CRITIQUE: PS - been playing with brushes

[Kerioak]

As mentioned elsewhere I want to really learn how to use PS so this week's studying has been on brushes - creating, adapting etc plus a little bit of other tweaking. As this is hardly photographic I thought I this might be the best place to put it ?

First a couple of the pictures used to create the brushes:

Then the result so far - if anyone knows how to get the brushes more solid looking I would appreciate your input - I did do Filter - Stylize - Find Edges but these were not really definite enough for what I wanted.

 

[Kerioak]

I guess this is no good and/or no one knows about the brush question going by the number of views against the number of comments

 

[adsayer]

It'd be interesting and more helpful for people wanting to give feedback I feel if you provided before & after shots christine

 

[Kerioak]

Hi Adam,
In what way - I put up a couple of "before" shots and the "after" result ?

The butterfly in the top picture is the one in the bottom left hand side and the seating/tree in the town shot is the isolated one in the globe

 

[JasonRS]

This is more a case of digital art than post processing or photo editing.

To get the brushes more dense you've got to get that density into the source image you use to create the brush.

Not my area of expertise I'm afraid, so can't offer any more advice.

 

[rereg2010]

I like the last image, not sure these are really my 'bag' though.

 

[SarahLee]

I think that's quite beautiful Christine

I also enjoy playing around in PS - For me the line where photography merges into graphic art is quite blurred and the extent that I use it depends on what I want as an outcome.
I make handmade cards as one of my other hobbies and quite often create this type of thing to print as a card.

I love the way that you've rearranged the elements in the final composition, the central "ball" with the benches has worked brilliantly.

Re: The brushes.
The central piece with the tree and benches looks spot on IMO . . . or did you want that denser again?

It's the butterflies that look to be a bit of a problem.
I quite like the soft ethereal look to them, but they could do with a bit more definition.
I think you're problem with these is the starting image. From the example you posted the original image looks a bit soft and blurred to begin with, and I don't think it's helped by the degree of white in that particular butterfly. There's not enough contrast there to really define the edges.

The sharper the starting image and the more definition around the edges the better the final outcome is IME - although the brush you've created from that particular one seems to be one of the best.

I've found that taking high pass sharpening a bit OTT on the start image helps with this sort of thing. Also adding each element on a separate layer and duplicating them up as needed can be useful.

Bear in mind that there may be far better ways of doing this though - I'm nowhere near an expert. I'm entirely self-taught and have sort of picked things up as I go along.

 

[Kerioak]

Thanks Sarah, yes the starting images could well have been the problem - I wanted the butterflies flying rather than feeding on the plants and they are not the easiest thing to keep track of and photograph. I mostly have white butterflies here, will try and get to one of the parks in town and see if they have something different. I will also try high pass sharpening . Yes, nearly everything was on a separate layer - ended up with quite a few layers