This is my first try using Denise's great soft effect fract tutorial.
And it just isn't right. Where do I go from here?
Thanks for your help.
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This is beautiful, Cheryl. I love the softness you have been able to achieve with the fract. Beautiful base image and colors. My only suggestion would be to add a bit more space on the right. TFS.
Thank you, Indranil. Denise's tutorials are great!
There is more room to the right, but I cropped it tight since the body just looks like a big orange blob. The ears look so bad I seriously thought about cropping the tops off of those too.
Hi Cheryl, I haven't tried any soft-effect fracts yet, but this one doesn't look too bad for a first try. I love the eyes on this beautiful deer. Agree with Indranil on the space on the right, I wonder if a bit more detail needs to be masked back in on the bridge of the nose. Very nice!
Cheryl, I think it's beautiful. The eyes are gorgeous. I agree about a little more room on the right.
Could you mask back in a little bit of the body?
Cheryl, I think this is a lovely image. I agree with you that it could use just a tad of...something. :c3: Moving the image to the left in the frame will strengthen the composition and then I think it might just need a bit more detail in the entire head area, especially where there would be a lot of detail in the fur. To make the image even stronger, I would suggest cleaning up the edge area between the deer and the background. You could easily paint out that pinkish blob on the right.
Cheryl, I'm impressed. This is lovely. The softness and the clear eyes look great. I agree a bit more room on the right and you could mask in just a hair more detail maybe on the body. Great job and now we will all be looking forward to more...:S3:
Nice first try Cheryl and you did well with setting up Fractalius. One thing to bare in mind, and why I think Denise's fox image, and the one she presented a while back, is so fantastic, is the contribution of the base image and the detail present for fractalius to work on. The top of the head, eyes, ears, are just fine in your image, but there are other areas that lack detail, like above the nose (I can't understand why since the nose and chin seem alright?).
Personally I find that not all images are suitable for this type of fractalius effect, that DOF usually needs to be substantial since the effect of fractalius on OOF elements can be problematic, and as I already mentioned, the appearance of considerable detail in the base image is very helpful. Also the size of the image worked on is important; the larger the better. A considerable crop just has too much of a negative effect on this specific type of fractalius treatment, though other effects do just fine. Just my 2 cents. Regards~Bill
Thank you, everyone for all of your help!! I worked on it again, but don't think I made any improvement, other than making the doe look "bug-eyed". :eek: not the look I was after. :e3
I will try again with a different image. This image should have worked, it was nearly full frame and had a lot of sharp detail in the head and neck . Oh well. I will keep trying. So much to learn.
Thank you, again!
Hey Cheryl, in addition to all the great advice already given, I'd look at opening up the dark areas on the head. With that nice, soft look, those areas seem too dark, IMHO. :S3:
