]

Next was the photo of the lake.

[bpurvis]

And the last one I did today. My first portrait attempt. I thought it turned out pretty well.

The original was a really light, small file. I did jpeg cleanup in Image Doctor, then enlarged in Genuine Fractals, and then used clarify and added a slight glow in Phototools. Then I was finally ready to play with it.

In looking at it again, I think the cheeks were a little blown out. Should have added some color back into the highlights I guess.

How do you go about printing these kind of images? The only thing I could think of that might work would be something like rag paper.

I would love some feedback on these. I can take criticism! : )
Becky

[bpurvis]

Rats. I should have posted in Photo Art 101. Sorry...

[Sweetlight]

No B, I think you posted in the correct place but of course I always end up putting stuff in the wrong place so you probably should not take it from me.

They all look nice. Is it totally just the plug-in doing the work or are you doing anything by hand?

c

[sponge03]

nice work bpurvis, I like the flower and the young girl best.

What did you use for the young girl?

[bpurvis]

Originally Posted by Sweetlight

They all look nice. Is it totally just the plug-in doing the work or are you doing anything by hand?

c

I used several of the Photoshop filters and the Impressionist filter. Lots of layers and blending modes. These are my very first efforts and I haven't tried doing anything by hand yet. I need to read some of the tuts and figure out how some of that beautiful work is done.

[bpurvis]

Originally Posted by sponge03

nice work bpurvis, I like the flower and the young girl best.

What did you use for the young girl?

The little girl is my favorite too. I used a combination of Impressionist filters and Photoshop filters -- maybe 8 layers with different blending modes. I don't really know what I'm doing yet, just playing to see what kind of effects I get. I need to start writing down the steps so I can reproduce them. Sorry I can't list the steps. Maybe next time....

Becky

[Joeven]

Keep playing. Don't worry about how you did it. You'll figure that out later. Keep trying different things. It's the best way to learn.

Joe

[palms1]

Becky hello and welcome
There are a lot us here who have been "sidetracked"
I joined here to learn how to improve my photographs and have been sidetracked ever since (and still need to know how to improve taking photo's and editing them )

Believe me you have only just started to scratch the surface there is absolutely loads that can be done

but as already said enjoy and have fun

fiddle around with all the filters and settings see what they do, look through some older posts there is lots of little nuggets of info to be learnt

and my favorite is the cactus

Palms

[bpurvis]

I will definitely keep playing. Too fun not to! Last night I tried to reproduce the effect I got on the child, but couldn't do it. Got something nice, but different. 25 layers!

I did figure out how to keep track of what I do without writing everything down. I started taking screen shots of the Impressionist filter before I applied it, then pasted them into a Word document in order. Then I labeled all the layers for everything else. I titled the document with the same title as the image, so I can go back into it and see exactly which filter I used and how I changed brush size, etc, without all the work of hand writing everything down. I think it will really help me reproduce the effect when something turns out really well.

Becky