Handpainting

Yea.
Remember those beautiful old handpainted photographs that people had done 'back in the day' before color photography became so cheap and easy?
A recent project in Digital Imaging was to create a 'handcolored' photograph using the computer and working on a photograph we were to bring from home.
(not steal from the internet - teacher being wary of copyright infringements)
I was going to "do" my Mother's graduation photo.
She actually paid to have that done back in 1950-something, but my sister got that copy. All I have is a smaller B&W version.
I decided I would do that little pix of my nephew instead.
I learned alot doing this project.
One thing I learned was that it was really good instinct on my part to go with a copy that I had color on, to refer to, first!
(That became very important in my learning curve here!)
I must have trash-canned a half dozen attempts before I realized that:
you got to go supper light in your color opasities and paint flow in photoshop & over lay colors on top of each other, just like you really would do painting, to even come close to NOT having a 'cartoon' caracter...
plus the whole idea of the project is to allow some of the grey scale to show through - that's the beautiful effect, of the handpaints, after all.
AND I learned that when you've done something you are pleased with, SAVE it.
This creates a cheap way of getting back to something you like, if you do happen to really screw up bad with your next set of choices.
AND speaking of choice, I found out that what I thought was a great color for lips and cheeks and hair really sucked!
I was soooo far off, so I resorted to flipping back and forth between my original colored photograph and the one I was trying to create.
I found that I could use the 'color picker' to select something from the cheek area, lets say... (and it would look like mud - really dark!) and then go to my project & turn that opasity way down on that color I just picked up, using the paint-brush tool, and... ureeka!
It would be much closer to what I really wanted. :P
So! That's the boring details.
Here's the Original, the grey scale, and what I finally came up with for the handpaint project.
So much fun I think I'll be doing that old photo of Mom, next...
. Original.....
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Grey-scale
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The Handpaint.
I think my sister will like it. =)
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Love and best regards to you and yours for a marvelous weekend!!!
D. ~