Is it bad that I am using this thread as a place to upload portraits for someone else to download because I have not found any other website that uploads BMPs and keeps them as BMPs.
Again not sure of the artist ... I'm bad this way. Thanks for clarifying the last one @Isandir, I don't mean to discredit the artists here I'm just absent-minded.
Shame the last thread got shut down. Though I am glad Isandir is the one to start the new one Havent posted antything for a while, but anyway, heres two great work of arts that I love (I wont be posting the cropped versions this time around, but I might do that in a post ahead).
Artist: Ural Koçak Artist: X-ste-x (deviantart)
To me the first one is a Gnome, even though the artist labeled it an elf. Second portrait obviously is a dwarf?
1. I am very impressed by isandir's work. That Hexxat is completely awesome 2. I was wondering if anyone knows how to "baldurize" a photograph. I kinda wanna... make myself a cleric or a mage (don't judge me!) but don't know where to begin or how difficult it would be. I've seen this type of thing all over but just don't know where to even start this sort of process
A few tips to get you started with BG2 style portraits:
1) Use Photoshop. Save your work often and under different names, so you may always go back.
2) Put each element (background, skin, hair, eyes, pieces of armor etcetera) in a seperate layer, so you may modify them separately - only flatten the image at the very end and make final adjustments such as contrast, color temperature and saturation. Just to point out how necessary this is: I often have irises, eye whites and pupils in separate layers - this makes it extremely easy to change eye color back and forth until you're sure you're happy.
3) Make sure you are satisfied with the size of the head and (the potential of) cropping - you dont want to work for hours only to realise in the very end that it will look wrong ingame. Compare to the original portraits. If you have extra image/background, you may always crop it out later. But if your head is too big and you lack amor and/or background to adjust, you'll feel sad. Trust me.
4) Instead of actually "cutting" everything away in order to get it in a separate layer, you can often copy the layer and put a layer mask on it, making only the relevant part show (and it's also easy to adjust later if your have to make changes). Learn to use layer masks, they are extremely useful.
5) Sharp edges (for example around the hair) may be softened with the blur tool.
6) Hair and facial hair may be "baldurized" with the filter oil painting.
7) Elven ears are made (again in a separate layer) with the liquidify filter (one first, then save before taking on the other).
8) Elven eyes are made by selecting the area (lasso with a soft fuzz works), then enlarging and rotating. Paint over any damage done around the edges (there seldom is any).
9) The head shapes of the BG2 portraits are not natural but much more square. I almost always have to scale the models head, setting it's height to approx 90 % of the original. Make these kind of major adjustments early on and take your characters race into consideration. Example (but you'll notice that even an elf such as Aerie is much more square than in the picture below):
12) I often paint the skin in three different layers: a) basic skin color b) black shadows c) white highlights. Then I use opacity to get the balance right, and finally blur the shadows and highlights layers strongly to avoid sharp edges. If the original photo has no shadows or highlight to help you, imagine how you want the light sources positioned. Maybe you could find another photograph to use as a reference? Since you paint over your original picture (even though using opacity to let it show through), you may want to enhance the contrast of the underlying photo quite drastically. You could also add a layer of the filter "find edges" with a low opacity.
13) Armor, weapons and details are found on the net. This site is a particular treasure: http://elderscrolls.wikia.com/wiki/Armor_(Skyrim). Use as large pictures as possible (never work with something that looks blurry in 210 x 330 pixels, which is the larger format). Make sure you start out with a character photograph of good quality as well, otherwise you're screwed even before beginning. You may absolutely work in a larger scale than 210 x 330 and then downsize at the very end. But the size of the elements you want to use may force you to downscale earlier. But never go below 210 x 330, and then you often have to work details in a 200 % view (no real problem though).
14) Notice how the original portraits often have slightly blurred armor and weapons. You may or may not want to do the same.
