Some friends stopped by last Sunday for a visit and to introduce us to their new 9 week-old Kelpie puppy. He is going to be a challenge - full of smarts and herding instinct mixed in with a great deal of personality.

Thanks,
Jeff




The second includes some new processing experiments I have been trying to refine.

Those are nice I really like the look of #2. Did you use Lucis?

Hi Dee Dee,

You are very observant. I have been following a number of threads that have addressed the "Ilustrator" style of processing. A number of people posted they have been using LucisArt but still many others have been willing to share their process to achieve a similar look with much more control and sans the $160 for a plugin.

The process is lengthy, it involves a lot of shadow/highlights, high-pass sharpening, noise reduction, some 'simplifying' steps along with layer masking. I never approach any photo with a recipe but use whatever I think will work the best at the point I am am in the process.

Add onto all tose steps a little Paint with Light and some Orton and BAM(!) you end up with something like this.

If you do a search on dpreview/retouching forum for "Illustrator Style" and I think 'cspringer' was one of guys who was very helpful, you will get and idea of the direction I took.

Great fun and a time eater too!

Thanks,
Jeff

Thanks for sharing this Jeff. I did look that up and found a lot of good info there. I really like this look, although your photos stand very well on their own also!

Hey Jeff,

Thanks for sharing. I also think the 2nd shot is absolutely adorable. Very well done. I will definitely check out the style over at DPReview. I have never heard of the Illustrator style. Do you know which forum that it was posted in?

James

Thanks James,

Do a search in the "Retouching Forum" for "Illustrator Style" - that should get you going. If I have time I'll get more specific on some links. Also if you go onto Flickr and do a search for the "Strobist" Group and then from there do a search on "DAVE HILL", there is someone there who posted a step-by-step of his own similar technique of this style.

There has been a bit of hub-bub around trying to guess and duplicate the style of processing found at davehillphoto.com .

The bottom line is you must start with a low noise, well-lit, sharp-as-a-tack photo to begin with. The process creates a lot of noise and unwanted atifacts.

Have Fun!
Jeff

Original:

Just to make it easier to start to understand the process, here are a few links:


http://flickr.com/groups/strobist/discuss/72157594577686705/

lucis simulation
http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/read.asp?forum=1010&message=19007081
http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/read.asp?forum=1006&message=19841406
http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/read.asp?forum=1006&message=19841521
http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/read.asp?forum=1006&message=19929547
related – Robert N
http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/read.asp?forum=1010&message=19736123
http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/read.asp?forum=1010&message=19780526
http://www.emanueleferonato.com/... .../11/photoshop-lomography-photo-action/
Scott D
http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/read.asp?forum=1006&message=19815193
chip’s suggestion
http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/read.asp?forum=1006&message=19815792
http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/read.asp?forum=1006&message=19816750
jeff p
http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/read.asp?forum=1006&message=19817570

Marvin’s instructs
http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/read.asp?forum=1006&message=19901423
http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/read.asp?forum=1006&message=19905854

That should get you started.

Have fun,
Jeff
--

Oh, thank you for the links. I know I commented on these images earlier. Infact it was before DeeDee and I did say I did not like the contrasty image. I adore this image that you just posted. But now that I see the technique I realize why an entry that I was up against recently looked like a Rockwell illustratation - duh! And another duh- I probably did not press okay submit........
so here goes.... think press....
Great images of this charming pup.
Okay gang - how about another challenge on seeing how this technique works with our own images?????

YEAH would love this challenge! I would really like to learn how to do this well. And yes Jeff thank you so much for those links! They are gold. I have only had time to go thru the first few and am bookmarking as I go. I am finding like you said you do need the right kind of photo for it to work really well. Lots of fun to play with this, it would be a good challenge.

Not to be contrary, but I like the original (#3 above). The processed version (#2 above) looks over-cooked to me and makes me wonder if a lot of digital data got thrown out along the way. It might be interesting to watch the histogram during each step and track data loss through the process.