Stained Glass Laysan Albatross Face

[Arthur Morris]

Inspired by Denise :), I tried a variety of Photoshop filters with this tight face portrait of Laysan Albatross from my recent Midway trip. Original image with the 70-200 f/4, the 1.4X TC, and a 25mm Extension tube.

Don't by shy; all comment welcome.

[denise ippolito]

Beautiful color palette and composition. I am impressed with your efforts to step out of the box. This is not an easy filter to use and create a pleasing image with. You did a great job!!:)

[Arthur Morris]

Thank you Denise :)

[Julie Kenward]

I think you did a great job on this as well, Artie. I might try to bring the effect in closer at the bottom of the eye so those few feathers don't show through but everything else is superb. I've never seen this filter used so well.

[Kora Baker]

Certainly is OOTB, Arthur:) A very hard filter to make any sense of, but you've certainly achieved this! I'm with Jules about the feathers showing through though. But the eye is great! Kora

[Jackie Schuknecht]

Wasn't fond of it when I first saw it but the stained glass looks great and good job of masking the eye back in Artie. Agree w/ Kora great OOTB work.

[Arthur Morris]

Thanks to all above who commented. I really like the feathers just below the eye :) As for using the new filter, I simply followed Denise's example. I tried several filters and once I liked the basic look (as I did here with Stained Glass), I tweaked the sliders so that to my eye it looked improved. I guess that I am a Stained Glass natural :) I did everything on a layer as Denise taught me and then painted back the eye with a Layer Mask. Looking more closely I should have taken a bit more care with those feathers below the eye: I was a bit sloppy with the gray box just above them and the lower feathers were done a bit sloppily as well, so thianks a ton for calling my attention to that.

[Kerry Perkins]

Hi Artie - great use of the stained glass effect! It might be interesting to add a stroke to the perimeter of the eye and feathers below to make that area look more like another glass piece. On the other hand, it is cool that it looks like the eye is peeking out from the stained glass!

[Arthur Morris]

Hi Artie - great use of the stained glass effect! It might be interesting to add a stroke to the perimeter of the eye and feathers below to make that area look more like another glass piece. On the other hand, it is cool that it looks like the eye is peeking out from the stained glass!

Thanks Kerry. How would I go about doing that?

[Kerry Perkins]

Hi Artie,

Just select the area with a quick mask or any selection method, then go to edit-->stroke. Choose black as the color and the number of pixels you want. You can have the stroke inside, outside, or centered on the selection. If you do this on a separate layer you will obviously have more flexibility in how it looks.

I believe there is also a "style" that adds a black stroke to a selection.