Severalplums

Challenge #121, by immortalje

2012-01-14T22:14:14Z

So, I won first place in Challenge 121 back in November and never actually got around to creating a tutorial for it since I ended up being busy with rl. So thanks to pensnest for letting me post this late :)

We're going from to

This tutorial was made with Photoshop CS5 and uses Curves, Hue/Saturation, Gradient Map, Brightness/Contrast and Flood Fill layers.

Notes:
• unless otherwise noted, layers are set to Normal 100%
• most values are reached by randomly sliding sliders up and down or going up and down with percentages until I liked the result.

Step 1: I tried various crops, but wasn't quite satisfied with most of them. I wanted to focus on just one pumpkin, but it was next to impossible to crop this. So, the first thing I did after finding a crop I was pretty happy with, was to "fix" it. For this I used the smudge tool and carefully erased the pumpkin on the right.

to

Step 2: In the next step I decided to put more focus on the pumpkin. To achieve this, I darkened the area of the tree which pulled most of the focus so far due to it's brightness by painting over it with black. I also added some white over the pumpkin. The size of the brush (or even the brush itself) doesn't really matter as the details dissappear once it gets blurred. To blur the black and white parts, I used the Gaussian Blur set to 5,0. I then set the layer to Soft Light.

to to

Step 3: Now I decided that I needed to work a bit more on the contrast and added a Curves layer. To darken the dark parts, I picked the black pipette and clicked on a dark part (defining it as the darkest element, anything between that and black will be set to black). The same goes for white parts, only that I used the white pipette for it. Curves Layer

Since I didn't want the bright part on the left/top to be even brighter, I painted that area of the mask black so that part of the layer wouldn't affect the icon and blurred it (most likely using ctrl+f to repeat the last filter)

to

Step 4: I thought the colours were a bit bland and used the Hue/Saturation layer to up the saturation. I set the saturation to +15.

to

Step 5: The Hue/Saturation layer didn't work as well as I had hoped it would, so I used a flood fill layer (#ff8a00) to increase the orange, setting it to Soft Light at 60%.

to

Step 6: Now I wanted to add a bit more contrast and darkness again. This time I used a black/White Gradient Map set to Soft Light at 40%.

to

Step 7: I actually don't remember why I kept this layer. I copied the previous orange flood fill layer and set it to 2% (keeping the Soft Light setting). It's possible that I just wasn't happy with it's effect and simply forgot to delete it.

to

Step 8: After having worked on the orange parts of the icon, I decided that the sky was far too grey and needed more blue. So I created a new Flood Fill layer (#3c00ff) and set it to Soft Light and 30%. In order to only affect the sky, I painted the mask black for everything that wasn't supposed to be affected and blurred it (most likely using ctrl+f to repeat the last filter)

to

Step 9: I was pretty satisfied with the icon now and got ready to sharpen it. For that I merged all layers to a new layer (ctrl+shift+alt+e) and used the Unsharp Mask filter with these settings:

Strength: 55%
Radius: 0,5
Threshold: 4

to

Step 10: After sharpening the icon, I decided that I wasn't done after all. The pumpkin appeared to be too bright, so I added a Brightness/Contrast layer setting the Contrast to 100%. Then I merged all the layer into a new one again (ctrl+shift+alt+e) and turned the Brightness/Contrast layer invisible. I set the newly merged layer to Multiply at 70% and hid everything outside of the pumpkin by painting the mask black again and blurring that part to avoid jagged edges.

to

Step 11: Now I decided that the "blue" sky had to be more blue and copied the blue flood fill layer, setting it to Overlay at 20%.

to

At this point I was rather happy with the colouring and decided that I was done :)

My layers looked like this:

Reminder, Challenge #123

2011-12-04T13:14:05Z

A quick reminder that Challenge #123 is all about PENGUINS, and who doesn't love penguins? You have at least another week in which to enter.

Also, don't forget that if there are problems on LJ, you can also use http://severalplums.dreamwidth.org/

Challenge #123

2011-11-19T13:16:55Z

This will be the last challenge of this year, as my own timetable is filling up crazily as Christmas nears, and that's probably true for many of you, too.

It's another 'find your own pics' challenge, this time on a theme of...

Here are some pictures to get you started, but you aren't obliged to use these.

Odd One Out by dfu

Penguin Posse by somadjinn

Three and One by dfu

Click to embiggen.

You may enter as many icons as you like for this challenge. Comment to this post with your icon(s) and their url(s). Please don't use these icons before the voting is completed. All submissions should, of course, fit the 100 x 100, 40K guidelines for LJ/DW icons.

