Illusions of Hell

anonymouscuban · December 19, 2011

It's been a long time folks and I've been lurking in the Challenge Forum for a while... so jealous of all the cool themes Sherstone has been coming up with. I had quite a few ideas from the get when I saw the current challenge theme. Here is my first try. As I mentioned in that other thread, I don't plan on actually entering the challenge. I just want to push my own photography and editing by shooting the themes and sharing my stuff.

If you have any questions, please feel free to ask and I will share.

Jenn · December 19, 2011

Can I see some Illusions of Heaven, pls? :-)

anonymouscuban · December 20, 2011

... too creepy?

billseye · December 20, 2011

Way cool... I really like this effect, especially in the context you've created. Was it created using the Droste filter in Pixel Bender? If so, I'm curious about the process/settings you used to get tot the final image. I guess I'm curious regardless of the software. Would you consider telling us a little (or a lot) about how you created this?

zoomer · December 20, 2011

ha...that is really cool.

anonymouscuban · December 20, 2011

billseye wrote: »

Way cool... I really like this effect, especially in the context you've created. Was it created using the Droste filter in Pixel Bender? If so, I'm curious about the process/settings you used to get tot the final image. I guess I'm curious regardless of the software. Would you consider telling us a little (or a lot) about how you created this?

Bill...

Yes. I used the Droste filter in Pixel Blender as a plugin to CS5. You can download the filter here and the Pixel Blender plugin here.

It's actually the first time I use it. I downloaded the filter a while back, it's free so what the heck but I've never used it. Never had a need. I honestly don't recall right now what settings I used; this was a bit quick and dirty and more trial/error than precise work. The filter has a ton of sliders and I just played around with each until it looked right. I mostly fiddled with the size sliders and the centering sliders. Also the inner and outer dimension sliders.

One thing that helped immensely was to mask my head out out of the background. I simply used the quick selection tool to select my head. I think cut/pasted it to a new transparent canvas. This helped make the effect of the Droste filter look more seemless; no hard edges from borders. Once I got it right, I came back to PS and did my edits. Converted to B&W, increased contrast through a curves layer, added a unsharp mask layer mask and then painted the sharpening effect to areas that were in focus. Last, I used a soft brush, set to about 15% opacity (black) and painted a some vignetting around the edges of my head (all of them

) to blend everything together.

What took the longest was getting an understanding of what effect each of the Droste filter sliders had on the image. Once I got that down, it took me about 15 minutes total to get the image as you see it.

If I have time and the inspiration tonight, I will do another and post a tutorial of sorts.

kwickers · December 20, 2011

very nice. cool effect.

billseye · December 20, 2011

anonymouscuban wrote: »

Bill...

It's actually the first time I use it. I downloaded the filter a while back, it's free so what the heck but I've never used it. Never had a need. I honestly don't recall right now what settings I used; this was a bit quick

What took the longest was getting an understanding of what effect each of the Droste filter sliders had on the image. Once I got that down, it took me about 15 minutes total to get the image as you see it.

If I have time and the inspiration tonight, I will do another and post a tutorial of sorts.

Thanks for your reply. I've messed with several Pixelbender filters in CS5 - just haven't quite got my head wrapped around all the sliders in the Droste one. Your use of a masked image on transparent BG makes sense. I'll give it a try later. Thanks again for sharing!

Bill