Topic: Paintshop pro experiment

[loonymoon]

I was experimenting with Paintshop Pro X2 last night and did this.




Converted the background to B&W and blurred it to make the bike stand out.

What do you think?

[Geeto67]

I think you made the bike look like it is floating. Really you could have gotten away with just the black and white.

when playing with blur tools you want stuff on the same plane as the bike (like the ground directly beneath it) to be in focus as well and for the blur to radiate outwards from the bike getting more blurry the further away an object gets from the bike.

[loonymoon]

I seem to have posted this twice... I tried to post this version but my connection then played up so I didn't realise it had actually posted, I then posted it again later.

Yes I know what you mean. I did try to create a depth of field effect by just blurring the background and not the ground the bike is standing on, but Icouldn't work out how to make it graduate to less blurry in the foreground. I'm pretty new to this sort of thing, so I just ended up with a line between blurry and non blurry that looked awful. I'm sure I could do it if I knew how to! I have ordered a book about PSP so perhaps that'll help me.

[ev0lve]

You might try making a few copies of the background (does PaintShop do layers?) applying your blur and then compositing them by erasing parts out with a soft brush. In Photoshop you could feather the edges of a selection and apply the blur to that. Maybe there's that functionality in PaintShop as well?

[loonymoon]

Yes I could do that. PSP has most of the functions of Photoshop I think, I'm just quite new to using it so far. I'm sure I can feather the edges of selections, but not sure I can feather them enough to make it look natural.

I used layers to make the image so yes I could add another couple of layers to make the blur more natural looking. It was getting rather late by the time I'd got to that stage and I couldn't think any more. Just cutting the colour image of the bike out of the background took ages..... but it does mean I can pretty much put it on any background now...

[ev0lve]

It really pops! Just pull the blur down directly under the tires/foreground a bit and it should look pretty natural.

[Bob Wessner]

Loonymoon,

Just curious, how long did it take you to 'develop' [pun intended ] the image?

[SteveD CB500F]

I manually cut a CB750 from the background for the nirvana logo. It took hours (using Photoshop CS) and I never did get the spokes.

How did you do that?

It was a gold K2, cutout, inverted and backed with blue:

[loonymoon]

It didn't take too long actually, probably only an hour to "cut  it". I think I was helped by the sun picking out the edges, also the image was only 3.2 megapixel, so I didn't have to zoom to far in to see it at a pixel level. The "edge finder" method on the selection tool helped a lot too.

I'm re-looking at it now.

This could become a thread for my experiments with the image... 

[Shenanigans]

I manually cut a CB750 from the background for the nirvana logo. It took hours (using Photoshop CS) and I never did get the spokes.

How did you do that?

It was a gold K2, cutout, inverted and backed with blue:

Hey steven, If you want I can have a shot of redoing that image for you.

I might have to sit here away so I might as well make the time useful 

[Tower]

@SteveD you must be a perfectionist.   What you have there is a nicely stylized rendering.   Too much detail might just take away from that effect rather than add to it?

[Shenanigans]

And while we are on the subject, has anyone used gimp? Is it worth check out?

[loonymoon]

Here's another version. A smaller size this time so the forum doesn't resize it and make it jaggedy edges.

[Tower]

Eaow!  That looks great! 3-D popout

[SteveD CB500F]

Hey steve, If you want I can have a shot of redoing that image for you.

I might have to sit here away so I might as well make the time useful 

Tower is right - it's stylised for the website so you don't need huge quality (especially when it's reduced to 100 pixels (or to 16x16 as it is on the favicon))

If I send you the picture of the K2, do you want to play with it?

[Shenanigans]

Hey steve, If you want I can have a shot of redoing that image for you.

I might have to sit here away so I might as well make the time useful 

Tower is right - it's stylised for the website so you don't need huge quality (especially when it's reduced to 100 pixels (or to 16x16 as it is on the favicon))

If I send you the picture of the K2, do you want to play with it?

Thanks but I have collect a large library of bike photos and I just came across the beautiful Norton commando that I think needs my attention for a bit.

@Loonymoon that photo almost reminds me of a HDR photo, very nice.