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Inda is a project manager at Mind’s Eye, Incorporated in downtown Atlanta. Mind’s Eye is a special event design and production company– never a dull moment over there! About two weeks ago Inda coordinated a photo shoot and invited us to photograph the staff of Mind’s Eye on a theatrical set they created in their staging area. Luckily, the staff?are all very good looking people so the challenges were mostly technical 😀
This was the first time I have used my Dynalite strobe lights in over 12 years, so it was more than a little challenging to remember how to work with?flash heads, umbrellas, flash meters, portrait lighting, posing models etc.
The "painterly" look of Inda’s image was achieved by applying Gertrudis graphic enhancement software to the digital photograph. Gertrudis is available on the Windows platform and is coded by a guru in Argentina named Enrique Nieloud. Gertrudis quickly produces some exceptional brushed and color-enhanced effects to photos.
The program knows some important secrets – Enrique has programmed it to analyze the colors and directions of objects and lines in a photograph. Then it interprets the vectors in such a way that the brush strokes and colors it creates follow those directions, creating painterly illusions in just a few minutes. Areas can be painted in, then refined or made more coarse with a few simple settings. There is no need to undo any part of an effect– one simply chooses a different setting and the?program erases the past effect as it creates the new one.
This has to be the best and simplest inexpensive digital painting program we’ve ever found. Combined with Photoshop, Gertrudis is an addictive image enhancement tool.? We are spoiled forever.?
Now, about the background– Inda was photographed against a brightly lit white slide screen to make it easy to separate her out and replace the background in Photoshop. The background is created using a Photoshop plug-in called AlienSkin EyeCandy 5 Textures-Stone Wall-Patio.
The procedure we use with Gertrudis involves opening the original photo in Photoshop to correct the composition, color and contrast. Then we open the corrected image in Gertrudis to make it a painting. Sometimes it goes back to Photoshop for further enhancements (such as embossing) and then back to Gertrudis, until the image is just the way we like it. With some practice, a digital photo can evolve from an original to a finished painting very quickly.
May 2nd, 2006 at 5:01 pm
Dear Charles,
Thank you for your post. The drawing is very nice.
I’ve put the Inda portrait with the link in the users gallery.
Also I’ll put a reference to your page in the Gertrudis Graphics Blog.
As far as I know you have the Gertrudis PS version. Please, let me know if you wish the Pro version.
thanks again
– Enrique