Here is an image from Ella. Her clothing and the lighting here matched to resemble a bit the painting of the old days. It’s a bit of Rembrandt lighting, although perhaps the triangle on her right cheek (left in the image) is a bit too big for that. And the blue spotlight in the back is perhaps a bit much for a 17th century look.

I used a lot of layers for this one, which is bad in a way since I’m always editing in 8 bits, so every layer you add will hurt the resolution of your colors. In the end, noise is always an answer for that to cover up some of the banding you add while trying to compromise the 16 vs 8 bits differences between speed, disk space and accuracy.

There is the usual blemish removal, a bit of eye lightening (though this girl really has very reflective eyes and large pupils). Then some 3D color lookups towards the CandleLight cube to get a more painterly color space. Some lifting of the black colors to get a bit of a washout effect (note that this is oh so delicate, depending on which screen you’re looking). Some noise, and a gentle crackle effect that I used once in the past to mimic old paint.

I love the simplicity, the strongness of her look and the old-fashioned post-processing.