Remember, if you're the winner you will be required to post a tutorial, so make sure you keep notes on what you did! You will also be required to vote if you enter.

I'm... not actually quite sure when I will post voting. Probably on Sunday 11th December, so you have loads of time to hunt down some penguin pics and have fun with them.

Meanwhile you still have until tomorrow morning to enter Challenge 122.

In case of LJ going fluffy, this challenge can also be found on Dreamwidth at http://severalplums.dreamwidth.org/64449.html

Reminder, Challenge #122

2011-11-17T21:50:08Z

Challenge #122 is open until midnight-your-time on Saturday, don't forget to get your entries in.

Reminder, Challenge #122

2011-11-11T17:17:38Z

Challenge #122 is open until next weekend, don't forget to get your entries in.

Note: if LJ is proving problematic when you come to enter, you can use the mirror community on Dreamwidth, severalplums.dreamwidth.org

Challenge #122

2011-11-05T11:28:31Z

You may enter ONE or TWO icons for this challenge. Comment to this post with your icon(s) and their url(s). Please don't use these icons before the voting is completed. All submissions should, of course, fit the 100 x 100, 40K guidelines for LJ/DW icons.

Remember, if you're the winner you will be required to post a tutorial, so make sure you keep notes on what you did! You will also be required to vote if you enter.

I will close entries and post the voting on Sunday 20th November. Please consider that Saturday 19th, midnight your time, is the deadline for entries (though you can get away with later as long as your comment is here when I get to my computer on Sunday).

Winner, Challenge €121

2011-11-04T16:57:52Z

Congratulations to this challenge's winner, immortalje.

immortalje, I'm sure you already know the drill: it is now your duty to write up a tutorial for your winning icon by midnight on Saturday 12th November. Please title your post Winner's Tutorial, Challenge #121, by (yourname), tag it with 'tutorial' and '121-130', and 'ps', 'psp', 'gimp' or 'pse' as appropriate. Don't forget to state which graphics program you use, and to give credits for any resources used. Do give plenty of detail about how and why you did what you did. If you have an account on both DW and LJ, do please crosspost, otherwise I will put up a link.

Reminder, voting #121

2011-11-04T00:22:01Z

Voting for Challenge #121 will end tomorrow morning - don't forget to vote for your favourites.

Voting, Challenge #121

2011-10-30T10:04:48Z

The images for this challenge:

And here are the entries:

Please vote for your TWO favourites in order of preference (there will be one banner awarded). Voting is not weighted for the first count, but if there is a tie, order of preference will make a difference.

If you entered, you must vote but you need only vote for ONE icon. All votes are welcome (but please, no anonymous voting).

Voting will close on Friday morning.

The next challenge will be up next Saturday morning. Meanwhile, a reminder that I'm hoping some of you will post images—animé and screencaps particularly welcome—that could be used in future challenges Post here if you have anything that might be suitable.

Texture tutorial Challenge #120

2011-10-29T01:52:02Z

I was invited to do a tutorial for either or both of the texture sets I made for Challenge 120 and since I couldn't decide which texture set to make a tutorial for so I made one for both. In order not to spam this community, I'm only posting the tutorial for the first texture I made to this community. The other one can be found here at love_sacrificed.

Going from this image to this image for this set

This was made with Photoshop CS 5 using various filters and a hue/saturation layer. Most of these should be available in earlier versions of Photoshop.

General Notes:
• You should click on the images to get the gigantic image in it's original size (2048x1536 px).
• Strictly speaking, I used 3 layers for this. I ended up with a couple of more to make the snapshots for this tutorial. There's the base, a hue/saturation layer and then a merge layer on top on which I used the filters. Most of the time I just do whatever and see where it takes me when it comes to textures :)
• I love the preview option of PS. I know this existed in Photoshop CS3 already (and not in PS 7), but I can't say when it was introduced. It allows me to switch between different filters without leaving the menu and I love using that to randomly skip through the different filters (not all are available through the menu though) and test all kinds of filters before settling on one. Most of the time it's really going back and forth between different things and eventually shrugging and saying "I'll keep that" before I start the process all over again.
• For all kinds of filters I usually use one of two methods: 1) I use whatever settings the filter is on 2) I adjust the sliders/numbers back and force until I've settled somewhere between extreme or a slight change, until I find something more or less satisfying depending on my current mood.

