Creative Portraits: Niki

[Janet Petty]

It's a little smooth (lacking depth and dimension) to be a woodcarving. Even pro woodcarvers have a bit of grain in the wood as well. It adds character and flavor to a project and gives a carving more of its own life. Now that said, I'm NOT a wood carver; but my husband's best friend is.

Other than that, you did create quite an exotic interpretation for an already exotic photo.

Enjoy,
Janet

[DannyRaphael]

Originally Posted by jaykita

What i'd like to know is why my 98.8 kb image of niki turned up so SMALL?? What seems to be the problem? Any explanation for this?
Thanks in advance.

What I do in Photoshop (generally speaking):
* Crop a portrait oriented image to 9-11" tall, about 8" wide and about 80 ppi
* File > Save for Web & adjust quality sider until the file size comes in under 100 KB (then save it)

That seems to work out most of the time.

Could be your image was smaller (dimension-wise), but higher in resolution, so you 98KB was used up in resolution (more tightly packed pixels).

Hope this makes sense...

~Danny~

[JustChecking]

Originally Posted by Janet Petty

It's a little smooth (lacking depth and dimension) to be a woodcarving.

yeah, you're right... it was more like i didn't know how to call it [JK]

maybe one copy of the pic, emboss, USM, overlay-blend would do a bit... the cut-like bits are there, but smoothed out...

i might give it a try later...

[itty-bitty]

I just registered tonight . Insominiac out of meds .
This looked like fun and I love all the different ideas!
Here is my contribution. I currently use PSP 8. New to photo editing but becoming addicted.
I cut and pasted her onto a white background - used feathered selecting delete to fade her into the background - made a duplicate layer with screen mode to lighten her up - merged - softened - erased over the eyes.

[DannyRaphael]

Originally Posted by itty-bitty

I just registered tonight . Insominiac out of meds .
This looked like fun and I love all the different ideas!
Here is my contribution. I currently use PSP 8. New to photo editing but becoming addicted.
I cut and pasted her onto a white background - used feathered selecting delete to fade her into the background - made a duplicate layer with screen mode to lighten her up - merged - softened - erased over the eyes.

Hey, I-B:

Welcome to the fun forum. Glad you registered and gave this one a try.

Apprecate the how-to steps you included. That helps others learn who are following in your footsteps.

No "rules" on how you create your art -- just have fun while you're doing it! Hope to see more in the future.

~Danny~

[Janet Petty]

A new take on an older thread...

Danny so inspired me with his line art in the airplane I had to try it on something else. Thanks Danny.

Steve L. (Trimoon) so inspired me with his watercolor tutorial with the Art History Brush I had to try it on something else as well. A BIG thanks for FINALLY clearing up the mechanics of the Art History Brush for me.

The rest is just my version of playing around.

1. Duplicated background, increased contrast a lot to make her high key.
2. Used smart blur, edge only and inverted once I got the settings about right.
3. Duplicated the layer and set it to multiply then merged those two layers twice to get the right line width.
4. Turned off that portion of the project
5. Duplicated the background layer
6. Filled the duplicate with white
7. Created a snapshot and set the origin to original
8. Filled the duplicate with white, selected a funky Art History brush and painted her back in. I used about 35-50 percent opacity and a low tolerance setting so the squiggles wouldn't overstep their boundaries.
9. Created a Merged layer from the Art History portion and tweaked using the smudge and eraser
10. Created two blank layers below this merged copy. Filled one with Filter>Render>Clouds. (Colors set with points picked from around the model). Reduced opacity until I was happy with it. Filled the bottom one of the newly created layers with a radial gradient, again picking colors from the model.
Making sure the highlight of the gradient was on the model's face and in the right place necessitated making several gradients. I wanted her face highlighted and the color to spread from her in this manner rather than have her backlit.
11. Duplicated the merged and tweaked copy of the model and changed the opacity to about 25 percent to bring her out of the background a bit.
12. Put the line drawing over the top of the whole thing and changed the blend mode to overlay with about 75 percent opacity.

Lastly, I'm hoping that the reduction in file size doesn't obliterate the detail.

[DannyRaphael]

I greatly admire how you took a little of this technique, a little of that technique and added some spice of your own. This is a wonderful example of creativity. Thank YOU for inspiring the rest of us.

~Danny~

[Indigo]

Hello,
Not posted here for a long time. The ideas I have posted have been shamelessly robbed from what I have seen others do over the years. The combinations are mine but the techniques are all borrowed. Thank you to everyone who ever shared an idea with me.

Here's hoping that I managed to handle uploading this correctly.

Indigo

[Indigo]

Hello Again,

Flush with the success of managing the upload proceedure correctly I am having another pop.

Made a mistake on previous post by adding method as an attachment. Got the idea now.

Method

1 Duplicate Background

2 Load luminesence. Control x to cut.

3 Open Threshold layer - click OK. Hold down Cltrl key and move cursor between
Threshold and Background copy. When the cursor changes - left click. This will apply
effect to the copy layer only. Blend to Overlay. Play with Opacity. Duplicate layer if needed.

4 New layer - Hold Alt go: Layer/Merge Visible. All previous layers now on new layer. Lock
other layers to avoid mistakes.

5 Load luminesence. Apply noise. Using this method the noise is added to the highlights only.

6 Load luminesence. Apply Crosshatch filter to taste.

7 Load luminesence. Cltrl- J to put on seperate layer. Gaussian Blur - about 80. Blend Soft Light
This blurs the hard line between the shadows and the highlights.

8 New layer - Hold Alt go: Layer/Merge Visible. All previous layers now on new layer. Lock
other layers to avoid mistakes. Lasso lips. Open Hue/Saturation Layer. Saturate lips.
Merge down.

9 Lasso eyes. Open Curves Layer. Brighten eyes. Merge down.

10 Load luminesence. Open Curves Layer. Click on Curves Mask and Invert. Use to lighten
shadows.

11 Duplicate Background. Use Quickmask to select only the hair. Go Filter/Artistic/Cutout and play.
Set Blend to Luminosity and play until happy.

Indigo

[DannyRaphael]

Originally Posted by Indigo

...Flush with the success

And you should be pleased... These are lovely. I especially like #2, which is a dramatic and bold approach.

Now that got past the upload process, I hope we'll be seeing more of your creations in the future. Welcome back, Indigo.

~Danny~

[Indigo]

Just for the fun of it.

[Legacy~Art]

Duv your first rendition here is gorgeous!

Joy CA that picture also looks lovely and very natural...Great work in PSP.

Janet that is nicely done!

Tiger Steve those two are very nice...Great lip color do you know the shade?

ByRo i shall try out the pencil sketch action tomorrow...Great work...

itty bitty welcome to the group and that picture is just beautiful! Nice to see you use psp.

Indigo - Two faced girlie now that is funny...well done!

[Axleuk]

Just experimenting.....

Not too happy with it, but decided to post it anyways.

[Duv]

Legacy. With all the wonderful renditions here, I'm flattered. Thank you.

Dave

[T Paul]

1. Started off in Photoshop
2. I decided to remove the arm
3. Next I did some retouching: added more hair to cover up shoulder (it’s so close to the camera that it looks unnaturally big), transformed the lower half of the body to slim angle, slimmed the nose a tad with liquify filter, turned up a corner of the mouth with transform tool, removed the necklace and did some general skin smoothing)
4. Added a little make-up, brightened eyes and added a few lashes
5. Saved Image
6. Opened image in Corel Painter
7. Working with Artist Pastel and Grainy Water added paint strokes to image converting it to a painting
8. Saved image
9. Opened back in Photoshop
10. Applied NIK gold reflector filter to add a warm glow