15) To make all your layers blend in better together at the very end, it is often a good idea to put a low opacity layer (perhaps around 5 %) with a color on top of everything - it will give all elements a similar color temperature (but try to adjust each layer individually as you work as well).
16) When you think your done, put the picture in a game with a full party and compare with the originals. It's often necessary to adjust contrast and saturation, depending on how your monitor handles those two in Photoshop and BG2 respectively. Please keep this in mind when looking at my example below - it's quite possible the we see very different colors and contrasts.
17) Below is the portrait I'm currently using in ToB. I went for a Tiefling multi Fighter/Mage (three berserker rages and a minor immunities to fire and cold added due to his race, and tieflings also get the elven weapon bonuses by default).
I had around 20 visible layers and about the same amount of non used layers in the end, after having used CTRL+Shift+ALT+E a couple of times (this short command will produce/clone one single layer out of your selected layers, while still not merging the original layers).
Here you can clearly see the very square shape of the head, the low contrast (actually the whole spectrum is there, but there are no dark shadows and strong highlights next to each other, making the end result seem more flat than it actually is) and the low saturation typical for BG2.
I second most of what Astafas has posted. Though I cite the number of layers used for portraits on my website (in part just as a reminder to myself as to how many elements I used), I don't count each of them separately. I consider the model a single layer, but I always break him/her into at least five distinct elements: the face/skin, eyes, mouth, eyebrows and hair.
Personally, I consider the polygonal lasso tool to be absolutely essential. Think of it as a digital pair of scissors that allows you to cut out pieces of the image point by point. Take a look at the model I used for Erysseril below:
If I were to simply adjust this image using Photoshop's tools without first cutting out portions of it, the colors, saturation and contrast would be off in most areas. The first step should thus be cutting out each of the pieces you're going to edit:
1: Right-click on any of the icons in this toolbar to see the options you have. The polygonal lasso tool is selected in this screenshot.
2: All of the different layers I've made are on the right side, You'll notice that one of them doesn't have an eye next to it; that's the base image, which I've left underneath as a separate hidden layer in case I want to use it again.
3: As you work with the image, use of the history box is critical. If you make a mistake, you can always go back by clicking on previous actions. However, it only records a limited number before deleting older ones, so click on the small camera at the bottom of the box ("Create new snapshot") every once in a while. This will set static points you can always return to later.
1: After I've cut out each of the separate elements, the next step I always take is editing the contrast, saturation and hue in each layer--available through the Image/Adjustments menu. Don't be scared to go high. As you'll discover, raising the contrast can be countered by lowering the saturation. The increase in dark areas can be countered by adjusting the shadows. Experiment and just have fun with it!
2: To blend the skin, hair and other elements, I use the mixer brush tool for the most part, just to the left of the number. I set it to a higher brush size for skin, and often down to 2 or 3 when I'm working with specific details.
1: You'll notice that by this point I've combined all of those layers, leaving only the eyes (which I often want to change later) separate. This also allows you to add glow or shadow effects to the model as a whole to reflect the lighting of the background you choose. In this case it also allowed me to narrow her cheeks and blend it--something you can't do while the layers are separate.
2: I occasionally throw in a filter as well if the image needs to be blurred or sharpened. I highly recommend avoiding using filters as a shortcut to giving portraits a "painted" look. Learning to do it by hand is far better, as it builds your skills faster.
Ultimately, the best advice I can give is to just open an image and start going through the tools and menu items one by one. Try each to see what it does and play with the results. It's likely that you'll stumble across something that works for you. I use at least a dozen other tools I didn't mention above, but it's based on what I want for that specific portrait. The only way I learned to use them was by playing!
Yes: The first post in this thread lists mine along with several other artists. If you have a site up and running for your portraits by the way, I can add it there.
