Common Redpoll Sketch

[Cindy Mead]

One of my favorite winter visitors, although they've yet to arrive this year. I used the soft crayon preset in Fractalius on a duplicate of the original then blended the two images.
(Having a difficult time getting the images down to under 200kb so had to size this one down alot)

suggestions and comments always appreciated :)

[denise ippolito]

Cindy, Great looking image and effect! I love the blended look. This has a nice soft feel to it-yet it has so much detail! Excellent!

[Christopher Miller]

Very lovely image, Cindy! Nice pose and comp. Love the filter effect, looks exactly like a colored pencil drawing to me. I might take the BG to all-white to enhance the drawing look. Just a thought, either way it's a great image. :)

[Roy Priest]

Cindy, this is a terrific treatment. Love the soft look and the pastel colouring. Great.

[Cindy Mead]

. I might take the BG to all-white to enhance the drawing look. Just a thought, either way it's a great image. :)

thanks all.. Christopher, I checked my monitor calibration after I posted my last high key bg image and my software says it's calibrated right. Like with the last one, I'm still not seeing anything at all in the bg except white.. I'm really confused now:confused:

[Jackie Schuknecht]

Cindy, beautiful image and treatment. The framing is superb. FWIW I am seeing the muted blues/greys and whites in the BG too. What are you using to calibrate???

[Indranil Sircar]

Hi Cindy, great image and a great effect! Love the placement of the subject and the colors. Beautifully done.

[Cindy Mead]

Cindy, beautiful image and treatment. The framing is superb. FWIW I am seeing the muted blues/greys and whites in the BG too. What are you using to calibrate???

thanks Jackie.. I'm using spyder software, but am beginning to think that the monitor itself must be acting up as the software tells me it's correctly adjusted. I guess it's time to price out a new monitor :/

[Dave Phillips]

I personally like the bit of tone in the bg.....seems appropriate to me.
However, if you want to go all white here is a reference image for
you to check your monitor Cindy. Can you see the white square in the
right half of the image? If so, your tonal calibratation may be ok.

Regarding your comment on file size, this image should post at
full allowable size well under 200kb. Use ps save for web and optimize
feature set to about 198kb

[Cindy Mead]

thanks Dave- I was able to see the square after I made some manual adjustments to my contrast (which I shouldn't have to do after using the spyder). Sent off an email to their tech support, something is whacked and I appreciate the help. (I was referring to a 1020 size image- I don't like to save at anything less than 80 or the image quality suffers too much)

I reworked the image- it's now brighter like I initially wanted, but I lost a bit of definition by tweaking the curves. (it now resembles a hoary redpoll) ;)

thanks again for the help :)

[denise ippolito]

Cindy, Call me crazy but I enjoyed the bit of color tones in the BG. of the OP. I also like the HK look to this one but the punch of the first one is my choice.:)

[Julie Kenward]

I like that first post as well (or possibly something between the two?) It's lovely and soft and you gave the bird a very realistic texture with the use of Fractilius. It's one of my favorite images with that software that I've seen so far. Definitely Christmas card material here...;)

[Cheryl Slechta]

Cindy, I love the first post. It's a beautiful base image and your treatment makes it feel just like a colored
pencil drawing.:)

[WIlliam Maroldo]

I like the first version much better, and I like the fact that you haven't let the plug in take control, which is pretty easy if you aren't careful. The problem to me is the interface of the vegetation and the background, a sort of smudgy gray. I'd try selecting the pine needles and bottom part of the bird, invert it, then either use a clone brush using an upper white area as a source, or pick an appropriate color with the eyedropper tool and use a regular brush with soft edges and reduced opacity. The basic idea is you want the edges to be similar throughout the image. Good job nonetheless.
As far as the 200Kb limit: I have problems with that as well, though in this image, with the relatively large uniform light area, it should be too much of a problem. I think that down to a 60% compression level works pretty well, yet it may be that you'll be forced to simply reduce image dimensions. regards~Bill