How do you do this?

Hi folks,

Im doing some advertising for a motorcycle magazine that has it's own promotional girls and I was wondering how you get this 'retro' painted look from a photograph?

I can get it as bright by altering the levels but it lacks the 'painted' look to it.

Any help appreciated....and no this isnt one of the girls...although they are equally as nice.....horrible job to do I know....but someone has to do it!

cut the girl out, make your background, go to Curves (Ctrl+M) and on the RGB channel push the Input values to 101 and the output values to 181 - or whereabouts.... just play around with diff settings - you'll get it

You're after that vintage look, like on ol' cans of beens from way back when ? Ha, I've been wondering just the same thing, so I'll follow this up...

well - there's more to it than just adjusting the curves - you could play with blending modes for the chick layer on a white background then select the girl layer when you achieve the look you want and copy it - along with the background underneath - save that on a diff layer - then ad it to your composition -
or you can manually airbrush shadows after you make her almost white....or....or....

Thanks Mihai....that works fine to get the same sort of brightness as the 'After Pic' above....but it doesnt look like it's been drawn/painted.....the After pic has a texture to the legs and bra.

whoops...sorry mate....keep going

lol - well - after you cut the chick from the rest of the photo - duplicate the layer, then desaturate it completely - auto levels - then run the "find edges" filter - go to levels, tick the (-) picker and click on your pic to remove extra grey areas - then blend that layer as "softlight" - you may have to manually delete some of the lines in the hair - I would use the smudge tool (still on the soft light, grey layer) to give it a bit of texture.....

[edit]= oh - and welcome to the forum

Thanks mate.....and thanks for the help....Ill have a fiddle with my women (so to speak!)