Fract Cormorant

[Dan Brown]

I finally acquired Fractalius today! Having fun!:)

[Ken Childs]

Hi Dan, yes it is a lot of fun and it's highly addictive! This is a good subject for a frac and your treatment looks good but if it were mine, I probably would have backed off just a little in the opacity of the frac layer.

[denise ippolito]

Dan, Welcome to the addiction! I love the pose and the glow. I might tone down the bright spot just a hair w/o eliminating it from the BG. Very nice first fract.

[Dan Brown]

Thanks Denise and Ken! I don't really know what I am doing with the plugin yet?

A couple questions, do you all apply the filter to full sized files or reduced files?
Do you start with one of the presets?

I did apply the filter to a BG copy and can adjust the opacity Ken, thanks for the tip.

Any other tips would be great!

[Kaustubh Deshpande]

Dan, very well done. Loved the treatment.

[Ken Childs]

A couple questions, do you all apply the filter to full sized files or reduced files? Do you start with one of the presets?

I apply it to reduced sized files because it takes forever to run on my full sized files. I'll start clicking on the presets until I get one that looks like a good starting point. Sometimes I get lucky and I'll find one that looks good right away....other times it's a matter of going through all the presets and then going back to one that looked good. Then it's time to go wild with the sliders. All the sketch presets are labeled 'BW' but sometimes they look great with the saturation increased so there's color.

In other words, just start playing around and having fun.

[denise ippolito]

Dan, I think Ken really summed it up. I do have a couple of tutorials on my blog(check the right sidebar) but they are basic since it really is a matter of just playing around w/ the sliders. I do like to start with a preset that might be a nice look for the image and then move on from there. I also adjust the layer opacity and also use different blend modes to make some adjustments to the look. I NEVER use a jpeg but Ken is correct the program takes forever to run on a full size image. The reason I never use a jpeg is because you never know when you will want to print a large print. Hope that helps.

[Cheryl Slechta]

Dan, very electric looking I like it a lot - you'll have a blast with it.

[Andrew McLachlan]

Hi Dan, love the look. I agree with Denise on toning down the bright spot a bit. Definitely check out Denise's tutorials on her blog to get yourself started, but as she also mentioned playing around with it. Once you get the effect you want hit OK and go make a coffee it is slow to work.