Challenge #6 Results!

[kerravonsen]

Sorry, I'm later than I intended to be. It's very hard to get things done when one has houseguests.
The results of Challenge #6: Shadow on the Wall are:

Embodiment of style
First:
by sallymn

Second:
by sallymn

Third: (a three-way tie!)
by siluria
by siluria
by kerravonsen

I Just Like It
First:
by sallymn

Second:
by sallymn

Third:
by sallymn

Mod's choice
by siluria

Thank you, everyone!

I've also revealed the entries in the challenge entry post.

Now, discuss! How, why, when, where, what...?

Comments

[siluria]

Well done sallymn!!! I adore the cat, I have to admit :)

And thank you very much for the Mod's choice! :) I played around with soft light and burn layers to try to get the bird dark enough, messed with fill and contrast layers to build up the colour of the sky, and after deciding that was a bit plain I found a stock image of a storm and added that.

I did find that this challenge wasn't quite as easy as I thought it would be. I guess when your subject is monochrome then you have to enhance everything else around it, which isn't where I normally concentrate :)

[sallymn.livejournal.com]

Your stormy sky is gorgeous and so is that texture behind the man :) I tried to do a floral one, but nothing came as good as kerravonsen's lovely rose (they all ended up looking like burnt crabgrass or something)

[kerravonsen]

but nothing came as good as kerravonsen's lovely rose

Thank you!

I hadn't actually set out to do a flower one; I was looking through my digital photos looking for trees, and the rose photo leapt out at me, probably just like the original roses had caught my attention when I was going for a photographic walk.

Instead of burning and changing contrast like y'all did, I cut out the background, and used the outline. It didn't hurt that the original was high-res, so when I reduced it to 100x100, it was more forgiving. I also cut and moved the withered-rose a bit closer to the blooming-rose so the image was more compact.

The background was a dusky pink gradient. I spent a lot of time (a) trying to come up with a good phrase to use, and (b) trying out different fonts for the words. The blurred outline around the "fade" was done by colour-picking the dark pink from the top left corner, doing a select-alpha on the word "fade", new transparent layer, grow selection, bucket fill, blur, and move the new layer underneath.

[siluria]

Oooh, I hadn't thought about cutting the background - I'm guessing you did that before resizing then?

[kerravonsen]

Yep.

Mind you, the rose one was the third icon I did for this challenge (I didn't enter the first one, it really didn't work, I gave up on it) and it was the only one where it occurred to me to cut out the background. The other ones I was trying Threshold and Contrast and stuff.

[sallymn.livejournal.com]

trying to come up with a good phrase to use... yep, the right text can make or break, and it can be hell (I have a little folder of 'finished but need text' icons waiting for Inspiration to Thwat Me Over The Head...)

[kerravonsen]

yep, the right text can make or break, and it can be hell

As you demonstrated this time around by changing the text on your Crow one at the last minute. 8-)

[sallymn.livejournal.com]

I was thinking of that - I though of the change en minutes after posting, while driving, and kicking oneself while driving is not a good idea...

[sallymn.livejournal.com]

{blushes furiously} Oh thank you everyone {blushes some more}

Describing how I did them is embarrassingly simple, but then I'm a simple person (and use simple GIMP :) As siluria said, it was a harder challenge than it looked, which is good sometimes - but finding silhouette-able pics that would reduce cleanly was my big bugbear (the absolute hardest was the 'wonderful world' one, which was never gonna come clean and sharp enough... muttergrumble)

The window one was a gift - I was googling for a shot of the moon through a window, and found this Japanese 'moon window' ad, all in browns. Greyscaled, fiddled thoroughly with the contrast and a very light burn, then covered up their rather scrubby floral arrangement with a tiny clip art cat and added a sky pattern (gradiented to make it look dusky) with the layer on 'darken only'... and that's basically it.

The crow picture (which made me think of M7's Josiah and his crows) was fairly dark anyway, so fiddling with and burning and screening it enough to get the background light made it nearly black and white anyway. I then found a cloudy sky picture, laid a light rain pattern over it to get the streaked effect and put it on top of the crow with 'darken only', then added text with a very very faint outer glow.

And the writing was an old ad I found, black and greying rather than white (the jpeg showed the original as fairly old) which just took clipping, contrast fiddling, a very light blue-to-green gradient, and a soft but wide outer glow on the text to make the white behind it look natural light rather than an outline...