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Portraits IV

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bringingyouthefuture

bringingyouthefuture

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Posting not sure if they existed - watercolor is a little rough still haven't mastered it along with uploading by dropping into text window lol :banghead:

 

To post pictures in this forum I click on the "painting" icon (near the emoticons and the "<>" and then copy paste the url of the picture. If it is not from the internet, I have to upload them (with this site, for example: https://imgbb.com/ )

 

uploading.png

 

 

hehe thank you!!

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“How do you 'accidentally' kill a nobleman in his own mansion?"

"With a knife in the chest. Or, rather, a pair of knives in the chest...”

The Final Empire, Mistborn Trilogy

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bringingyouthefuture

bringingyouthefuture

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Question!  So I think I have everything down for making good Portraits in Photoshop, except I missing the hard outlines (and some of the textures but not sure I can do anything about the texture).  Any suggestions for getting the hard outlines?  I would like the outlines to be color too - I could hand draw them, but is there is an easier method open to suggestions :)  Gonna try a few things myself.

“How do you 'accidentally' kill a nobleman in his own mansion?"

"With a knife in the chest. Or, rather, a pair of knives in the chest...”

The Final Empire, Mistborn Trilogy

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InsaneCommander

InsaneCommander

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Question!  So I think I have everything down for making good Portraits in Photoshop, except I missing the hard outlines (and some of the textures but not sure I can do anything about the texture).  Any suggestions for getting the hard outlines?  I would like the outlines to be color too - I could hand draw them, but is there is an easier method open to suggestions :)  Gonna try a few things myself.

 

I don't know how to do it with Photoshop. I'm using gimp and following this guide. I basically just do what is said there, but when I use the brush I have to guess how many times will be good. Apart from that I only change something when the picture doesn't look good and I try to blur more (or less) or use a different edge detect method. However, I don't really know everything that is going on. :blush:

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sign.jpg

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Hellcow64

Hellcow64

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I found the above image on https://kirileonard.com/rpg-illustrations/, which has some really nice DnD character portraits. Would anyone be able to have a go at turning it into a watercolor for me? Cheers in advance :)

Hello Bell88,

I'm glad you like my artwork but please do not use it without permission, and especially not to alter it. It's not free clip art and it's copyrighted under US law. 

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Hayte

Hayte

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Question!  So I think I have everything down for making good Portraits in Photoshop, except I missing the hard outlines (and some of the textures but not sure I can do anything about the texture).  Any suggestions for getting the hard outlines?  I would like the outlines to be color too - I could hand draw them, but is there is an easier method open to suggestions :)  Gonna try a few things myself.

 

Theres a bunch of different methods. The one I used most frequently for Deadfire watercolours is this method:

 

 

1. Start with a portrait you want to outline like so:

 

n778jY0.png

 

 

 

2. Convert it to greyscale and duplicate the layer so you have a lower and upper layer that looks like this:

 

MB6KdFj.png MB6KdFj.png

 

 

 

3. On the upper layer, invert colour and change the layer mode from "Normal" to "Dodge". Your layers should look like this:

 

MB6KdFj.png EC0kmdM.png

 

 

 

4. ...and when summed together, you should get a white image like this:

 

hINgAS1.png

 

 

 

5. Still on the upper layer, use a blur filter (gaussian blur, surface blur or smart blur). Now play around with blur radius and delta. Below are three different passes with different radius/delta values:

 

Uq3w5Qc.png 9Mj5NRH.png btJHDRI.png

 

 

 

6.  You can also combine different edge detect layers by adding, subtracting and dividing them into each other with layer modes. There are also some interesting ready made filter effects that produce interesting edge detects. GIMP for example has an artistic effect called "Photocopy" which produces an edge detect like this:

 

F9sn76v.png

 

 

 

7. When I have some good edge layers, I open them in Inkscape and trace bitmap. I use multiple scan (grey), stack layers, no smoothing and remove background. You will get results that look like this:

 

qsUPgg8.png GIpXW6z.png

 

 

 

8. When exporting your vector outlines from Inkscape, you need to save them as encapsulated postscript (.eps) or scalable vector graphics (.svg) files. This is because the vector outline can scale to any size but Photoshop wasn't made for editing scalable images (which is what Illustrator is for), so it converts vector images into raster images. These get pixelated when re-scaled. When you re-import your .eps/.svg files back into Photoshop, you will be asked what size you want the image to be.

 

 

 

Don't worry too much about the visual noise when doing various types of edge detect. You can remove this manually if you have to. I usually don't remove it with a black and white brush because this is very time consuming and often not necessary.

 

What I typically do is add my edge layers and create layer masks (full transparency) for each image. Then I "paint" into the layer mask everything I want to be opaque. Or if its less time consuming I will do it the other way around - set my layer mask to full opacity and paint into the layer mask everything I want to be transparent. This lets you choose what lines and what noise you want to be present in the final layer and it is completely non-destructive.

 

I find that the noise can help to achieve certain types of water colour or oil texture effects, so if it looks good, ill keep the noise and erase the outlines using a layer mask. Experiment with it.

Edited by Hayte
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Zaris

Zaris

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Tip for people with less time or patience than our amazing watercoloring team: in paint.net there is an automated option to create an effect like the Deadfire portrait. It’s under Effects-Artistic-Pencil Scetch: just slide coloring to max and size of pencil to min and you’ll get quite nice portrait. It doesn’t help with the convo backround, this one you’ll have to do the hard way; or just use a portrait that already has white/yellowish backround in it’s normal version. Hope it helps.

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bringingyouthefuture

bringingyouthefuture

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Can somebody help me with the water-colored versions of my pale elf character portraits?

 

Hey! Not the best but gave it a shot, still working on my versions - someone else maybe can knock them out if you don't like.. no judgement :no:

post-180781-0-11477600-1539820077_thumb.png

post-180781-0-76241100-1539820088_thumb.png

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“How do you 'accidentally' kill a nobleman in his own mansion?"

"With a knife in the chest. Or, rather, a pair of knives in the chest...”

The Final Empire, Mistborn Trilogy

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Kaylon

Kaylon

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Can somebody help me with the water-colored versions of my pale elf character portraits?

 

Hey! Not the best but gave it a shot, still working on my versions - someone else maybe can knock them out if you don't like.. no judgement :no:

 

Thanks, could you do the small version too?

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