show your photoshop chops

nathanm · « **Reply #20 on:** 16 Jun 2007, 06:43 pm »

Thanks Lensman, your building shot is fantastic, though it makes me wince too! That one is one of those torturous projects; you look at it and know exactly what to do, but you know it is gonna take a LONG time. Pure cloning tedium!

I wish we could do that in real life, get rid of all these damn ugly signs and wires and crap.

Daygloworange · « **Reply #21 on:** 16 Jun 2007, 06:43 pm »

Quote

Dayglow...

That one took about 18 hours. Having to reconstruct areas of the building concealed by poles, signs, streetlights, etc. was rather time-consuming.

Lensman

I kinda figured. But considering the amount of work, less than I would have thought.

Nice work.

Cheers

drphoto · « **Reply #22 on:** 16 Jun 2007, 08:29 pm »

The trick is to use "patches" rather than clone.

Lensman....would you agree?

Lensman · « **Reply #23 on:** 16 Jun 2007, 08:36 pm »

Quote from: drphoto on 16 Jun 2007, 08:29 pm

The trick is to use "patches" rather than clone.

Lensman....would you agree?

The cloning tool is not a good choice for rebuilding areas with texture and shading. For much of the building "reconstruction", I copied sections of the building with similar shading and texture and pasted them in, feathering (erasing) the edges to blend and then using the patch tool to clean up. In some cases, copying whole sections of the building and using the skew and scale functions to create the proper perspective.

Lensman

drphoto · « **Reply #24 on:** 16 Jun 2007, 08:44 pm »

That's what I meant by 'patching" I see many beginners over use the clone tool.

drphoto · « **Reply #25 on:** 16 Jun 2007, 08:48 pm »

As you know well Lensman....layer mask are you best friend. I preached that over and over when I used to teach Pshop.

Lensman · « **Reply #26 on:** 16 Jun 2007, 09:54 pm »

Drphoto,

yep, I agree 100% with what you posted. When I mentioned "erasing" I wasn't talking about the eraser tool. I actually use the paint brush to paint out areas of the layer mask. For the sake of brevity, I simply used the word "erase".

Incidentally, I'm an advocate for working in 16-bit mode.

cheers,
Lensman

drphoto · « **Reply #27 on:** 16 Jun 2007, 10:12 pm »

Lensman...I generally retouch in 8 bit, however, if I have to go big....say a trade show image....I render the RAW file in 16 bit and rez up in increments from there. Works about as well as "Fractals" without the hassel of converting to a different format.

Have you been around long enough to remember "Live Picture"? I wish Adobe aquired that technology. Pretty brilliant program, but a very clunky interface. It was true 16 bit.

TONEPUB · « **Reply #28 on:** 16 Jun 2007, 11:16 pm »

Oh man, do I remember that! I was one of the idiots that bought it when it
first came out and was $5000!

Too much of an early adopter over the years....

Still have a copy of it on CD somewhere (Version 2.6 I believe)

Adobe made sure those guys went under!

nathanm · « **Reply #29 on:** 17 Jun 2007, 01:04 am »

Wasn't Live Picture some kind of quasi-resolution independent dealie where you'd work on a lower res file and then render your changes on the big file? I sort of remember it, I might have tried a demo at some point.

drphoto · « **Reply #30 on:** 17 Jun 2007, 12:48 pm »

You got it Nathan. In LP, your edits were stored in as set of commands, and then the finished piece needed to be rendered later. This allowed the editing process to run in real time, no matter how large the file. Remember, this was in the days of the first generation Mac PowerPC, when Ram chips cost thousands.

What sucked about LP was no direct selection (lasso) no layer mask, etc. But it did allow distortions via a brush way before Pshop had Liquify, and because it was 16 bit, it could do beautiful gradients w/ no banding.

I think what killed it, was they hired that idiot John Sculley.....the same jerk who almost ran Apple into the ground.