I can easily see your progress - your more recent half really outshines your earlier work. Keep it up and continue to make us happy! :-)
On a sidenote, three BG1 NPC:s that really need new portraits are Faldorn, Coran and Quayle. Faldorn looks old and ugly. Coran in no way looks like a charismatic Elf (he's clearly a human with yellow teeth and no chin). And Quayle... He looks like som kind of [insert swear word of choise] leprechaun! So if you ever get some time off, these could need your brushes. ;-)
Thanks so much @Astafas and @Isandir! You guys were very helpful. Unfortunately I don't think I have the talent to do this . I may make an attempt though. You guys are awesome for taking the time to explain this
Basically I'm gonna try and make this picture of myself I just took with mage robes and possibly some assortment of rings/amulet (awkward sharing a pic of myself, but I could use advice) If I was to add these things, what kind of models would I use? Also what kind of background do you think most appropriate?
@booinyoureyes I don't have the technical expertise to pull it off, but you'd need a much better quality picture as a basis. I sent @Isandir a good few versions before he had one he could kinda work with. One that includes natural shadow is also very useful.
I'm not sure if having your hand in the shot like that is necessarily a good idea for a first attempt. It seems to complicate the picture for me. From my pencil drawing experience, hands are surprisingly tricky to draw convincingly.
I imagine background is reasonably easy... maybe a bookshelves in the background for a mage? Robes... just find something you like that fits around your photograph. Quarterstaff is reasonably easy too, if u sling it behind your back like I've done with my sword, it saves you having to work out how to hold it with your hands.
I've tried incorporating elements of a picture I want for a portrait using photoshop, and layering them, but I don't have the skill to make it look like art, i.e. Baldurise it.
lol.... I was wayyyyy too ambitious... I was thinking some tapestries in the background with ornaments and extravagant rings with a cool magical amulet.
I think I'll just use all the awesome pictures from the other closed thread. There were some I really loved. I adore the FTG386 ones that @Abel shared here, plus there is a baldurized version of James Purefoy that I'm currently using for my bard.
So many good options from so many talented artists!
Hey, I know that it is probably a huge thing to ask for, but do you think it could be possible for you to record the most important steps when making your next portrait and upload that video on youtube?
I'm not asking for a full-fledged tutorial, mind you, I know that would take a lot of time and neither i ask for a full video of you creating that portrait (because creating them probably take at least several hours), but a few several minute videos with what you think are the most important steps would be very welcome. I've already tried several times to create a portrait but so far my results are pretty miserable. The one thing that gives me the most troubles are colors. I don't really know how to set contrast/saturation/shadows to make the portraits "baldurized", so they most often end up as a simple image that have oil painting feel.
Oh, and i have one more question. So far i've tried to create portraits out of my characters from Skyrim, not from photos of real people. Do you think it is even possible to create proper portraits from them? They have quite nice resolution (2880x1620), and i made sure to make shadows noticeable in game.
But wait, the previous portrait thread was closed? WTF?
@marceror If u really wanna find out, just go to the last page or two of the old thread. Basically, one individual decided that rules and laws were uncool, and when politely reminded of common courtesy and legal norms, decided to respond with distasteful immaturity, ruining it for the very people who had just done him a great favour by satisfying his portrait request.
Inspired by writing my earlier post, I made the first BG portrait ever for my wife today. She says she will play the game eventually. I believe her when I see it. :-D Still, she is very supportive in all this nerding, so all is forgiven. Without further ado, here she is as a Human Ranger (uncropped, I might have to modify some details should she decide to use it):
I'm very sorry, but I can say right away that I won't be able to make that video tutorial. I will however start working with simple videos sometime during 2014 so that may change later on. On the other hand, there are many people out there with far more PS skills than I. If I succeed, it's only because I'm stubborn, I google tutorials and I try things out.
There is no one way that always works for contrast, saturation and shadows. Simply put your portrait next to a few of the ingame portraits, and compare. Then adjust. If you have everything in separate layers, you may change only what doesn't work instead of the whole portrait (which could cause a new issue).
I believe Skyrim uses 3D models? In that case, I would say probably not. At least BG2 has a very flat 2D-feeling to it, so I think it would be difficult. Then again, you can't tell very good 3D modeling from a photo, so...
