Oh yeah, I forgot to post an example of the movie poster contest.

"Now you listen to me. I'll only say this once. We chemists are not sick!"

At 9/1/08 11:18 PM, Kart-Man wrote: Oh yeah, I forgot to post an example of the movie poster contest.

"Now you listen to me. I'll only say this once. We chemists are not sick!"

LOL

That is pretty sick. You must've spent a bunch of time on that.

I just tried making mine really simple, like those biopics...

Hahaha, I don't think the butterfree photoshop took that much skill to make at all. You'll find a little more info about it in the thread I originally posted it.

At 9/1/08 12:48 PM, Whirlguy wrote: Probably the most challenging photoshop I did so far.
Made from:
- Butterfly Wings
- An Aubergine
- Fly Eyes
- Rat Claws
- Cat mouth + fangs
- Bunny Feet
- Butterfly Feelers

I was practicly just looking for parts, edited them, and stuck them together.
So Kart-Man, it doesn't surprise me much that you think it looks edible, it's body was shaped out of an aubergine hahaha.

Here's my horror movie poster about a zombie and turtles.
Be afraid.
Be very afraid.

One region I've yet to dabble much in is making fictional characters look realistic, so taking a cue from Whirlguy I decided to try my hand at a Pokemon.

As expected it was a little more difficult and time consuming than I thought it would be, I had to play with many different filters to get the effects right and properly shading it was like 8 bitches in a bitch boat. But I suppose I could have attempted a slightly easier subject than what I had selected. At the time I thought I had chosen a fairly simple one to shop, and I was sorely mistaken.

I can assure you this will be the LAST TIME I ever try one of these damn Pokiemans again >:P

If anyone is interested in seeing some other great examples of fictional characters realistically photoshoped, head over to the Worth1000.com's Photoshop Contest for a peek at some phenomenal talent.

rawr...

Wow.. That's very freakin' awesome Jamoke! o.o

Oh and Kart-Man, thanks for answering my question. Sadly it does not give the exact wished results for me. I was hoping for it to look cartoon-realistic.

Also I made a silly spelling mistake in my contest enty which I will edit, and I'm thinking of adding more to it while I'm at it.

Contest entry:

George- "I don't know guys, counting is pretty hard."

O wow, this is late, but
THIRD PLACE?
I honestly didn't expect any places in the competition, seriously, thanks. I haven't been active because I'm quite busy, but I will do some kind of shop tomorrow.

Anyways, its late, I'd best be get going to bed.

Here is a really old and quick shop of Kuriboh.

filters used:

accented edges
--edge width: 1; edge brightness: 30-45; smoothness: 1;
patchwork
--square size: 0; releif: 0;
lense flare
--brightness: 115%; lense type: 50-300mm zoom;

====

step-by-step...kinda:

5 main layers--border, top pic, bottom pic, top text, and bottom text.
top pic left un-edited.
bottom pic made up of a few different layers merged.
bottom pic copied into new layer.
--filter > brush strokes > accented edges; blend: soft light; opacity: 65%-100%.
the two layers are then merged, then another copied layer is made.
--filter > texture > patchwork; blend: normal; opacity: 45%-75%;
center is erased with 450-500 px eraser, 0% hardness.
the two layers are merged again.
a new gradient map layer is created.
--yellow to orange to red to dark red/dark brown; blend: hue; opacity: 10%-35%;
the two layers are merged one last time.
--filter > render > lense flare;

====

just messing around in photoshop cs2. thought it looked kinda cool. pic taken and edited[of course] by me.

At 9/3/08 08:43 AM, CagedSilhouette wrote: just messing around in photoshop cs2. thought it looked kinda cool. pic taken and edited[of course] by me.

You really brought out the color tones to a level that highlights the subject, yet are still inert enough to not overwhelm the pic. The violet really comes through and the lens flare filter gives it that extra bit of zazz. This is very reminiscent of the effect Whirlguy was looking for in a previous post, so if you read this, Whirlguy, you might want to give this process shot.

Photography is a great hobby and having photoshop around to enhance your work makes it that much more enjoyable. Keep it up.

At 9/3/08 10:00 AM, BlueFlameSkulls wrote: This is an ice breaker post.

Glad to see you decided to stop by afterall.

