Dancing with PS

Trying modifications to an existing painting using PS.  A  chance to look at variations on a theme. It should be easy to identify the original painting.

A portrait under the influence of "Painter"

Both PS and PX were used extensively to doctor up this portrait Photo. I used PS to select Dales profile. I could then brighten his image leaving the background very dark for a bit of Rembrandt-like drama. Then I worked in PX. Used quick clone to alter photo to a painting look then I added and painted on over-layers to give the portrait a modern spin and emotional feel. I also copied the lit portion of the face and duplicated it. These duplications are on their own layers and I inserted them between various other layers.

Stretching my abilities in PS

The original photo is included here. My idea was to capture both a starkness and the mystery and foreboding found in the interstices of things. Used PS to exacerbate and dramatize elements in the photo. I wanted to alter the perspective to tipped-in verticles making it over-towering. This is easily done using Transform/perspective, however the top of the whole image is pulled together so that the full rectangular format is lost. Sure I could crop the remaining image but then elements are lost from the unstretched bottom of the photo that I want to keep. 

The solution that worked: Before adjusting the perspective I selected a narrow column at the right and left edges, one at a time. Using Transform the selection is stretched sideways to increase to total width of the photo. Then I could adjust the perspective and crop to a rectangle without loosing elements at the bottom. An inflection in the angle of the building caused by the stretching was mostly corrected by carefully selecting that section of the building and using a distort function in Transform. Filled some resulting voids with clone stamp tool. I tested many filters on the image. Though the stretching left a stretched look in those areas the use of filters eliminated the problem. The image here resulted from two filters, watercolor followed by texturizer. There are qualities that will not be apparent in this image due to its size and resolution.

A project to exercise selection primarily. 

A rough poster look

Scanning again. A sketch made from a friends wedding photo. This was on the beach in Seldovia. I did some splashing of color with the paint bucket in PX. Telouse Latrecish perhaps?

Back to using Painter with the scan of a sketch

Used PS to process a scanned sketch, used 'sharpen' and 'sharpen more' to darken the lines. Used magic wand to select non-line areas (tolerance set at about 90 I think)  Deleted to clear non-line areas. In PX created several layers to paint upon, used brush and airbrush. I also created three channels and saved selections as masks for the airbrush painting. As I gain a bit more familiarity with the tools I am using more of them in combination.

another brush with painter

a bit of play with Painter, the brush and a felt marker.