Eagle Portrait in Oil

[Paul Lagasi]

I spent a day at the Alberta Bird of Prey Center near Lethbridge, Alberta.
A great place to photograph birds without fences of mesh getting in the way. Well worth a visit if your in the area.

For this image I used a combination of CS5 (B&W conversion and Select tool to add back certain colors), Nik Color Effects (Low Key Effect) and Fotosketcher to convert to Oil Painting.

Thanks for looking...

[Cheryl Slechta]

Paul, I really like the combination of filtering and I think Fotosketcher is an underutilized tool (at least in my workflow). I think they've had an upgrade also which I need to do (I'm way behind!). I like the gray areas in the beak but I'm thinking I might like some to be a little lighter.

[Diane Miller]

This is wonderful! I've been messing with Corel Painter, and with the right subject it can produce some lovely images.

[Dennis Bishop]

Nice work, Paul. I like the stern look of the eagle and the background you used. The colors work well together. Thinking about Cheryl's comment about the darkness of the gray on the beak, I had mixed feelings. The gray fits so well with the tones in the rest of the eagle, and it contrasts so well with the rest of the beak, I like it very much. However, it is so similar to the tone of the background that it loses some of its appeal. I masked the background, inserted a Curves layer with extreme lightening between the image and the masked layer with the eagle. Then, I put a radial gradient from white to black on the Curves mask (Screen blend mode), transformed it to the size I wanted, and made some adjustments with a soft, low opacity black brush. I think that not only makes the gray in the beak work better, but it helps the beak and neck to play a more important role in the portrait.

[Diane Miller]

Oh, yes, wonderful touch!

[Maureen Allen]

Beautiful portrait Paul

Dennis' added processing brings it up a notch.

[Dennis Bishop]

. . . I've been messing with Corel Painter, and with the right subject it can produce some lovely images.

I've done a lot of reading and a bit of playing around with Painter. Not nearly enough playing around, I think. I'd like to see some of the images you've done with it.

[denise ippolito]

Paul, I really like the way you created this one! Great job. I like the additional lighting behind the bird in Dennis' repost!

[Andrew McLachlan]

Hi Paul. nicely done. I like the treatment for this headshot.