Project 5: Focus and Filters

One of the things I learned the most from reading Chapter 8 of the text was to use more than one filter for each image. When I have used filters before I've just tried applying one per image. Using more that one filter can add more depth to an image effect as well as creating a dizzying array of possibilities. I felt pretty overwhelmed at the possibilities.


Here is my original photograph:

This is a photo of part of the Mendenhall refuge in Juneau I had taken a couple years ago. It was taken during really rainy, stormy weather so it has sort of a painterly effect to begin with. I decided to try to apply three different artistic effects to the photograph. The first was to make it look like an oil or acrylic painting. The second was to make it look like a pastel drawing. The third was to make it look like a watercolor and ink painting. You really need to enlarge these images to really see the effects. They don't show up as well as these smaller images on this blog.


This first image I tried to make look like an oil or acrylic painting. I first choose Paint Daubs as a filter and adjusted the brush size and sharpness until I liked it. I also chose Wide Sharp for brush type. The result created an effect that looked like painting but it lacked depth. I created a new filter layer in the filter gallery and experimented around until I found the Dark Strokes filter. That added the darker color of paint strokes to the image. At first it was way too dark so I adjusted the black intensity filter down to 0, which still darkened the image but did not overwhelm it.


The second image I tried to make look like a pastel drawing. I chose the rough pastels filter from the filter gallery and then added a new filter layer. Then after experimenting with some different filters I also chose the sprayed strokes filter. Combined with the rough pastels filter it seemed to make the pastel effect look more natural.


The last effect I tried was to try to make the image look like a watercolor with ink drawing. I chose the watercolor effect from the filter gallery and then added another filter layer and choose ink outlines. I adjusted the ink outlines to minimize the amount of dark ink marks on the image.
I've found that experimenting with which filter you apply first does make a difference. I've also realized that the size of your final image is important in how you adjust these filters.