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Poster inspired by drejs


ibclare

ibclare

Queen Bee
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Hi guys, I have been wow'd by drejs' work and though my creation rather pales by comparison, it was fun and gave me ideas on how to do better next time. Here are the original image and the transformation.

I've added a 2nd version as someone whose first initial is P suggested I warm it up :mrgreen:
 

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Nice effort clare, one problem i see is there is no depth or feel to the image, it feels cold - not warm or lived in like drejs works.
Walk us through how you got to this result maybe?
 
Thanks for the feedback everybody. I'll work on it some tomorrow if I have time. I know what you mean on the sky, lol! It's just me, I love rainy weather since I don't get enough of it here. I'm always taking pics of skies when they're threatening. But I have some others I can use. And Paul, I see what you mean on the coldness. Well, I am not trying to reproduce drejs' work, but I may give some warmth to it somehow and see where that takes it. I should ask but I bet his (her?) images use HDR; the color is so rich.

I appreciate all the comments LRG, Paul, Sir M. Muchas.

I have been working on another I'm going to post.
 
Paul said:
Nice effort clare, one problem i see is there is no depth or feel to the image, it feels cold - not warm or lived in like drejs works.
Walk us through how you got to this result maybe?
Click to expand...

no depth or feel? ouch. I respectfully disagree.
I can't really walk you through this very quickly since there are a lot of steps. Right now there are 22 active layers, some others have already been merged. However, I can touch on a few things.

First, I opened it in Bridge and upped the luminance about as far as it goes (or maybe all the way). This accentuated the painterly effect it already had to some degree. I corrected the exposure to what I wanted and so forth - in Bridge - then opened it in PS.

I did selective sharpening mainly of the plants. I used the pen tool to cut out windows, punched them through a layer mask on the street scene, then filled them with color and layer fx. I used the layer mask to cut out the sky which I did with the quick select & I think I used the polygonal lasso rather than the pen tool.

Most of my layers are adding punches of color or other painterly effects to different parts of the (almost called it a painting ;-] ) image. You can't see it much as it's an overlay of hobbit on hobbit, but the upper hobbit layer has the drybrush filter then the faces masked out.

Anyway, that's my process, kind of pay as you go, lol. I posted my warmer version as an edit to my first post. Added a warming overlay layer (rather than the photo filter); levels changes overall and to selections making changes thru the mask. I may make this kind of transformation my learning project for the time being.
 
Much better mate, it now as depth of colour and feels real, nice sky to.
 
OH! That last one is beautiful! Lovely color combinations, and such a strange feeling of something inbetween dream and reality, in a good way. I love it! :)
 
I like it! Again, second attempt is an improvement. Cool work!

Is that Frodo and Sam???

-Stefano
 
Hi Clare, glad my work can inspire you. I like the atmosphere that is in your picture, both before and after you played around with it - it has a lot of potential. Mind you, even though "A Moment In Time" is one of my quicker works, I still spend the better half of a month before I felt it was quite right - and actually retouched it a bit before I posted it here. I'll keep posting a new design every friday, for as long as I have something to show, so hopefully I can keep inspiring you. If you can't wait, you are welcome to visit my personal website at www.drejs.com.
 
Thank you. I don't know if I can wait or not :D. Well then, I won't let my frustration at not getting it "right" bother me considering the time you let yours "cook!" I'm glad you shared that. I'm going to continue to play around with this inspiration; in fact have just sort of finished another, but it doesn't feel right. How many do you toss because you're not satisfied or do you just put them aside? I find that I am afraid to edit and remove parts of an image even though I think it would be better drastically cropped, reshaped, etc. Guess I will have to make duplicates, then slash away. Anyway, thank you for your comments.
 
Don't hesitate to crop, reshape, erase, clone, blur or whatever is needed for you to get the right expression in your design. You'd want to look back at what you did years ago and still feel it looks great - even though your PS skills may have advanced. I sometimes allow myself to retouch a design, but not too drastic.
Yes, always work on a dublicate - even in your .psd file. That is, keep the original image in the bottom in a locked layer in your .psd, and work on a duplicate on other layers. That way you always have the original close at hand for reference.
I'm sorry to tell you, that out of 20 ideas I may get, I only start working on about 10, and of those I only finish about 2 to a point where I feel it's presentable. It comes to about 6-8 design a year. Right now I'm struggling to finish 2 designs before the new year.
Keep up the good work.
 
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