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Treating photographs

skip.knox

toujours gai, archie
Moderator
I'm looking for a digital artist who can take a wide variety of images and somehow create a sense of unity among them. I gather mostly old (19thc) photos, plus some artwork. I remove any modernisms such as telephone poles or cars. But I'm still left with great variety in the aesthetic.

I'm envisioning a way to have thirty to fifty images at my website, scattered across many pages of course, that would still look like they came from different photographers or artists, but would still look like they "belonged" to Altearth.

I know how to look for artists for a book cover, or a designer for a web site, but I'm danged if I can figure out where to shop for this sort of skill. All I know is, I have some technical comfort with Gimp/Photoshop, but I have the artistic sensibilities of a bullfrog.
 
If you are trying to do this yourself I think what you should do if you want it to look like the same artist worked on a set of photographs is to make a tell.
-Some artists will only photograph scenes where people are in- specifically a targeted person who will take up at least a quarter of the image as if it were for a fashion magazine.
-While other artists will only take pictures of the sea, and will also only do it from a distance so they can get a small percentage of the coastline in it.
-Some artists don't like people in their city photos at all, so they might take pictures only at dusk and dawn where the fewest people are on the street. This can be told through fog, warm pale sky's with fuzzy shadows on the ground.

Since you want them to look like they are from an alternate earth you may want to change signs/ logos/ business fronts. Bring in some of the world-building you have done. If there are monsters roaming the streets of towns normally then add monsters to some of the images. ( I am unsure on how alternate is your altearth so I am sorry if all this is useless)

If you are looking for an artist who can do this for you (I am sure you understand it will cost money.) Conceptart.org has a section for people to put up job postings. You could also ask around their forum or questions section for more information on how to do it yourself, or if there is somewhere better to search for artists for this.
 

skip.knox

toujours gai, archie
Moderator
Thanks, Lunaairis. I know enough of digital tools to do some of the editing you describe. Dropping in dwarves, gnomes, trolls, etc. is a challenge beyond me, especially since I tend to tweak each race a bit. Using standard imagery is too, well, standard. And anyway, dropping them into a scene convincingly starts to get beyond my skill set.

Thanks especially for the reference. That is really what I need. When I needed a map artist, I spent some time over at the Cartographer's Guild. I need a couple such for this project. If it were just one image, a trip to Fiverr or Deviant would do the trick, but this is a longer-term proposition. I'll check out Conceptart.
 

skip.knox

toujours gai, archie
Moderator
It's all in knowing the right words. We know all about that, don't we, fantasy writers?

It's called photo manipulation. A search on that brought up a ton of references. I'm on my way. Thanks again, Lunaairis.
 
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