smudgepainter

This is my smudged version of a lovely portrait of his son that Jeff posted at the DPReview Retouching Forum a couple of days ago. Jeff's username at DPR is jeffjmr.

C&C please.



-- Marty

Great job on this....I really think you have done this proud!!!

Excellent

Best wishes

Ray

Looks great Marty!

Thank you both very much for looking and for your compliments.

Here's what the original looked like:



So, you can see that there were some issues here that had to be dealt with.

I tried to smudge the BG leaves several different ways, none of which was any good. So I decided to put him into a "studio" setting instead.

I avoided the challenge of the shirt texture by smudging it out entirely.

Then, there were his freckles. They're hard to see in this small image, but trust me, he has oodles of them. I felt that they sort of defined the boy at this age, and therefore had to include them in the painting. But, how many to include? How to reproduce them? I finally decided to paint a selection of them onto the final image using an inverted edge mask on a blank layer. It's the kind of mask I use when doing edge sharpening.

I'd really be interested in hearing what other smudgers would have done with these "problems."

Best,
-- Marty

Great work Marty

If i had tried it i would like you, changed the background leaves ( might of painted them ? )

As for freckles they would of stayed (not sure how i would of done them though). I do tend to leave freckles, moles, scars, etc in, i once done a face with a lot of small moles, the owner complained back to me that i had reduced the moles by 2

Palms

Thanks for looking and commenting. You only left out 2 moles. I must have left out 200 freckles. As I said, he had oodles.

Anyway, thanks for the compliment. Much appreciated.

Best,
-- Marty