Man this shading stuff takes forever!

Mr Toast

Mr Toast

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Aug 1, 2002
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www.mrtoast.com
As many of you know, I am working on a rather involved Maidens piece at the moment. I am working with one rule this time... everything is be hand done! (i.e. no quick photoshop cut & paste and then working/brushing/touching up the image to fit another picture this time...).

Anyways, I got bored working with the backdrop, so I started working with Linda's pic, and although the gal I have on the canvas doesn't look bad, the face doesn't look quite like Linda yet.

And I've been working on her for a few days now! I'm going BUGGY!!!

For those of you that haven't experienced just what a shading nut I am, witness the piece below...

maddaughters2.jpg


The mummy chick in the middle isn't mine (although I gave her those legs), but other than her, the majority of that image is hand done. Note the 'Timecop Betty' at the left, which incidentally isn't done yet... You can get an idea of just how I like to blend colors a bit examining that piece. the 'Tree Betty' at the right is another fine example of my brushing technique. Remember that I knocked those out quickly, and in their cases strong coloration works.

When working with a face like Linda's (which is very fascinating to begin with; I like her beauty), well getting just the right color balance is a little frustrating at the moment...

Hair I can do, and is no big thing. Arms & legs I do well too... Faces - well there's a reason I haven't drawn people all these years! No time like the present to learn :p

So, anyways, I'm done for the night and just needed to share my uphill battle. Everyone keep their fingers crossed; I would like to get this thing done before New Years!!!
 
As always, I'm impressed, Mr Toast! "Chapeau bas", as we say in French! (it means I take my hat off to congratulate you)

If I may, I have a little question for you. I took a picture recently at a Sinergy gig and it is screwed. I'd just like to know whether, according to you, I can hope to correct it with a computer... A yes or no is enough, I'll sort something out if it's a yes...

The picture is here:

http://thibaut.cousin.free.fr/metal/photos/SinergyLyon20021120/S14.jpg

Thanks!
 
Originally posted by Mr Toast
Mind if I take a crack at cleaning that up for you? Trying to recover bad images goes with the job here...
Click to expand...

Please do! It was not my intention to give you extra work, but if you feel like it, I would be happy!

Will you tell what kind of tool you used?
 
By the way, I could give you a higher resolution picture. This one is 600x400 but the original one is 1800x1200. Interested?

I'm asking because I'd like to print the picture once it is corrected and maybe 600x400 is too small for that...
 
I'll play with it over the weekend... BTW, do you just want the two people there cleaned up or do you want the yellow streaks completely gone? (I can make that look pretty cool with leaving the streaks around the fringes...)
 
Originally posted by Mr Toast
I'll play with it over the weekend... BTW, do you just want the two people there cleaned up or do you want the yellow streaks completely gone? (I can make that look pretty cool with leaving the streaks around the fringes...)
Click to expand...

No, the people are OK... It's all the light effects that bother me. Thanks!
 
Wow Toast... I can't wait to see what the finished product looks like! I'd gladly get a poster made out of that if you can get me a high enough resolution scan to work with once it's done. The girls have gotta love this idea.
 
Originally posted by Mr Toast
Here's what I have so far(got tired chasing the yellow streaks for a bit...)

http://www.k6plus.com/tjstuff/ironmaidens/matcauthronpic.jpg

will that do?
Click to expand...

Oh, yes! Thanks a lot, Mr Toast! This picture is quite important in my eyes, so I'm very, very happy to see it fixed! :) :)

If I may ask, what tool did you use? On my first tries, I used that tool (don't know the name) that copies the neighbourhood of a point elsewhere in the picture (you click somewhere to leave an anchor, and then you start "painting" at some other place). Is that the right tool to start?

Thanks again!!! You rule!
 
Posted by Matcauthron
If I may ask, what tool did you use? On my first tries, I used that tool (don't know the name) that copies the neighbourhood of a point elsewhere in the picture (you click somewhere to leave an anchor, and then you start "painting" at some other place). Is that the right tool to start?
Click to expand...

The tool you are thinking about is the clone tool, and yes I did use that fairly extensively in that repair job. I also used a regular paintbrush in spots to restore some areas that needed help. In particular, I had to redo the speckles in the garment, and painted in a texture for the cloth as well...

I also selected some specific areas and pulled some yellow out (selective color is an awesome tool), played with the brightness/contrast, hue/saturation, and also sharpened then blurred things as necessary to restore some lost detail... I know all this other stuff sounds like a lot of work, but we do it here on a daily basis - you should see how much work we do to the photos for our paper! (And yes, we are #1 in our category for quality in our company, which owns quite a few papers...)

Photoshop 7... it makes an awesome artist out of me!!!

I've done better, but at that point my eyes were buggy. Glad to be of help!
 
Originally posted by Mr Toast
The tool you are thinking about is the clone tool, and yes I did use that fairly extensively in that repair job. I also used a regular paintbrush in spots to restore some areas that needed help. In particular, I had to redo the speckles in the garment, and painted in a texture for the cloth as well...

I also selected some specific areas and pulled some yellow out (selective color is an awesome tool), played with the brightness/contrast, hue/saturation, and also sharpened then blurred things as necessary to restore some lost detail... I know all this other stuff sounds like a lot of work, but we do it here on a daily basis - you should see how much work we do to the photos for our paper! (And yes, we are #1 in our category for quality in our company, which owns quite a few papers...)

Photoshop 7... it makes an awesome artist out of me!!!

I've done better, but at that point my eyes were buggy. Glad to be of help!
Click to expand...

I'll remember the texture thing... and the sharpen/blur advice.

Once again, a big thanks!
 
The lasso tool can save you some grief... that way you can concentrate on/make color adjustments to a specific area (example: the hairdo only) to make your changes without affecting the whole picture...

One other thing Photoshop 7 has which I find extremely useful is the history window, which allows you to 'go back in time' should your current changes turn out to be bad ideas... kind of like the undo command but you can go back quite a few steps, and maybe do some before/after comparisons.

I'm still finding out new things myself - I'm learning to use the history brush and another item that allows you to 'fade' your changes at the moment...
 
Baby steps!!!

It is tempting to really push sliders on brightness, contrast, etc, but often just a slight bump in one direction or another will bring the best results in the long run.

This also applies to airbrushing. If you work your way gently to the color you want to achieve, it can end up looking a lot better than if you just picked that color to begin with, and more natural too!

Admittedly, this takes time, but you should to be willing to take the extra time if you want awesome results!
 
Originally posted by Mr Toast
Baby steps!!!

It is tempting to really push sliders on brightness, contrast, etc, but often just a slight bump in one direction or another will bring the best results in the long run.

This also applies to airbrushing. If you work your way gently to the color you want to achieve, it can end up looking a lot better than if you just picked that color to begin with, and more natural too!

Admittedly, this takes time, but you should to be willing to take the extra time if you want awesome results!
Click to expand...

I think I started to understand that recently. I was scanning some old comic books for a page on my website. The colors had faded quite a bit and at first I couldn't correct them as I wanted. Then I discovered that if I corrected luminosity and contrast together, but small step by small step, I got a better result. :)

Thanks!
 
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