Hi everyone I do a lot of space type photoshops. This here below is my earliest space images I made a few months ago. It had to be resized because it was a wallpaper size.

You can tell it's lost some res due to the unforgiving NG resizing, but it looks great nonetheless. The color balances of the background are something else.

Looking back I could do better and I've forgotten how I did it. But I can make star fields at the flick of the wrist. Add noise is essential. duplicate layer and make that layer...I think it was either screen or overlay. The colourful nebula is made from clouds filter although I can't remember how I made them different colours in two layers. The planet was some blending options and a texture. I think I may have the original PSD file.

Thanks for the tips and the little technique, I'm going to give it a try later. I'm sure that by messing with a few filters and blend modes I'll be able to figure out the missing steps. If you remember them, fill the rest in later.

I get the feeling I'm derailing the topic you lot are talking about though.

Not at all. Other than the weekly competition, there's nothing more pertinent to discuss than photoshop techniques so you're right on track. In fact, you couldn't have come at a more opportune time as I was gearing up to post another little tutorial I've been practicing at lately that just so happens to involve a space theme. If you have any more space-related pics you'd like to post they are more than appropriate. With the wide range of uses for photoshop just about anything goes at any given time.

At 9/3/08 10:00 AM, BlueFlameSkulls wrote:

Hi everyone I do a lot of space type photoshops. This here below is my earliest space images I made a few months ago. It had to be resized because it was a wallpaper size.

That looks cool, the only thing that bothers me is that the space is a bit grainy.

BFS, i'd lower the brightness, up the contrast, reduce the colour range, and just have one part of the backdrop coloured.

I designed some skateboard decks yesterday. They only took about 5 minutes each but it's a start in a more professional field of design.

At 9/3/08 10:48 AM, THEJamoke wrote: You really brought out the color tones to a level that highlights the subject, yet are still inert enough to not overwhelm the pic. The violet really comes through and the lens flare filter gives it that extra bit of zazz. This is very reminiscent of the effect Whirlguy was looking for in a previous post, so if you read this, Whirlguy, you might want to give this process shot.

Exactly what I was looking for!
filter > brush strokes > accented edges
Thanks for the alert! (:

And here's an update of mister zombie and his turtle army.

*smacks himself in the face*
Pressed the wrong button..
I wish I could think of a better catchphrase too.
I could have used "I love turtles," but it didn't add anything to the horror theme.

At 9/3/08 05:26 PM, Marsupial wrote: I designed some skateboard decks yesterday. They only took about 5 minutes each but it's a start in a more professional field of design.

That's pretty cool.

I like the black/white one on the right.

A little while ago I started to tackle the space technique that BFS posted and I believe I've unlocked the secret the he's been trying to recall. After fiddling with layers, cloud filters and color options it was just a simple matter of trial and error until arriving at the final desired result.

At 9/3/08 02:30 PM, BlueFlameSkulls wrote: Er I got this one which is my current desktop. I still haven't finished it but I doubt I'll ever finish it as I started it when Doctor Who finished. There was an episode where they got a number of planets together and I thought I;d do something similar. This is obviously resized and you can't see the stars.

I was in the process of making a better nebula than the one in the background.

As you stated, the pics you've made thus far are for desktop wallpapers, therefore when resized they lose the fine intricacies such as the stars. I managed to get around this little barrier by simply starting with a document that is more compatible with the NG dimensions. This is only for the purposes of posting an example here, so if anyone else attempts this keep in mind that you can create your picture to a much larger scale to increase and preserve the quality if you don't plan on posting it here.

Most of this is created from scavenging from tutorials and then doing my own thing. The nebula was a fluke, it was made from a difference cloud filter. Looking at the PSD of this I remember making multiple layers for the planets then having to flatten them into one layer. So trying to recreate that might need to researching.

The nebulae turned out to be the easiest part in a way. A couple of layers, a few filters and some colorization was all it took, but in order to get them just right I tried using layer masks. This worked to an extent, but I still wasn't happy with the result, so I used a much easier trick to get them perfect which I will explain later.

At 9/3/08 05:26 PM, BananaBreadMuffin wrote: BFS, i'd lower the brightness, up the contrast, reduce the colour range, and just have one part of the backdrop coloured.

