ok, gang, here's my latest crack at this shot. i took all the great advice i got here and elsewhere and tried to do this thing some justice. from a workflow standpoint, this is definitely the most ps intensive thing i've done yet, and regardless of the results, i believe it represents my best effort so far at "doing it right." as always, all advice appreciated.
oh...and about the stick and shirt tag...they stay. i'm a purist, and while i like the shot without the sucker stick, that's just not how it happened. as i've discussed this image with friends, they've also pointed out that the sucker lends a quirky twist to the image because it's sort of the last thing you'd expect this character to have. i like that.
pp method was about the same as i described for v2.0 but this time i got serious about using layers. each phase was on a separate layer, and i named them all...."blur background", "convert to bw", "dodge and burn, " etc. i also did some selective sharpening around the eyes, but the truth is the shot just wasn't sharp enough to start with. i dealt with the sucker stick by making a copy of the first bw layer after conversion and moving it to the end of the stack, because i knew everything i did between then and the finish was going to screw it up. then, as one of my final steps, i darkened the "stick layer" and used a layer mask to overlay the new stick onto the old one.
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wp.
