Challenge #12 Results!

[kerravonsen]

The results of Challenge #12 "False Colours" are:

Embodiment of style
First:
by vilakins

Second:
by siluria

Third:
by kerravonsen

I Just Like It
First: (a tie!)
by siluria
by kerravonsen


Second: (a triple tie!)
by vilakins
by siluria
by siluria


Third: (another triple tie!)
by vilakins
by kerravonsen
by kerravonsen


Mod's choice
by sallymn


Thank you, everyone!

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

NOTE: Due to naarmamo in August, your challenge for next month is to participate in that; in other words, we are on hiatus next month, and will be back in September.

Now, discuss! This was a hard one this time, so I'm sure everyone would really appreciate information on people's techniques.

Comments

[sallymn.livejournal.com]

I sure would :)

I did find it hard, probably because although I do a lot of monochrome or graded-colour icons, trying to use blatantly unattural colour didn't come at all natural to me...

[kerravonsen]

Thanks, everyone! Here's what I did with mine...


I did a lot of experimentation and tweaking with this one before I got something I liked.
1. Cropped an image of the Tenth Doctor from "The Runaway Bride" where he was looking particularly Oncoming Storm.
2. touched up the background a bit to get it a bit more uniform behind his head (my favourite Gimp plugin: Smart Remove Selection) (l1)
3. Copied l1 and desaturated it (l1-d)
4. Copied l1 and applied and undid lots of gradient maps to it until I found one that I mostly liked (GIMP -> Colors -> Map -> Gradient Map); it was a rainbow-y one (l2)
5. Copied l1-d and applied a black-and-white gradient map to it (similar to what I'd used in my digital art of Sapphire & Steel in my gallery); this makes an interesting sort of shading. (l3)
6. Set l3 to "burn" mode. This step and the next were also was subject to a lot of experimentation, because I was trying to make the image in l2 darker but not too dark...
7. Made a copy of l3 and set it to "multiply" and set the opacity to 50%.
8. The "Bad God" text I did first by taking a "copy visible" and "paste new layer" of the image, then rotated it -90 degrees, so I could look at how it looked with the text. Then when I'd decided on the font and size, I set the text layer to image size, then rotated it +90 degrees (and hid the copy-visible layer).
9. The border was made up of four rectangles of decreasing size at 50% opacity, rotated to make the four sides.
10. The "Bad God" text was originally white, but I duplicated that layer and did a gradient fill on it (with a gradient I made by picking the red and yellow from the image and making them foreground and background colours).
11. I tweaked the text by setting "Bad God" coloured layer to "grain merge" mode, and setting the original white "Bad God" layer to 50% opacity.
12. As a finishing touch, I erased a single-pixel-wide line from the long edges of the rectangles in the border.


As a contrast, this one was actually simpler, though I did end up doing a fair bit of doing-and-undoing with this one too.
1. Started with a photo of barbed wire I'd taken during my Easter holidays this year.
2. After some failed experiments, duplicated the original layer and used a layer mask to mask out everything except the barbed wire itself. (l1)
3. Duplicated this one and did some tweaking (I forget what, probably increased the contrast or something) (l2)
4. Duplicated the original layer; used "select layer mask" to get the outline of the barbed wire, then used "smart remove selection" to remove it. (bl1)
5. Used Iwarp on bl1 to reduce and remove the brown parts of the image.
6. Used the smudge tool on bl1 to make it smudgy greenish not-quite-smooth looking layer.
7. Experimented with colour inversion and gradient maps and didn't get anything I liked at all.
8. Made a white background layer (white) and put it underneath l2 (hiding l1).
9. Layer bl1 above l2 in difference mode.
10. Plasma layer (Filters -> Render -> Clouds -> Plasma) above bl1 in difference mode (wash1)
11. Duplicate l2, apply layer mask, desaturate (l3), put above wash1, mode "Grain merge".
12. Text "Barbed" in a barbed-looking font. Mode "Grain merge".
13. New transparent layer (shad1).
14. Alpha to selection on Barbed layer. Make shad1 active. Grow selection by 1 (or 2?) Bucket fill with black. Gaussian blur (2-5, I'm not sure). Layer-move shad1 down and to the right.
15. Alpha to selection on Barbed layer. Make shad1 active. Delete selection. This needs to be done because since Barbed is in Grain merge mode, the shadow layer is showing through.
16. New transparent layer (border1); add 1-pixel black border.

[siluria]

Thank you for the votes! :) This was a really hard challenge! I normally love making icons that have bright colours in them, but I always try to get them as natural as possible, and just tinker with brightness and contrast... this was something entirely different!!

All of the icons I made had one or two layers in common - a 'color' and a 'hard light' or 'darken' layer. I use PSP and tried a lot of different methods to change the original colours. The only way I could come up with was to pick a colour from the palette that was several shades darker than I wanted to use and with the paint brush on a new layer, paint over the areas I wanted to change with the selected colours, and then set that layer to 'color'. I found that generally wasn't dark enough, so I filled another layer with a dark colour and set it to 'darken' or 'hard light'. Some worked, some didn't so it was definitely a trial and error challenge :)

[kerravonsen]

but I always try to get them as natural as possible, and just tinker with brightness and contrast... this was something entirely different!!

I know, it goes against all one's instincts! It was double challenge because it wasn't just unnatural colours, but trying to make it look good at the same time.

[vilakins.livejournal.com]

I played around a lot with the others, but 'alien dawn' was actually very simple. As far as I remember, it was a sunset picture with a transparent layer set to 'colour' on which I did two separate rectangular selects into which I poured two colours I liked. Then I added plain white text.