Textured Portrait - first attempt

jasonstone

Inspired by Joel Garcia's textured portraits I thought I'd play around with it.
Now first - that guy has got some serious mojo going there and I don't have anywhere near the necessary PS skills or a model etc. to match his results - but hey you have to start somewhere and so I thought I'd mess around with a snap of my oldest son.

Well there's a lot of work to do (not the least I suck as PS borders) but I can see that with some time and effort this could be nice to print and put in a frame on the wall...



Cheers, Jase

JeriAmrine

Jase, I think you did an excellent job. His eyes are so in focus! Print it, frame it and hang it.

ilbcnu

Wow I think it looks great, cool effect and sharp face! As a mom I would frame that. After reading and seeing the ones on the forum I tried my hand for the first time last evening. Nothing like the quality of yours! I can't quite figure out how to clear the face without blur? Now that you have made it through how about some hints on your steps along the way..

ladytx

ilbcnu wrote:

Wow I think it looks great, cool effect and sharp face! As a mom I would frame that. After reading and seeing the ones on the forum I tried my hand for the first time last evening. Nothing like the quality of yours! I can't quite figure out how to clear the face without blur? Now that you have made it through how about some hints on your steps along the way..

Your texture should be on a separate layer and mask out what you don't want the texture on.

madigg

Hint
Can you give us a little more hint.. Good Job..

jasonstone

Thanks!
Firstly thanks for the complimentary replies!
Now I'll let you know how I did it - although I did learn from tutorials on the web etc.

1. Get a photo - personally I chose one where the person is in it but not with too much of a distracting background - just as I wanted the person to be the focus more

2. Open the image in Photoshop

3. Open your texture image in Photoshop - note that that it can be a problem to find full resolution textures for free - but i'm already thinking that all you have to do is take the texture photo yourself - then you'll definitely be able to match up your image resolution and the texture resolution 1:1

4. Drag the texture image onto your photo in PS

5. Line up the texture so it covers all your image edge to edge

6. For the texture layer change Layer type to Multiply and then bring the opacity down until you like it

7. select around the face and then do a selection -> feather - 20px

8. Gaussian blue the selection now - quite big pixels - it's just on the texture layer to basically make it not show over the face area

9. then I grouped the two layers

10. new adjustment layer - 50% opactiy grey

11. painted white over the face to brighten it up to where it was pre texture layer

that's it

course my description isn't the best but I did basically what it says here:
http://redleafstudios.squarespace.com/red-leaf-inspiration/2008/3/27/texture-tutorial.html (from the thread of Joel Garcia the guy doing the awesome images)

and here:
http://www.dgrin.com/showthread.php?t=2478

I did some final adjustments in Lightroom

Hope that helps - basically if you read the two threads above you'll be doing what I did

cheers
Jase

Qarik

technically superb! great original photo as well..the only thing that doesn't jibe with me is more artistic in nature. You have great youthful happy shot of your kid but the texture is to me is dystopic, grimy, earthy, etc. If your subject matter was more gritty I think it would have been a better match. just a thought

madigg

Got is all except how to do this... "painted white over the face to brighten it up to where it was pre texture layer" could not get the face back to normal color... thanks

jasonstone

madigg wrote:

Got is all except how to do this... "painted white over the face to brighten it up to where it was pre texture layer" could not get the face back to normal color... thanks

Ah the colour is a different thing - that will be because of the blend of the colours of the texture and the photo.

I tried putting a layer mask on the texture layer - but to be honest I didn't manage to do a very good job yet - it looks too fake where I removed the texture

Always something to learn!!

Cheers, Jase

jasonstone

Qarik wrote:

technically superb! great original photo as well..the only thing that doesn't jibe with me is more artistic in nature. You have great youthful happy shot of your kid but the texture is to me is dystopic, grimy, earthy, etc. If your subject matter was more gritty I think it would have been a better match. just a thought

Hi Qarik - that's actually a good point. Honestly I have been experimenting with whatever texture images I can grab for free from the internet.

Once I get some more practise then I'll try to start blending with textures that I'll take myself and then I can try to match the texture and photo a bit better.

Thanks for your comments

Cheers, Jase