In case anyone is interested in the major steps involved in yesterday's post, here is a run down of them. Top Row: Original image scan of a 4x6 photo. I scan big: it's a 11Meg file. Next the original has been cropped to put the subject more towards the center, because I knew I wanted to use the MOSAIC/Vignette tool. The entire image was given this treatment. The effect is to put very small 'stones' in the center of the image. They are almost undetectable, but they get slightly larger as they move towards the edges. This is OK, what I really wanted was the ragged vignette the filter produces. The 'filling' of the mosaic is black. Once the vignette was achieved, I reran the MOSAIC filter with the largest 'stone' setting and turned the vignette OFF. This created a very rough design and this killed a lot of the clutter on the shelves, etc. You can see some of this rough texture around the dancer's head. The next shot of the dancer is just that. She's been cut to a separate file and cleaned up with the eraser tool. In this image, as in the reworking of 'Spoils...', I learned that the eraser is your friend. It has several settings: hard to soft edge and transparence which emulates the pressure of the eraser. Big background clutter was cleaned up with 0 transparency and 0 softness: this is the BIG eraser setting. It destroys everything. For close work around the dancer's outline I used a soft edge (99) and a medium transparency (44). WIth this arrangement, one can edge the eraser in and achieve a softer edge to the erasures. Moreoever, it takes several applications as the color is 'worn' away rather than just wiped off. It takes longer, but it gives a LOT more control. This figure HAD to be clean, because it would be pasted into the mosaic. It was also setting up for other effects I wanted and would become the baseline figure for them. The next image of the dancer shows that she has been treated to an overall mosaic effect. I used medium 'stones' and the objective was the skirt. I wanted it to blend more into the background (remember the armor from 'Spoils...?'). So this image was pasted onto the very grainy/stoney basic vignette image. The next image is the top layer of the dancer. It's derived from the first 'cutting.' I removed the skirt where it just flowed away from her body. I retained the portions where her leg was visible under the drapery as I liked the transparent effect. This effect was lost in the middle image. This image, sans skirt, would become the top layer of the dancer. The end result of this layering was much like the second image. Only one small problem: the foot and the left hand were intruding too much into the black vignette. This was easy, but first a trip across the bottom row. The head shot shows the coarseness of the stones in the MOSAIC filter. If the image were smaller, stones this size (largest) would be even more coarse-looking and the background details would become even more abstract. The actual sizes, etc. are a matter of personal choice. The highlints in the hair are bounce-back from the flash from the cabinet. I liked the effect and wanted to keep it. The eyeshadow was touched up and darkened ever so slightly. The foot by itself shows in more detail the effect of treating the dancer's image to the medium 'stones' of the MOSAIC filter. The final image is the final effect: a simple black, oval vignette was added. It blended perfectly with the MOSAIC/VIGNETTE and was adjusted to retain the ragged edges of that filter. However, it was also adjusted to slightly cover the left and and the foot thus bringing them back into the overall image. The background for this set is something I found somewhere sometime. It seemed to fit! Enjoy; thanks for viewing.