Not a problem, like I've said before, i did not expect any real tutorial, I've done one for Skyrim and i know how time consuming and tiring it is. I thought of something more like you recording as you work and then uploading a few most important parts of it. Then again, every portrait is different so in the end it could prove to be not as useful as i would hope for it to be.
Anyway, thanks for advice, hopefully that and your previous post where you explained step by step what i should do will help me improve enough to post my work here (for now it looks way too bad, especially next to work of all other people from this thread).
As for Skyrim, yes it uses 3d models, but i don't think screenshots from it look any more "3d" than real life photos do. I was more concerned about shadows not being as clearly defined as in the real photos (although that depends on the photo) and... well a "gameish" look of character. Anyway, for now i will just try to find a real life model i like and work on that, maybe it will turn out better than my work so far.
Here is a little tool you may use for adjusting your portraits. The originals are straight out from the game (but saved on my computer as JPG, so it might be worthwile to make your own, just to be on the safe side with the colors - the JPG conversion doesn't like my darker greens for example, which is visible below but not at all in the PSD original).
Anyway, as you can see I've put my tiefling in the middle, and it blends in more or less perfectly. The portrait of my wife though (bottom right) does need more work. Note that the fixes have to be made within the individual layers - there's no one fix that will solve the whole picture. For example:
1) Her hair is to shiny. The skin could on the contrary need some more luster (I need to raise the opacity of the shadows layer and of the highlights layer - if they were all in the same layer I would be forced to adjust the contrast instead, but that would also force me to lower the saturation that would go up at the same time, possibly causing new problem areas).
2) The green in her armor is too saturated. The same goes for her eyes.
3) The color scheme is all wrong. I used a blue background to bring out her green eyes and red hair. However - and as I knew - that doesn't fit in well with the other, very well composed color schemes. When I made the tiefling, I was very careful with this, opting for the three dominant colors pink, green and arctic blue. It still stands out a bit, but hey, I'm the star of the show in my own game. :-D
4) Far to much details in her equipement. It will have to be blurred out. And it feels a bit cramped as well, the portrait needs more space.
5) Finally, note how the eyes of all portraits more or less align? I have my wifes head cropped in the top, but could possible lower it down a bit, making her eyes align with Jan's instead. The size is a good match though, as Nalia has one of the smallest heads/faces in the game.
Comments
Again not sure of the artist ... I'm bad this way. Thanks for clarifying the last one @Isandir, I don't mean to discredit the artists here I'm just absent-minded.
http://nenuno.co.uk/creative/design/inspirational-3d-character-concepts-by-rainfeatherpearl/
Havent posted antything for a while, but anyway, heres two great work of arts that I love (I wont be posting the cropped versions this time around, but I might do that in a post ahead).
To me the first one is a Gnome, even though the artist labeled it an elf. Second portrait obviously is a dwarf?
2. I was wondering if anyone knows how to "baldurize" a photograph. I kinda wanna... make myself a cleric or a mage (don't judge me!) but don't know where to begin or how difficult it would be. I've seen this type of thing all over but just don't know where to even start this sort of process
A few tips to get you started with BG2 style portraits:
1) Use Photoshop. Save your work often and under different names, so you may always go back.
2) Put each element (background, skin, hair, eyes, pieces of armor etcetera) in a seperate layer, so you may modify them separately - only flatten the image at the very end and make final adjustments such as contrast, color temperature and saturation. Just to point out how necessary this is: I often have irises, eye whites and pupils in separate layers - this makes it extremely easy to change eye color back and forth until you're sure you're happy.
3) Make sure you are satisfied with the size of the head and (the potential of) cropping - you dont want to work for hours only to realise in the very end that it will look wrong ingame. Compare to the original portraits. If you have extra image/background, you may always crop it out later. But if your head is too big and you lack amor and/or background to adjust, you'll feel sad. Trust me.
