TEMPUSMASTER PHOTOGRAPHY

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I'm in the process of developing a series of articles on life in Japan and wanted to include some sketches. I considered using photographs, but after experimenting with color, monochrome, and sepia I just wasn't happy with the results. What I really wanted was something closer to an old fashioned sketch. Just the highlights, quickly done, without all the distracting details.

Unfortunately my sketching skills are almost nil. I have trouble drawing something as simple as a round circle. They always end up looking more like eggs.

So finally, almost in desperation, I started experimenting with Paint Shop to see how close I could come to what I wanted. After a lot of trial and error, and a little bit of midnight oil, I arrived at a process that produces fairly good results.

• Crop the original photo
• Adjust levels
• Convert to monochrome
• Edge detect
• Remove noise
• Adjust gamma
• Adjust brightness and contrast
• Convert to color
• Adjust color balance to 'colorize'

I'm still playing around with the settings, but definitely feel that I will be able to make this work well enough to get the sketches I need. Here are a few examples.

Photo sketch of a stone bridge near Kamakura:

The original photo:

Photo sketch of the Kamakura Budda:

The original photo:

You can see more of my photo sketching experiments in this album - Photo Sketching

Posted by Lem on January 2, 2004 | Permalink | Email this post

Comments:

I think your work is great. My heart is in Japan
because of the deep friendships there. I will never be able to see Japan except through sites such as yours. Please keep up the good work and thank you very much for sharing this with me.

Posted by: William D. Brecht | May 1, 2004 6:39:00 AM

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