Re: [Tutorial] Before - After Postwork
Posfan and others really put a lot of work into their post-render editing, and it pays off for them in great results. For the lazier among us (like me) a lot can be still be accomplished with less effort using just five simple layers. I read about the basics of this technique on some photography website a while ago and often use it on my images. I use PaintShopPro, so my brief descriptions apply to that program but if you use
photoshop or something else the process is very similar.
1) Open your render in the image editor program and fix any obvious flaws like using a clone brush to cover body parts sticking through clothes, using a soften brush on sharp edges and
Posette's collar/shoulder joint, etc.
2) Duplicate the original image layer four times so you have five layers all together.
3) On the bottom layer, flood fill the whole area with white (RGB 255)
4) On the second up from the bottom layer, make a sepia-toned version. In
PSP for example, on the Title Menu go to Adjust>Hue and Saturation>Colorize and briefly play around with the color/saturation level to make the layer look like an antique photograph or old drawing.
5) On the third layer up from the bottom, leave the original image unmodified (except for whatever you did in step #1 of course)
6) On the fourth layer up from the bottom, make a greyscale image. In
PSP for example, from the Title Menu go to Adjust>Hue and Saturation>Hue/Saturation/Lightness; leave the hue and lightness at zero but set the saturation to -100.
7) On the fifth layer up from the bottom (i.e. the top) flood fill the whole area with black (RGB 0).
Now just play around with the opacity and/or blend mode of the layers to get many interesting results. The image below shows only a tiny number of possibilities (sorry if it's a little hard to see, I was trying to keep the file size down; the original image in (a) was around 600x600 pixels).
a) This is what the original image looked like. Nothing special here, it's just a stage scene I use for
Posette to try on clothes, so it's overlit so I can clearly see what's going on.
b) I made a fair looking black and white image by leaving the greyscale layer at 100 percent opacity (blocking off everything below it) and adusting the black layer opacity to enhance the dark areas of the image
c) The opacity of the black (top) layer was pretty high and set to overlay, the greyscale was turned off (I think, I should have kept notes as I went along)
d) I personally tend to like soft and desaturated-looking colors. Here the black layer was off, the greyscale was at low opacity, and the middle layer (original image) was set at low-medium opacity, allowing the sepia layer to show through.
e) I made a freehand selection around just
Posette and then deleted just the part of the image with her figure in the black layer, the greyscale layer, and the sepia layer. Then I set the black layer at near zero opacity and played with the opacity of the middle three layers (especially by turning down the middle layer) to make a sort of ghostly
Posette for Halloween
f) Continuing with the modification in step (e) where I cut the part of the image with
Posette out of most of the layers, here I put the top black layer at a lowish opacity, left the greyscale layer at almost full opacity, and put the middle (original image) layer at 100 percent opacity resulting in an image where
Posette seems to spring to life or jump out of the drab scene behind her.
This method allows for very fast results. It didn't take much longer to make the six frames a-f than it did to assemble the overall picture set posted here. Although I'm definitely not saying anyone should speed through their work (after all, you want to make something you can be proud of and that takes effort), if you're at that point where you're looking for something from your image but don't exactly know what that something might be this is an efficient way to experiment.
Endosphere
I won the Loebner prize 
! 
