Broadtailed Humingbird Oil Painting

Hi Folks;

Captured this little female Hummingbird at Madera Kubo B&B, Madera Canyon, AZ. last week. Processed it using Adobe Pixel Bender in CS5. If you don't have it, just Google for Adobe Pixel Bender download, it's free, after downloading it, you will find it under Filter. When using it I play with top 2 amounts in the 7 range, and next 2 in 1 range, leave 5th. amount at 1.

The border I came up with by playing around.

1. Used Rectangular Marquee Tool to make a selection giving about 1/4" border
2. Go to Select>Inverse (This will select border)
3. Go to Filter>Filter Gallery>Texture, you will find 6 choices, I used>Craquelure>OK

Comments always welcome and educational

Keep smiling :bg3:

Gus aka MP

You seem to be a magician in capturing great hummingbird shots. Thanks for the workflow details.

I've not used Pixel Bender OilPaint very much, but its effect has been very good in some images posted by you and others. Just to learn, I've been paying close attention. In your previous hummingbird post, there must've been a good deal of vegetation in the background to cause those wonderful swirls. In the current one, it looks like the background was pretty much mono-colored. Consequently, there were mostly vertical lines with a sharp transition to the lines following the profile of the hummingbird. Thinking back to the effect with the background vegetation, I wondered if there was some reasonable way to soften the transition in plain backgrounds.

I wasn't really successful at that, but -- for better or worse -- I did introduce some wavy texture. After several attempts that didn't satisfy me, at all, I came up with this approach. On a duplicate layer and using a fairly small hard brush and a color much like the gold that was already there, I painted wavy strokes that sort of followed the profile of the hummingbird. Vertical lines in a previous attempt had proved a bad idea -- probably because they were parallel to the PB brush strokes, so I was careful not to do that. Then, I used the PB OilPaint filter. Afterwards, I masked the hummingbird and frame back in, reduced the layer opacity, and tried different blend modes. A number of them worked pretty well. This one is with Luminosity.

I'm not suggesting at all that your image should have this wavy background. I just wanted to share what I'd learned.

Hi Dennis;

Thanks for your comments & workflow. Generally speaking you will get the swirled background with most backgrounds and you tone it down by reducing the Coloration amount to 1 or less. In the case of my post the background was absoluty a completely plain one color background. I actualy prefer the toned down swirly background. However I like pushing the envelope. :2eyes2:

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. i have at leat 6 other programs for painting, however, with a new computer I have only installed 32 & 64 bit CS5, 32 bit for some programs that only install into 32 bit, like for instance my Topaz Clean is 32 bit, maybe they have a 64 bit?

Keep smiling

Gus

Gus, I like this one. Nice golden tones. I think this will make a lovely holiday card. Either one is nice but I prefer the original. Gus have you ever tried selecting the Hummingbird and running the filter on both the bird and back ground separately (just thinking out loud)then merging them so you don't get the large outline. Not sure if it will work for you and you probably already tried it but just in case I thought I'd throw it out there. Happy Thanksgiving!:S3:

Hi Gus, very nicely done. Nice pose for the bird also. Agree with Denise that this would make a nice card. :S3:

Very nice Gus! Another vote for a card. :S3:

Very nice, Gus. I can only echo as above... Nicely done!

Hi Folks:

Thank you very much for all the kind comments.:bg3:

Big Hugs

Gus