I found that a very crucial part of the process was adjusting the lighting and contrast levels on several occasions. My initial attempt came out a little bright, but with space scenes customarily being very dark it just didn't feel natural to have such vivid colors. I had to go back and tweak the process slightly and give it an extra step that complicates things a little, but is worth the extra effort.

So without further adieu, here's my method for creating a space scene with Photoshop.
This one is of moderate difficulty compared to the last few tutorials, but still easy enough.

Photoshop Tutorial: Space - nebula and stars
(for Ps CS3 Extended)

Open a new document and set the dimensions to 700x525 pixels, 72pix/in. This is a good size pallet to work with for starters.
If you wish to post it here on NG and want to preserve the quality, set the dimensions to 599x450 pixels. If you are planning on making it bigger for a wallpaper, go higher to 1024x768, a nice standard size for desktop backgrounds.

STEP 1: Depending on how many colors you want in your nebula clouds, make a new layer for each color, excluding the background. If you want 2 different colors for the nebulae, you should have 2 layers and a background making 3 layers total. If you want 3 colors of nebula, that will make 4 layers including the background, etc.
Right click the background in the workspace and press "layer from background" to make it a layer that's unlocked so it will be easier to work with. Take the paint bucket and fill the background layer with black.

*To organize this a little better, and to make theses directions easier to follow, you should change the name of each layer. Right click each layer and hit "layer properties." Change the bottom layer that is solid black to something like "stars" and each layer above it to "nebula (#)" or "cloud (#)"

STEP 2: At the bottom of the tool bar, set the background color icon to black.
On a nebula layer above the stars layer, set the foreground color to one of the colors you desire for the nebula.
Go to Filter > Render > Clouds. You should now have clouds of your selected color with just a little black showing through in the background. You can press Ctrl+F several more times to add the filter again and again until you get a good amount of black showing through.

STEP 3: Go to Filter > Render > Difference Clouds to reverse the colors. Now the black should be a majority of the clouds, while the color you selected will be the background.

Repeat steps 2 & 3 for the remaining nebula layers, each time choosing a different foreground color.

Step 4: Set each nebula cloud layer's Blend Mode to "screen." (DO NOT touch the blend mode for the stars layer.) The color of each cloud layer should now be visible and blended.

Step 5: Click the stars layer. Go to Filter > Noise > Add Noise. Click the "gaussian" button and the "monochromatic" button. Set the noise level to somewhere between 9% and 12% so that you now have a nice star filled sky and click OK.
Now go to Image > Adjustments > Brightness & Contrast and move the contrast level all the way to 100. Now you have a beautiful set of stars that are not too dim and not too bright of varying sizes and luminosity.

Step 6: At this point you've got a very nice looking space motif, but there may still be too many nebula clouds for it to look real.
I tried using layer masks to fix this problem, but I found them to be a pain to get just right for this kind of project, not to mention if you are not that familiar with using layer masks it's a bit more complicated to do, so here's my solution:

Click each cloud layer and with the Move tool, resize each layer to spread out the nebula clouds and reveal more of that lovely starry sky in the background. Then you can also take the Eraser tool, right click to set it to a decent size with 0% hardness and on each cloud layer remove some of the nebulae and give them a thinner, streakier look rather than cloudy and robust.

If you are not happy with the results and want to try again, you can always go to Edit > Step Backwards, or just expand the Step History at the top left corner of the workspace and go back to a step that will restore the image to before you changed anything.

Step 7 (optional): Now that the nebula clouds are nice and evenly distributed, you can press Ctrl+L to adjust the lighting levels and darken/brighten the clouds to the desired effect. You can also press Ctrl+U to change the cloud colors and mix-and-match colors until you're happy.

Finally, after tweaking and pruning here and there you should have a basic space background you can do a multitude of things with. Before you flatten the layers, try adding some extra "stars" with
Filter > Render > Lens Flare. Add some different lens flares in random places, adjusting their brightness to give the effect of stars at different distances. Once you flatten all the layers you can continue add lens flares so that they will be "on top" of the nebula clouds.

You can make a whole scene by searching through Google or Yahoo! images for different elements such as planets, moons, space ships, galaxies, comets, asteroids, anything space related. Just remember that depending on where you put some of the lens flares and how bright you made them, you may want to adjust the lighting and add shadows to your pasted objects before finalizing the image. Keep in mind the view aspect as well when creating a space scene, sharpen and blur things to draw the eyes to or away from objects depending on the focal point.

