A few closeups of my face and hand with a Canon Powershot SD200...

[blanket_art]

http://www.personal.psu.edu/eja144/eyes2.jpg

2.
http://www.personal.psu.edu/eja144/eyes1.jpg

3.
http://www.personal.psu.edu/eja144/face6.jpg
4.
http://www.personal.psu.edu/eja144/hand1.jpg

[tim]

Oooh, #2's great, and #4's pretty cool too. #1 seems a little bright. Nice processing :)

[dewmuw]

#2 is stunning - great work.

[mikesd]

I'm on board, #2 all the way!

[Agaric]

Have to agree #2 is the bomb.
Nice work

[Ballen Photo]

These are REALLY Cool! I like 2 & 4 the best. Nice work! :D
-Bruce

[blanket_art]

hey thanks for the comments people, I'm glad you like 'em.

there should be more to come soon, I have about 200 photos to sort through and resize for the web!

[tim]

How'd you do #2? I'm going to try copying the shot and processing myself some time :)

[blanket_art]

Well first I plugged my camera into the tv so I could use the television as a viewfinder. It really helped me frame up the shot, rather than snapping away blindly. Also make sure you take the original shot in color.

Once the shot is taken, load it into photoshop. First, chage the mode to grayscale or desaturate completely. Then select the whole background using the rectangular selection tool and copy it. Once the B&W is copied, use the history panel to revert to the original color photo then paste the B&W over the color. Finally you need to cut the eyes out of the B&W layer to allow the color layer to show through. This part can be tricky because if you don't cut the eyes out perfectly it will look crappy. So take your time and make sure the selections around the eyes are as perfect as you can make them. Once this is done, you should be left with a B&W face and colorized eyes.

If you want to take it a step further, you can adjust the color of the eyes by selecting the color layer and going to "Image>Adjust>Color Balance" in the tool bar.

Finally, to get that high contrast old-film effect, select the B&W layer only, then go to "Filter>Artistic>Film Grain" and mess around with the settings until the desired effect is reached.

Hope this helps, if you have any questions along the way feel free to send me a pm.

[tim]

Thanks blanket_art. There's a simpler way to do that using the history brush which avoids having to mess with layers. I'm not an expert so you'd be better off googling it than me trying to explain what I do. The bit I really wanted to know was "film grain" and "color balance", thanks :)

[MegaTrixel]

Ditto. These are cool! Especially #2.

[blanket_art]

ahhh, see that's why I need a newer version of photoshop! I still use PS 5.0 which doesn't have a history brush. :o

[blanket_art]

ok here's a few more...

1. this first one will be the cover to the album I'm working on, the band is "blanket" and the album is called "EVE"...

http://www.personal.psu.edu/eja144/EVE.jpg

2. http://www.personal.psu.edu/eja144/eyes5.jpg

3.
http://www.personal.psu.edu/eja144/face1.jpg

4.
http://www.personal.psu.edu/eja144/face3.jpg

5.
http://www.personal.psu.edu/eja144/face5.jpg

6.
http://www.personal.psu.edu/eja144/face7.jpg