4) Instead of actually "cutting" everything away in order to get it in a separate layer, you can often copy the layer and put a layer mask on it, making only the relevant part show (and it's also easy to adjust later if your have to make changes). Learn to use layer masks, they are extremely useful.
5) Sharp edges (for example around the hair) may be softened with the blur tool.
6) Hair and facial hair may be "baldurized" with the filter oil painting.
7) Elven ears are made (again in a separate layer) with the liquidify filter (one first, then save before taking on the other).
8) Elven eyes are made by selecting the area (lasso with a soft fuzz works), then enlarging and rotating. Paint over any damage done around the edges (there seldom is any).
9) The head shapes of the BG2 portraits are not natural but much more square. I almost always have to scale the models head, setting it's height to approx 90 % of the original. Make these kind of major adjustments early on and take your characters race into consideration. Example (but you'll notice that even an elf such as Aerie is much more square than in the picture below):
Research for your preferred race may be done for example here: http://forgottenrealms.wikia.com/wiki/Half-orc
10) Clone tool is your best friend. You'll have to use it a lot to enhance/reproduce hair or "glue" pieces of armor together.
11) The mixer brush also have a lot of potential: http://www.dummies.com/how-to/content/how-to-blend-colors-with-the-mixer-brush-tool-in-p.html
12) I often paint the skin in three different layers: a) basic skin color b) black shadows c) white highlights. Then I use opacity to get the balance right, and finally blur the shadows and highlights layers strongly to avoid sharp edges. If the original photo has no shadows or highlight to help you, imagine how you want the light sources positioned. Maybe you could find another photograph to use as a reference? Since you paint over your original picture (even though using opacity to let it show through), you may want to enhance the contrast of the underlying photo quite drastically. You could also add a layer of the filter "find edges" with a low opacity.
13) Armor, weapons and details are found on the net. This site is a particular treasure: http://elderscrolls.wikia.com/wiki/Armor_(Skyrim). Use as large pictures as possible (never work with something that looks blurry in 210 x 330 pixels, which is the larger format). Make sure you start out with a character photograph of good quality as well, otherwise you're screwed even before beginning. You may absolutely work in a larger scale than 210 x 330 and then downsize at the very end. But the size of the elements you want to use may force you to downscale earlier. But never go below 210 x 330, and then you often have to work details in a 200 % view (no real problem though).
14) Notice how the original portraits often have slightly blurred armor and weapons. You may or may not want to do the same.
15) To make all your layers blend in better together at the very end, it is often a good idea to put a low opacity layer (perhaps around 5 %) with a color on top of everything - it will give all elements a similar color temperature (but try to adjust each layer individually as you work as well).
16) When you think your done, put the picture in a game with a full party and compare with the originals. It's often necessary to adjust contrast and saturation, depending on how your monitor handles those two in Photoshop and BG2 respectively. Please keep this in mind when looking at my example below - it's quite possible the we see very different colors and contrasts.
17) Below is the portrait I'm currently using in ToB. I went for a Tiefling multi Fighter/Mage (three berserker rages and a minor immunities to fire and cold added due to his race, and tieflings also get the elven weapon bonuses by default).
I had around 20 visible layers and about the same amount of non used layers in the end, after having used CTRL+Shift+ALT+E a couple of times (this short command will produce/clone one single layer out of your selected layers, while still not merging the original layers).
Here you can clearly see the very square shape of the head, the low contrast (actually the whole spectrum is there, but there are no dark shadows and strong highlights next to each other, making the end result seem more flat than it actually is) and the low saturation typical for BG2.
If I were to simply adjust this image using Photoshop's tools without first cutting out portions of it, the colors, saturation and contrast would be off in most areas. The first step should thus be cutting out each of the pieces you're going to edit:
1: Right-click on any of the icons in this toolbar to see the options you have. The polygonal lasso tool is selected in this screenshot.
