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I love to use warp to completely transform faces. It's possible to not only change the shape, but to change the expression and direction of gaze. This image relies on warp for the huge eyes that draw you in. I make two versions of this image, one that relies on wacky color and Metabrush texture for interest, and the other that gets a puffy texture from iColorama's Raise tool.
I started with this photo from the Sktchy app. I love how the huge glasses create an emphasis on her eyes, for what otherwise would have an unremarkable photo.
In iColorama, I used Form/Warp to warp her face to straighten the head, largen and uplift the eyes, and fill more of the canvas.
The Sktchy photos are low resolution, and often out of focus or noisy. So I used Effect/Denoise smooth preset to smooth the face. Then I used Adjust/Tonelab preset 4 at low opacity for clarity, and Tone/Enhance for color.
I used Brush/Paint to paint in catchlights in the eyes with a small soft round brush and white paint at medium opacity. Then I used Style/Flow to further smooth the image and to smooth out the catchlights. I applied Effect/Denoise preset 4 to smooth the jaggy lines that Flow can sometimes produce.
Now I applied a vintage texture to the background using Texture/Vintage, with a brush mask over the figure.
I opened the image in Metabrush and painted in Shatter mode with Doodle brush 25.
I opened the image in iColorama and used Effect/Blur preset 18, using a brush mask for the figure. This creates a round blur, and because I used a mask, the blur applies only to the background.
I used Form/Deforms preset 5 to enlarge and distort the figure. It gives a kind of fish-eye effect.
I used Form/Deforms preset 5 separately for each eye, to enlarge it. You have to make careful use of all the sliders to control the effect, and use the x and y sliders to position the effect over each eye.
I applied Tone/Lomo for wacky color. I applied Effect/Raise preset 2 at low opacity for emphasis on the shatter pattern. I used Effect/Sharpen preset 7 to sharpen the image.
For another version, I went back to the pre-Vintage texture step. In iColorama, I applied Effect/Denoise presets 2 and 3 at full opacity, Style/Coherence at full opacity, and Effect/Glow at low opacity, to get a lot of smoothing in the face to prepare the image for applying Effect/Raise.
I applied Effect/Raise preset 3 at medium opacity. This gives the puffy 3D effect. Try experimenting with all the sliders, including opacity.
I used one of the presets in Texture/Leak at half opacity and Soft Light blending mode under Set. This gives the effect of multicolored lighting sources illuminating the figure, which I think helps with the 3D effect.
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