Everything Old is New Again

I've been going through some of my older photography. I shot this photo of a Buddhist monk in Tokyo during the mid-90's on film and had the roll converted to Kodak's PhotoCD format. Because I was unhappy with the overall quality, these images have languished for years. Now flash forward to the present. Photoshop CC has so many excellent dynamic range recovery capabilities now that I am able to extract much more contrast and detail out of these images than in the past.

I used Jixipix's excellent Aquarelle app to transform the photo into a watercolor appearance. I used some John's Watercolors brushes to distress the edges, as well as lighten some of the image itself.

Windy City Perspective

I've been playing around with Painter X3's new Perspective Guides, which can be used to snap brush strokes to the lines of perspective. In this image, I started with a shot I took of Chicago from the top of the Hancock Center. I aligned a 3-point perspective grid to match the photo, then drew in the building shapes. The original photo is a daytime scene; I used a new color palette to change the cityscape to a nighttime scene.