I don't know why I do it, but I keep choosing images with featureless, flat or just not there faces. I've been cleaning and painting and burning and hoping for the best. I was sitting here this afternoon, backdoor open, watching the male cats frantically scent marking the deck because there was a strange cat out there last night, pondering three more faceless people to fix. I'd cleaned and done a basic paint on the baby and I wanted a way to emphasize what I'd done - and maybe bring up his/her facial contours. I thought maybe something like Find Edges would help but that wasn't what I wanted. I used Emboss on the baby's face and set the layer to Soft Light. I was impressed with myself :) I'll have the white bits to clean up but it did make a difference. He/she looks less like the Pillsbury Doughboy and more like a baby with actual, real facial features. I'm not finished playing with the face, but I was so pleased with the result I thought that I'd share. I'm sure our Chris has many more faceless people to spring upon her unsuspecting volunteers.
(http://i241.photobucket.com/albums/ff264/Charlene5_photos/baby.jpg)
My new avatar is honor of Himself, Mister Type A Personality taking a week off work because he had vacation days he was going to lose. He's been underfoot, in my way, and telling me how things ought to be done since last Saturday. The avatar is in honor of my mood :)
MJ
What a good idea MJ, Emboss really brought in more detail and it looks very natural! :up2:
Hannie
I'm so glad you shared that one! Very impressive results indeed! I'm definitely gonna file that one away for future reference...
Your final comment and then looking more closely at your avatar made me chuckle out loud! (A sympathetic, but much needed, chuckle!) What a great picture!
MJ, thanks for the tip. I use Emboss and Soft Light for regular pictures, but haven't even thought of it using it like you--great example. What I really like about Emboss is that I you can start out low, somewhere around 1-3 and if that doesn't work you can increase it up as high as 5. Past that, I'm not sure about the results.
I love your avatar! :funny:
Margie
The cat in the picture is Milo, our 19 year old Maine Coon cat who is actually a big, docile baby who can't even produce a proper meow. He squeaks. He once belonged to our next door neighbors. When they moved in they had a baby daughter. The minute she started to walk she started chasing poor Milo around and he decamped, injured dignity and all, to my house and refused to go home. He's been here five years. The neighbors have since moved on.
My daughter caught him just as he started to open his mouth to yawn - she'd interrupted his nap to take a picture.
I'm slow, I only just realized there was text underneath the faceless baby picture. MJ, you are a riot! (http://bestsmileys.com/lol/4.gif)
Hannie