April 18th, 2005
My kid
This was my first shot at manipulating a photo in an artsypants way. Photo taken with the canon powershot s-30, painterly effects inspired by the amazing Cugasmom and all done up in Photoshop. Working on this really gave me the urge to do something I haven’t done in a long, long time: I want to run down to Hobby Lobby and spend a hundred dollars on craft paper and charcoal pencils, and then bring them home and put them in a drawer and never draw a single picture of my child with them.
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digital, taken with powershot then manipulated in PhotoShop 7
April 19th, 2005 at 11:27 pm
what filter did you use to make this?
April 19th, 2005 at 11:36 pm
Hi kat! Let’s see if I can remember – I used several layers and filters. I think what I did was…
1. Convert to black and white using channel mixer
2. duplicate layer, then apply one of the sketch-type filters to the top layer. I don’t remember which one I used! I also adjusted the curves way, way up on that layer so it was much brighter/lighter than the one beneath it.
3. Set the top layer to “difference” – so that’s why you see light outlines against a black background
4. Select-all, shift-copy to copy the combined layer, paste into a new layer. Applied unsharp mask to get some crisper lines in his hair and around his eyes. I also painted out the background in dark purple
5. Then I made a duplicate layer of that, and then applied the rough pastels filter to that top layer. I -think- I may have set that layer to “multiply” making the contrast more dramatic but I’m not sure.
6. I went through and erased bits of the top layer so the whole thing didn’t look too obviously “rough pastelled”
I may be missing a step or two – I was playing and undoing and messing around, ya know? Let me know if any of that doesn’t make sense… I love talking photoshop. :)
April 20th, 2005 at 9:23 am
This is so cool. Should I tell you about the art supplies that sit around my house and never get used?
April 20th, 2005 at 8:57 pm
This is really great, I love what’s going on in the hair area!
How the heck did you remember everything you did?! OMG I can’t remember what I do beyond the first layer change. LOL But then I’m senile.
April 20th, 2005 at 9:42 pm
Thanks! That means a lot.
I remember the steps because I am a huge dork. My brain stores tons of inane details about photoshop processes, but then forgets things like the name of my child’s pediatrician.
April 22nd, 2005 at 1:26 pm
I wonder if you get the same feeling I do when going through this process…it’s almost exactly like when you are actually painting/drawing. Layer change 1-3 you hate the piece, you hate the process and you’re not sure but you may even hate yourself (hehe). Layer changes 4-6 you kinda like what’s happening on layer 3 and delete layer 5. Layer changes 7-9 you start falling in love with the small details that are emerging and you so totally get excited because YES! This is what I was trying to get across when I did layer 1-3, but now 1-3 is almost obliterated. Then when you are making final tiny changes to adjust how your eye moves through the piece and where the areas of focus want to be, it feels so incredible and so much like you actually did the work to paint or draw it on paper…I just love the ending…
See, I’m a dork too…just not one that can actually remember anything that happened more than two minutes ago. LOL!!
April 22nd, 2005 at 1:28 pm
…do another one.