I made this image on Thanksgiving morning before heading over to my brother's home for dinner. There was just something about the quality of the water that morning - I kept fiddling with this over and over again. Tonight, I curved it up into more of a high-key image and ran an Illustrated action on the entire image, then backed it down about 50%. I'm still not thrilled with the catchlight I "built" in his eye but I'm ready to let it go for tonight.
Hi Julie. Nice image. You have mentioned it a number of times before and I've been wondering what you were referring to as Illustration Action. Is this a plug in or a action script you picked up somewhere? Personally I simplify the image (lately with Topaz Simplify) copy it to new layer, use the find edges filter, convert to black and white, use soft light (or sometimes overlay or another mode) blending, maybe adjust lighten or saturation of the base layer, then flatten. Basically is this what you are doing? I might add that Topaz simplify does have mono-color edge capability, but it doesn't work too well, and in PS that you might also convert to black and white, and find the best contrast with the presets, before using the find edges filter. regards~Bill
Last edited by WIlliam Maroldo; 02-09-2009 at 01:28 AM.
Julie, I like the high-key effect, agree w/ Jackie about the eye . The water looks amazing!. William brings up some interesting thoughts and would urge him to apply his effect idea along with step-by step instructions to the "Show me what you got " image posted yesterday in this forum
I like it Jules Great feel Was wondering what it would look like if we could see all the water ripples ... with the bird in the middle !!! interesting !!!
Bill, you can find that action at action central. Think it is atncentral.com. I think the one julie is referring to is actually called sketch. You can download it to PS and it will go into your actions folder.
Close, Jackie! It is at www.atncentral.com but the one I am referring to is Dave's Illustrated Action. It works best on lower resolution images so it isn't great if you want to send the final version to print but it does give some nice detail in a higher resolution as well.
I get almost all my free actions for Photoshop at www.atncentral.com so if you see me say "Orton Action" or "Illustrated Action" you can almost bet I found it there.
Thanks Jackie and Julie. I've been at action central before and could never find illustration action, though orton effect is there and other stuff. I've checked out Dave's Illustration Action before, and some others that were for sale. Pretty much as Julie pointed out, they don't work too well on large images, their effects are underwhelming, and I could create my own actions to do the same thing for free. In any case I like to check out what is "under the hood" by reading the script or getting a new action to stop at each step. Very educational. The good news is that I just found Maredas Cartoon Action at action central. Just run through as it is it looks much like Poster Edges. Now set it up to stop at vital adjustment points, and adjust properly , it can be tweeked to get a very good Illustration effect that is not image size dependent. Appreciate the info. Regards~ Bill
Last edited by WIlliam Maroldo; 02-09-2009 at 08:18 PM.
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