2: All of the different layers I've made are on the right side, You'll notice that one of them doesn't have an eye next to it; that's the base image, which I've left underneath as a separate hidden layer in case I want to use it again.
3: As you work with the image, use of the history box is critical. If you make a mistake, you can always go back by clicking on previous actions. However, it only records a limited number before deleting older ones, so click on the small camera at the bottom of the box ("Create new snapshot") every once in a while. This will set static points you can always return to later.
1: After I've cut out each of the separate elements, the next step I always take is editing the contrast, saturation and hue in each layer--available through the Image/Adjustments menu. Don't be scared to go high. As you'll discover, raising the contrast can be countered by lowering the saturation. The increase in dark areas can be countered by adjusting the shadows. Experiment and just have fun with it!
2: To blend the skin, hair and other elements, I use the mixer brush tool for the most part, just to the left of the number. I set it to a higher brush size for skin, and often down to 2 or 3 when I'm working with specific details.
1: You'll notice that by this point I've combined all of those layers, leaving only the eyes (which I often want to change later) separate. This also allows you to add glow or shadow effects to the model as a whole to reflect the lighting of the background you choose. In this case it also allowed me to narrow her cheeks and blend it--something you can't do while the layers are separate.
2: I occasionally throw in a filter as well if the image needs to be blurred or sharpened. I highly recommend avoiding using filters as a shortcut to giving portraits a "painted" look. Learning to do it by hand is far better, as it builds your skills faster.
Ultimately, the best advice I can give is to just open an image and start going through the tools and menu items one by one. Try each to see what it does and play with the results. It's likely that you'll stumble across something that works for you. I use at least a dozen other tools I didn't mention above, but it's based on what I want for that specific portrait. The only way I learned to use them was by playing!
I can easily see your progress - your more recent half really outshines your earlier work. Keep it up and continue to make us happy! :-)
On a sidenote, three BG1 NPC:s that really need new portraits are Faldorn, Coran and Quayle. Faldorn looks old and ugly. Coran in no way looks like a charismatic Elf (he's clearly a human with yellow teeth and no chin). And Quayle... He looks like som kind of [insert swear word of choise] leprechaun! So if you ever get some time off, these could need your brushes. ;-)
From Lumar:
From FTG386
Is it just me or are most of his women almost identical looking? I mean body type and face structure?
Thanks so much @Astafas and @Isandir! You guys were very helpful. Unfortunately I don't think I have the talent to do this
(awkward sharing a pic of myself, but I could use advice)
If I was to add these things, what kind of models would I use? Also what kind of background do you think most appropriate?
So complicated! but still awesome, lol
thanks man
I don't have the technical expertise to pull it off, but you'd need a much better quality picture as a basis. I sent @Isandir a good few versions before he had one he could kinda work with. One that includes natural shadow is also very useful.
I'm not sure if having your hand in the shot like that is necessarily a good idea for a first attempt. It seems to complicate the picture for me. From my pencil drawing experience, hands are surprisingly tricky to draw convincingly.
I imagine background is reasonably easy... maybe a bookshelves in the background for a mage? Robes... just find something you like that fits around your photograph. Quarterstaff is reasonably easy too, if u sling it behind your back like I've done with my sword, it saves you having to work out how to hold it with your hands.
I've tried incorporating elements of a picture I want for a portrait using photoshop, and layering them, but I don't have the skill to make it look like art, i.e. Baldurise it.
I think I'll just use all the awesome pictures from the other closed thread. There were some I really loved. I adore the FTG386 ones that @Abel shared here, plus there is a baldurized version of James Purefoy that I'm currently using for my bard.
So many good options from so many talented artists!
But wait, the previous portrait thread was closed? WTF?
Hey, I know that it is probably a huge thing to ask for, but do you think it could be possible for you to record the most important steps when making your next portrait and upload that video on youtube?
