What you would do (#1)

[Nicole]

This is the first post in what will hopefully be a weekly series of posts.

xxpinballxx made the suggestion that with all the people who are really good at post-processing stuff, we could start a series of threads where a photo is posted per week, and we all can do what we want to edit the photo and explain what was done to it. This will teach people new ways to post-process and give people some new ideas.

So, the rules are simple:

1. Threads will be posted on Tuesdays (US time)
2. If you want your picture to be used in one of these threads, send me a PM with links to a medium sized file for posting, and a large and / or raw file (it will keep everything organized)
3. If you post an edit in the thread, please also post what you've done to it That's it, do what you would to edit it.

I mean, that's pretty simple, right?

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Our first picture was submitted by jmadigan.



Large Size (1024x681)
Raw File (7.2MB)

Ok guys, show us what you can do

[Teewinot]

What a cutie! Certainly not the expert here, I decided to play around with the “antiquing” angle.

What I did (in Paint Shop Pro 8):
1. Duplicated layer
2. Applied a Gaussian Blur to the duplicate layer
3. Chose ‘Overlay’ blend mode with a 75% opacity
4. ‘Colorized’ the original layer: Chose a yellowish/sepia color and gave it minimal saturation.
5. Cropped the image to a square.
6. Added noise
7. Created a mask around the edge and used fill tool with a color found on the girl’s jacket to create a mild vignette.
8. Applied a Gaussian Blur to the mask
9. Added a white border

This was fun! Can’t wait to see what others come up with!

[eflouret]

Great effect Teewinot! Here's mine...



High Resolution version here (in jpg format)

I also played with the image until something came up.

1) IMAGE > ADJUSTMENTS > LEVELS (30 1 230)

2) FILTER > BLUR > SMART BLUR (100 100 HIGH NORMAL)

3) FILTER > SHARPEN > UNSHARP MASK (60 80 0)

4) FILTER > SHARPEN > SHARPEN MORE

5) FILTER > BLUR > SMART BLUR (100 100 HIGH NORMAL)

6) FILTER > NOISE > MEDIAN (1)

In step 4, the Sharpen More filter gives a lot of detail to the hair, and the Median filter in step 6 gives everything a "vectorized" look.

Here's a closeup of the face:



Who's next?

[Digidave]

eflouret, Very cool effect!

[xxpinballxx]

I want my computer back so I can play with this one...great shot to start off with. Sorry Nicole for not getting a photo to you Im having difficulties. Hope to get on this one soon. Great start so far....good job you guys!

[Nicole]

No worries xxpinballxx You're on deck for next week then... if your computer is fixed

BTW, great effort so far everyone! Some good really good results

[Tiberius]

I saw eflouret's technique, and thought that looks pretty good, so I followed his instructions and used that as a base to make a watercolour effect.

1. Follow the instructions in eflouret's post.
2. Duplicate the layer twice.
3. On the top layer, go to FILTER, BLUR, MOTION BLUR and set a motion blur at 90 degrees (so it's going up and down). The amount to use depends on the size of the image, but I used 20 pixels.
4. However, this leaves the eyes, mouth and nostrils blurred, so create a layer mask on the blurred layer and use a black brush with a low opacity to let some of the unblurred eyes, mouth and nostrils from the layer beneath to show through. Don't do it too much, otherwise the watercolour effect on't come across on the eyes, and it looks really freaky. Just use it to define the outlines of the eyes, mouth and nostrils a little. Don't worry about getting it right straight away, because you can come back and adjust it later.
5. Now, create a new layer that is on top of all the other layers and fill it with white.
6. Now create a layer mask on your white layer.
7. Select a brush that looks like a paintbrush (so not your standard round brush, but one with a bit of texture), set the opacity way down to about 10-15%, set the brush size to a fairly large brush (about 100 pixels works pretty well in this case) and start painting on the whaite layer's layermask in short downward strokes.Keep the brush strokes within the basic shapes though - for instance, I kept the strokes of the umbrella outside the strokes I used to show her face through. A bit of overlap is fine though. Don't worry about being too neat, and don't worry if you don't go all the way to the edges. It actually looks better if it's a bit messy.
8. Now, reduce your brush size a little and increase the opacity (i brought mine up to about 50%), and go over the subject and other areas that you want to define a little more. Then repeat the same process; short downward strokes, keeping confined to the shapes.
9. Keep going until you are happy.If you want, you can reduce the opacity of the blurred layer a bit to bring out the details a bit more.

And here's the result I got from this, bearing in mind I did a rushed job.

[JJthethird]

As a newcomer to PP I thought that I would experiment. The look that I was going for was the graphic novel type illustration.



Using Elements 5.0

1. Duplicate layer
2. Remove colour
3. Invert
4. Add gaussian blur- about 11
5. Overlay. This made the colours brighter.
6. Then I merged the layers down.
7. I then added poster edges, setting the brush,edge thickness to suit.
8. Then cropped the image.
9. I then used adjust colour for skintone to get a comicbook type skin.

I havent done much of this before so I understand that it wont be up to the standard of most but I fancied giving it a go.

John.

[Teewinot]

JJthethird,

Nice job! I really like this. I also really find this crop effective. I toyed with leaving those far right branches in, but ended up going with the square crop because it better fit my technique. However, in your case, the crop really works! I like how the subject has somewhere to look with her eyes.

Thanks for sharing!

[xxpinballxx]

still trying to get my laptop working...only PC with CS i got...UGHHH!
Nice work...I really like Tibs. I think it gives it a whole new look. Not that the others don't just a dreamy watercolored look.
I can't wait to play with this photo....anyone know alot about laptops?