I also used to use a program called Elastic Reality to do warping and distortions. What is cool about this, is you can draw a shape around an object, then draw a target shape, link key points and let the software warp the object to fit. Again...technology Adobe should have aquired.

navi · « **Reply #31 on:** 17 Jun 2007, 01:57 pm »

Something I did a few years back-For a Melbourne model- She's actually lying on horse meat.......AND she's a vegetarian!! (she never spoke to me after that)
here's the link of how it was put together:
http://www.ijproductions.com/alana/

ivan
ivan@ijproductions.com.au

Lensman · « **Reply #32 on:** 17 Jun 2007, 02:25 pm »

Navi,

Very nice image! A lot of time and skill went into that one!

Lensman

Lensman · « **Reply #33 on:** 17 Jun 2007, 04:04 pm »

"Rarindarized"

version of downtown Harrisburg, PA. Top image is straight raw conversion. In case "rarindarized" doesn't make sense, see the link under Favorite Photographers. I couldn't resist trying this out.

Lensman

nathanm · « **Reply #34 on:** 18 Jun 2007, 01:09 am »

Wow Navi that's right out of a death metal album cover! Actually it's better than a lot of those. Sort of like a Wes Benscotter painting meets Exhumed's "Gore Metal" cover (more with live guts). Usually when you see hot chicks and gore combined it's an illustration or cheesy photoshop, but that's the real deal! Extremely impressive work.

Lensman · « **Reply #35 on:** 20 Jun 2007, 12:45 pm »

Did this thread just suddenly die? I thought it was a fun thread.

JohnR · « **Reply #36 on:** 20 Jun 2007, 12:49 pm »

I'm a photoshop dunce. Anything more than resizing and cropping I have to ask nathanm for help

So anyway, dumb question, how come the model couldn't have been photoshopped onto the horsemeat? I'm no vegetarian, but ew...

Lensman · « **Reply #37 on:** 20 Jun 2007, 02:01 pm »

Quote from: Lensman on 20 Jun 2007, 12:45 pm

Did this thread just suddenly die? I thought it was a fun thread.

Lensman, did you notice it too? Why did it die so young?
Starved to death!

nathanm · « **Reply #38 on:** 20 Jun 2007, 05:03 pm »

Here's some work stuff I did. These three photos can't possibly illustrate the insane process that this cover went through. The original art directive was to emulate the look of 1950s era illustrations. I thought it was great, but I told them it wouldn't work unless you hired a real painter who can do that stuff proper. Our in-house guys are really good, but we ain't exactly classical illustrators. Faking the painterly look in Photoshop is not easy. Computers can't turn you into Norman Rockwell overnight. I have a deep respect and admiration for the artists of old who had to do everything the Hard Way.

Meanwhile, in the real world we've gotta get this damn thing done. The cover went through a bazillion revisions by another designer and they all, well...sucked (design-by-committee, a great way to ruin a project) until I decided to take a crack at it. I know, it sounds arrogant and maybe it was, but they were just not achieving the intent at all. So I took the files home and started from scratch, painting over the train in Fractal Design Painter using a custom Dry Brush preset I cooked up. The painterly effect can't be faked with filters all that well IMO, you have to face facts and redraw over all the detail. What sucked was that the source file was a mediocre 35mm scan. Less than impressive unfortunately. But anyway, after many hours of work and a fair amount of committee meddling (unavoidable) the end result looks pretty good IMHO. (the narrow strip on the left of the last image is the book spine)

Here's a 1:1 detail

Not as good as if it had been painted by someone with genuine painting talent, but for a digital emulation it's not bad.

Lensman · « **Reply #39 on:** 20 Jun 2007, 06:27 pm »

Wow, nice job! I assume the frame on the left is the supplied original scan, with model trees set in the grass around the bridge. So, did you have to paint the sky and mountains, or was that pulled in from another file?

The brushwork on the close-up is sweet!

Lensman