[Irma]

I've been working with this furry cow, Sorry don't know the propper name. to make a kind of painting effect. In the original its fur looks a bit messy and I thought maybe I could get nices traces here. I like the effect as it is, but I find it a bit blurry.

How do you see it? Do you have any advice to improve it?

What I have so far.




Original.
I made an HDR image of the original, and from here I started my painting effect.





I also thought about working the picture as a sketch, but I don't have any good tutorial to make sketches... If someone wants to share a tutorial, it would be great too.

Thanks so much for your help...

[Toad]

One problem with anisotropic diffusion is that it leaves the image very soft looking. Sometimes that works really well and sometimes it is just too soft. In this one, I would select some key bits of the image such as the eyes, ears and snout, and sharpen them. I think that will give the furry look without the effect of having lost critical sharpness.

[Irma]

Thanks Toad.

My main treatment is with paint daubs artistic filter. You can sharpen the strokes, but the problem is that when you apply sharpness some bright edges appear in most of the strokes.

here is a detail at 80% more or less.




I have tried to remove those over sharpening lines blurring the lightness channel, and diffusion but it is as you say it becomes a bit soft. I tried to do it manually with smudge tool, but it looks irregular somehow, and it would be a lot to do too. I worked also with find edges... merging a gradient map 50% gray and black to overlay and just get the lines, but the lines look so harsh...

Just now thinking possible if the gradient map is kind of beige and 50%gray... I will give another try anyway....

Thanks for your comment.

[Keith Alan]

I think what I would do is apply the diffusion using a selection like Toad said, but select a wide area around the eyes with the right amount of feathering (40-60-80 pixels?) then invert the selection so the blur gradually fades away from the areas that need to be clean and sharp.

[Irma]

I will do it with the selection, because what I do sometimes is to mask what I don't want with the effect but I think I am missing the feathering...

Thanks a lot Keith.