Here's a little example I whipped up using this process. The quality isn't phenomenal due to a slight resizing, but it will give you a basic idea of what it can achieve. I purposely made the foreground objects a bit blurry to give it more 3-dimensionality and draw the focal point more towards the planet in the center of the pic. I used some vivid colors just to illustrate the various layers of nebula clouds involved.

Here's another example of what can be achieved with this little tutorial, this time I've uploaded it to an outside source to preserve the quality. It is a little more realistic in terms of color than the last and has barer content to better illustrate the effects of the lens flares.

LINK

At 9/4/08 12:16 AM, THEJamoke wrote: Here's another example of what can be achieved with this little tutorial...

...and here you can get another little taste of the possibilities of what you can do.
(I never would have thought it'd be so hard to find a decent pic ot THAT ship on the internet of all places)

LINK

I'm having this computer class ( ICT) and we're going to learn adobe photoshop in that class!
So I guess that I'll be a professional photoshopper in a few weeks, we got a tutorial book that's worth 40 dollars.

I've read all the tutorials here too, they're really helpfull!
Thank you guys for making these and I hope that you'll be seeing alot from me in the future.

At 9/4/08 10:17 AM, BlueFlameSkulls wrote: Thanks for the nebula tutorial.

The space looks really good in that.

At 9/4/08 10:17 AM, BlueFlameSkulls wrote: But the nebula looks better than what I would do before. It's simple to make too which means I'll remember it next time I'll need nebula clouds.

Nice, but looks like some of it's been cut off, particularly a square in the top right corner where there's a couple of sharp edges to the nebula clouds.

Well I took some time, and from inspiration from those pokemon photoshops, I made this.

Since I haven't really practiced at photoshop filters, I'm basically doing filters at random. The basepics were hard to get though, I had to get one for the shell, legs, tail, and the head is made out of two snake heads.

At 8/31/08 09:33 PM, Allhaillaharl wrote: Does anybody know if this is possible in GIMP? Ive been screwing around with the "bevel" Filter, but it doesn't seem to do anything >,>

I tried it out, and It's possible. I think if you practice a bit with it, it would look real good.

Basically, I started with a transparent background. Then I just erased a little pattern type deal, and made use of the shift for straight lines.

At this point I selected the image and copied it. I pasted it on top of it's self and erased a border, then I selected the inside (inside was white at this point, border was black) and put a gradient in it. I then used the filter>distorts>video on it. Then I select the outside drew a couple colors in it to make it look chromeish and motion blurred it at 0degree angle for 10 distance.

Voila, a crappy tech border.

At 9/5/08 02:55 AM, Purpin wrote: Voila, a crappy tech border.

It looked better than that when I saved it.

Fucking gifs.

Looks good, BFS, but I think the starscape is a bit too noise-ey. Or starry, as it were.

At 9/5/08 02:55 AM, Purpin wrote: Voila, a crappy tech border.

Try this :D

Also, I'm going to dig up some planets that I made a while ago, seeing as everyone seems to be in the space mood.

At 9/5/08 05:54 AM, Officer wrote: Try this :D

I was trying to do it in GIMP, because he asked if it was possible.

At 9/4/08 09:32 PM, BlueFlameSkulls wrote:

At 9/4/08 08:38 PM, americanidiot2f wrote: Well I took some time, and from inspiration from those pokemon photoshops, I made this.

Since I haven't really practiced at photoshop filters, I'm basically doing filters at random. The basepics were hard to get though, I had to get one for the shell, legs, tail, and the head is made out of two snake heads.

You can do better than me. I rely on filter rather than use base pictures. For you it seems the opposite. I'll have a go at real pokemon images tomorrow.

Ha, thanks, not that I wouldn't want to learn about filters, I'd start once I get a lot of time on my hands away from school, but all of my shops rely on base pictures and me trying to fit them together to make it look almost real.

Though, nice filtering, I'll probably work on another pokemon image, these are pretty fun, making a fictional character seem real.

Does anyone use Fireworks?

Other than Magic Wand, I want to be able to use filters the way that they can be used in Photoshop.

I feel severely limited by this program...