I'm not asking for a full-fledged tutorial, mind you, I know that would take a lot of time and neither i ask for a full video of you creating that portrait (because creating them probably take at least several hours), but a few several minute videos with what you think are the most important steps would be very welcome.
I've already tried several times to create a portrait but so far my results are pretty miserable. The one thing that gives me the most troubles are colors. I don't really know how to set contrast/saturation/shadows to make the portraits "baldurized", so they most often end up as a simple image that have oil painting feel.
Oh, and i have one more question. So far i've tried to create portraits out of my characters from Skyrim, not from photos of real people. Do you think it is even possible to create proper portraits from them? They have quite nice resolution (2880x1620), and i made sure to make shadows noticeable in game.
If u really wanna find out, just go to the last page or two of the old thread. Basically, one individual decided that rules and laws were uncool, and when politely reminded of common courtesy and legal norms, decided to respond with distasteful immaturity, ruining it for the very people who had just done him a great favour by satisfying his portrait request.
I'm very sorry, but I can say right away that I won't be able to make that video tutorial. I will however start working with simple videos sometime during 2014 so that may change later on. On the other hand, there are many people out there with far more PS skills than I. If I succeed, it's only because I'm stubborn, I google tutorials and I try things out.
There is no one way that always works for contrast, saturation and shadows. Simply put your portrait next to a few of the ingame portraits, and compare. Then adjust. If you have everything in separate layers, you may change only what doesn't work instead of the whole portrait (which could cause a new issue).
I believe Skyrim uses 3D models? In that case, I would say probably not. At least BG2 has a very flat 2D-feeling to it, so I think it would be difficult. Then again, you can't tell very good 3D modeling from a photo, so...
Not a problem, like I've said before, i did not expect any real tutorial, I've done one for Skyrim and i know how time consuming and tiring it is.
I thought of something more like you recording as you work and then uploading a few most important parts of it. Then again, every portrait is different so in the end it could prove to be not as useful as i would hope for it to be.
Anyway, thanks for advice, hopefully that and your previous post where you explained step by step what i should do will help me improve enough to post my work here (for now it looks way too bad, especially next to work of all other people from this thread).
As for Skyrim, yes it uses 3d models, but i don't think screenshots from it look any more "3d" than real life photos do. I was more concerned about shadows not being as clearly defined as in the real photos (although that depends on the photo) and... well a "gameish" look of character.
Anyway, for now i will just try to find a real life model i like and work on that, maybe it will turn out better than my work so far.
Here is a little tool you may use for adjusting your portraits. The originals are straight out from the game (but saved on my computer as JPG, so it might be worthwile to make your own, just to be on the safe side with the colors - the JPG conversion doesn't like my darker greens for example, which is visible below but not at all in the PSD original).
Anyway, as you can see I've put my tiefling in the middle, and it blends in more or less perfectly. The portrait of my wife though (bottom right) does need more work. Note that the fixes have to be made within the individual layers - there's no one fix that will solve the whole picture. For example:
1) Her hair is to shiny. The skin could on the contrary need some more luster (I need to raise the opacity of the shadows layer and of the highlights layer - if they were all in the same layer I would be forced to adjust the contrast instead, but that would also force me to lower the saturation that would go up at the same time, possibly causing new problem areas).
2) The green in her armor is too saturated. The same goes for her eyes.
3) The color scheme is all wrong. I used a blue background to bring out her green eyes and red hair. However - and as I knew - that doesn't fit in well with the other, very well composed color schemes. When I made the tiefling, I was very careful with this, opting for the three dominant colors pink, green and arctic blue. It still stands out a bit, but hey, I'm the star of the show in my own game. :-D
4) Far to much details in her equipement. It will have to be blurred out. And it feels a bit cramped as well, the portrait needs more space.
5) Finally, note how the eyes of all portraits more or less align? I have my wifes head cropped in the top, but could possible lower it down a bit, making her eyes align with Jan's instead. The size is a good match though, as Nalia has one of the smallest heads/faces in the game.