rbissett wrote:
A few post rendering experiments. Would like to know your reaction, pro or con.
Hi Bob,
Great collection of alternatives! Layering effects with different opacities to expose the original … or yet another partially opaque effect is a very effective technique, especially in Photoshop where the opacities can be tweaked as often as desired (along with adjustment layers and layer masks).
1. The blurred composite suggest a nice alternative, but as shown looks like the room would appear through the middle of my trifocals.
😉 I assume you're wanting to simulate depth-of-field. You should mask away part of the blur layer to allow part of the image to be in focus - perhaps from the carpet just this side of the bed to just past the pillow for example. In Photoshop, you would do that in an editable fashion with a mask layer - permitting you to play with the in-focus parts to an unlimited extent. ( I don't know what Paintshop Pro's capabilities are as far as dynamic masking.) Be sure to mask with a soft-edged brush so that the effect is feathered.
Something new in Photoshop CS (8, really) is a new blur mask that varies the amount of bluring according to the greyscale of the mask (alpha), providing variable depth of field as in reality. One of dozens of cool new things in CS over 7.0. You could fake the same thing to an extent by creating several blur layers at different blur amounts and attaching mask layers to each ... but a lot of work.
2. The Guassian noise composite is interesting, however I would still add a layer mask and feather the noise opacity in an interesting way using an irregular brush and a pressure sensitive Wacom tablet to give it a bit of "hand".
The thing I would comment the most about this image is that the noise is uniform throughout - which is what one would expect from Paintshop or Photoshop type applications. If your copy of Piranesi has arrived yet, do a similar noisy application that is attached to the surfaces ... note how Piranesi's depth-awareness allows the noise to have perspective according to the surfaces it is applied to ... the walls will look like the noise is applied to
them
and not as an overlay of the entire image. May not be what you want of course!
3. Starting to get more interesting, IMHO – and showing your experience as a fine artist on the orange wall of the 'impasto' filter image. Again, I think you would be impressed with how much more realistic and accurate your brush strokes might be with a Wacom tablet and Piranesi. On the other hand, I just got a copy of Corel Painter 8 – partly because it was on a cheap upgrade sale – but mostly because it ‘understands’ watercolor, oil, etc … down to being able to have your watercolor washes bleed into each other as in real life. You specify the wetness of a brush and the paper, have a tool to ‘dry’ things, or to spray the paper with water, etc. Oil brushes look like oil.
4. Gouche and colored pencil are nice!
5. Silkscreen … Architectural Batik? Way 60’s, man!
6. Pastel – perhaps my favorite…if you play with the depth of field a bit.
Lots of fun seeing your experiments … always fun to see how the same image can evoke a different feeling by post-work.
Enjoy!
Karl
One of the forum moderators
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