Creative Portraits: Redhead in a Hat with a Pensive Look

[T Paul]

Had fun playing with several filters on this one....….roughly

1.Sharpened image
2. New Adjustment Layer, Hue/Sat, set master to -25
3. New Adjustment Layer, Selective Color – tweaked colors
4. New Layer, Painted over background and parts of subject with black at varying levels of opacity
5. New Layer, Mode Overlay
Paint black with 5-50% opacity brush darkening details
6. Merge Layers, Duplicate
7. Rendered Lighting Effects, added a spotlight and two omni lights
8. Merged Layers
9. Duplicate Layer
10. Equalize
11. Brush Strokes – Sprayed Strokes, Erased face to bring back detail from layer below
12. Selective dodging and burning to bring out detail.
13. Texture>Grain

[DannyRaphael]

Originally Posted by T Paul

Had fun playing with several filters on this one....….roughly...

Detailing your steps clearly illustrates there's more to getting a unique result than applying a single filter, plugin or effect. It's by having fun/trying new combinations that "happy accidents" happen. When they do it's nice to know to how how you got there in order to recreate the effect on a future image.

Once again you inspire me, T.

- - - - - - - -

Hi Paul:

Welcome to the forum. I believe you'll find most of us tend to be more like Paula than Simon, looking to emphasize the positive than beating people over the head with the negative.

Regarding "too photgraphic" vs. "looks more like a painting," people are all over the map on that one, with supporters in both camps. A happy medium it seems is to "really arty up the background" and apply subtle touches to the subject. This style is popular with Jeremy Sutton and Helen Yancy (www.HelenYancystudio.com). Most customers people seem to prefer not a whole lot of manuplation of facial details.

Since you have Painter, try experimenting with the Blender > Grainy Blender brushes to simulate a little "brush stroke" texture and Effects > Surface Effects > Luminance to emphasize them even more.

Hope you'll continue to share your experiments with us.

~Danny~

[Con Looymans]

Hi Danny,

Here's my attempt;

I simply duplicated the Layer a couple of times added some Blur and used a blend mode of Lighten. I then added a Hue/Saturation Adj Layer and partly desaturated the image. Finally I painted back some of the Saturation in the hair using the mask that comes with the Layer.

Regards

Con Looymans

[Mitch]

Hi All,
I hope you'll forgive a complete novice adding his effort. I only have PSP at the moment,and I'm still finding my way around. I'm going to have a lot of fun translating the PS commands and duplicating them in PSP. Or trying to. I feel like a pupil in a whole classroom of teachers.
I used the following tools:-
mezzoforce ice plugin
VP Coloured pencil {to lighten the hair}
SoftSketchColour script

Regards,
Mitch.

[ahutton]

Mitch, nice to see another PSPer on here! I have both, but, well...PSP has my heart.

AmyHutton

[byRo]

Hi Mitch, welcome to RP

That came out real nice. I especially like the background and the hair.
Hope to see a lot more of your work.

Rô

[plewis6]

Mitch, love the image and the colors. I think I would blend/smooth the hair possibly before or after the other effects as it still has some very photographic edges. I don't know the PSP brushes, but I assume it has blenders/smearers like photoshop or painter.

Keep submitting!

-paul

[DannyRaphael]

Originally Posted by Mitch

Hi All,
I hope you'll forgive a complete novice adding his effort. I only have PSP at the moment,and I'm still finding my way around. I'm going to have a lot of fun translating the PS commands and duplicating them in PSP. Or trying to. I feel like a pupil in a whole classroom of teachers.
I used the following tools:-
mezzoforce ice plugin
VP Coloured pencil {to lighten the hair}
SoftSketchColour script

Regards,
Mitch.

Wow. For a "complete novice," you've certainly got some advanced skills. Glad to see you're not afraid to combine some bold effects.

Believe me, we're all pupils -- even the regulars -- and all who participate have the opportunity to be teachers, just like you were on your first post.

I hope others follow in your footsteps.

Welcome aboard.

~Danny~

[Mitch]

Thank you all for your kind words and welcome. I think the only advanced skill I have at the moment is diving into the manual to find how to do what I want to do, or to decipher the steps you all have used.
Once again thank you for your encouragement.
Regards,
Mitch.

[TylerRB]

First I overlayed a paper texture too the whole image.
I added curve and levels adjustment layers to only the hair and slightly to the face.
To entire image:
Paint Daubs
very miniscule Motion Blur
very miniscule Ocean Ripple
very low crystallize ( I think? )
Unsharp Mask

That's about it. Pretty much an experiment.

T

[Patricia]

More playing around with cloning in Painter 8, then into PS 7 to add texture. Love her hair!

Patricia

[byRo]

Sometimes I like to use a photocopy sketch as a base for my Art-History stuff. This one worked fine.

Rô

[Janet Petty]

WOW Ro, you are becoming quite the AHB expert. The redhead is one I truly like.

Good job Patricia. I like yours a lot too.

Janet

[corona2632]

In my opinion, I have added a few impressionist's style to this image.
I painted this image in a Painter and Photoshop.

[cazubi]

I thought I would try a montage of some different pictures.
I used blending mode to overlay each picture also used layer masks to make each element overlap. It came out a kind of moody piece.

Cathy