GMIC is a versatile plug in, and you can change the settings at your liking.
Really nice your latest outcome. I like it.

Also used GMIC for the sharpness and contours. Then edit as a water colour painting.

Very nice.

Wow! Some very nice renditions of the evening primrose which was a beauty without doing anything to it. I thought I would try. .

Some duplication, Rodilius, change of saturation, lightness, hue, and sl sharpening.

One more try and blame this on Lyle. He got me hooked on the wicker effect he started and I keep going back and playing with it. I moved a lot of the settings around and did not keep track of what I did.

Thank you for your contributions, Pat. A very beautiful rodilius one.
Is there a wicker plug in or is this a method with several steps?

Ella, it is both. Lyle devised the method manually, and Samj, made a filter with all the steps. It is in G'mic, Testing, Lylejk.
See
viewtopic.php?f=11&t=16384&start=0p

https://gimplearn.net/viewtopic.php/Pat ... &start=30k

I changed many of the parameters to get the different effect on the primrose.

Thank you Pat, also for the links. I have a look at it.
There's so much I want to try out, I don't know where to start...
And first reading all the explanation or tutorials is timeconsuming also, certainly when English isn't your own language.

I have neglected this thread for a long time! So here are three photographs for anyone to play with.

david.

My attempts.

dinasset,

Great improvements of these three pictures. We had the same ideas! My results are quite similar.

Also giving me a chance to get used to Gimp 2.10 and RawTherapee which I am now using to process RAW images. It is a huge program and will take me a long time to understand all its capabilities!

david.

I see, David, but pay attention to the blue tones created by RT in boats1, they do not match (I mean the sky and the sea): with such a gray-blue sky you can't have such a vivid-blue on the sea (IMO).

dinasset,

I think you are correct, but I can't blame RT - I adjusted the sky and sea separately, so it is my fault!

david.

Here is my try on the flower. I used ian's noise reduction , high pass layer, and a small touch of color in the midtones.

Fran6,

I like your result very much. The addition of a little colour transforms the picture.
You have given me ideas!
My latest attempt.

david.

A nice one David ! I like more warm colors on the flower.

Tried Lyle's Wicker then placed original above and used grain merge.

I decided it was time for me to try to colour another photograph.
I found a picture of Grand Duchess Anastasia - one of the daughters of the last Russian czar. I cropped it to head and shoulders.
There is a problem with the "mottle" effect, particularly visible on the face. Does anyone know an effective cure for this? In mild cases anisotropic smoothing or selective gaussian blur will disguise this, but a solution for more extreme cases would be welcome for anyone who restores old photos.

I used the healing tool, but it results in a plastic appearance of the skin.

I would like to see other peoples versions.

david.

Wow, David! You did a beautiful job getting rid of the mottling and coloring. I would not be able to do any better on that in a million years. She does need eyelashes and eyebrows fixed, and the shape of her right iris is slightly distorted. I do not have any experience doing that that would suffice for this picture. To you experts out there, I need a good tutorial on eyebrows and eyelashes!

I have to thank you for your beautiful contributions to this thread.
David, you did a great challenge on that photo.
I have neglected this thread for a long time, too. But I can currently add some photos from a trip to Tenerife. I'll post some photos for you play on them.

@David
I do not take your challenge on Anastasia, too difficult for me if even yourself -a very capable retoucher- did a not good job, as you evaluated your own results. IMHO better to keep the original even if noised.