Step 1:
In the very first step I player around with the colouring and used a hue/saturation layer to decrease the saturation.

I used these settings:
hue: +12
saturation: +38
brightness: +38

to

Step 2:
In a second step I first merged both layers to create a new one on top of the other two, using the key combination ctrl+shift+alt+e. After that I started playing with the filters.
The first filter I tried was Water Paper with these settings:
fiber length: 15
brightness: 60
contrast: 80

to

Step 3:
The next filter I randomly chose was ocean ripple with the following settings:
ripple size: 15
ripple magnitude: 16

to

Step 4:
Now I used a color halftone. I later on wished I had used this at a later point since filters I would have loved to use distored the dots too much, but I'm nonetheless really happy with this step. It showed me that if I wanted to keep this kind of pattern, I should use it as one of the last steps though.
My settings this time were:
max radius: 8
channel 1: 108
channel 2: 162
channel 3: 90
channel 4: 45

to

Step 5:
At this point I really went through all kinds of distortion filters to try and find something that moved the colours a bit without deforming the dots to much.
I used these settings:
amount: -4
ridges: 8
style: around center (I hope that's the correct translation)

to

Step 6:
In a last step I added some dimensions to the image by using the spherize filter, using these settings:
amount; 33%
mode: normal

to

This was the final image I used to randomly crop interesting parts from. I tried to be diverse with the colouring and effects visible for dots to refrain from being too boring or too crowded.

Invitational Tutorial, Challenge #120 (texture) by wunderkind_lucy

2011-10-28T18:15:05Z

Made in Photoshop CS5

Going from this: to this:

First, I started out with this image. Resize, crop, etc.

Duplicate the base, and gaussian blur it at a radius of 1. (You will need your base several times, so be sure to save it!)

Duplicate the base, bring it to the top, and move it toward the sandy part. Gaussian blur it at a radius of 12, and set it to lighten 100% opacity.

Duplicate the base, bring it to the top, and move it toward a lighter more whitish part. Gaussian blur it at a radius of 12, and set it to soft light 100% opacity.

Duplicate the base, bring it to the top, and move it a grayish blue part. Gaussian blur it at a radius of 12, and set it to difference 100% opacity.

Duplicate the base, bring it to the top, and move it toward the sandy part. Set it to multiply 20% opacity.

Make a new layer, and take a 20px brush with ffffff. Paint some strokes where you would like the icon to be shiny.

Gaussian blur it at a radius of 12, and set it to normal 24% opacity.

Add a vibrance layer, and input these settings: vibrance: 100%, saturation: 100%. Set it to soft light 100% opacity. A similar effect can be done with hue-saturation.

Add a gradient map layer using this gradient, and set it to soft light 24% opacity. (Or add a new layer of 46bede, and set it to soft light 24% opacity.)

Voila! There you have it! ^^ The other textures were variations of this tutorial.

To download this set, go here.

If you have questions, leave a comment here.

Winner's Tutorial, Challenge #120 (texture) by pensnest

2011-10-27T21:24:46Z

This set was made in PS5 (on a Mac), using basically Filters and Layer Modes. The specifics may not be available in other programs or versions of Photoshop, but the general method is available to anyone.

For this Textures tutorial, I think I'm going to have to go with a General Method rather than specifics.

What I like to do when making textures is to mess around with Filters and layer modes. In this case, I've tried to make it clear in the Layers Palette what I have done, so I will start with that.

Starting from the bottom (forget the Background layer, for some reason I must have opened it onto a blank document):

Layer 1 is the original picture. Here's a segment of it as a reminder—it's the same crop as the rest of the landscape images in this tutorial, so you can see the changes clearly.

Next up, a copy of layer one with a bit of Gaussian Blur applied (7.0), set to screen.

Next up is an amalgamation of these two layers, which I call my New Base.

From here on, it's a question of duplicating a base layer and applying one of Photoshop's many Filters, then combining these in ways that seemed promising. I've tried to give them new names, eg the New Base copy filtered with Neon Glow became A. I then tried A on Multiply over the New Base, and then on Difference. You can see from the thumbnails that the effects are quite interesting. (If anyone wants to see any in more detail, I can easily post them, but I thought I wouldn't make this post ridiculously image-heavy.)

New Base B Liquefied: PS5 has a very fun thing in the Filters menu called Liquefy, and I've done a rather larger image for you to get a better look at this—essentially you can pull bits of the image out of shape. You'll see, further down, why this is fun.

The Reticulation filter (the 20:40:10 were the settings I used) gave me another blue, with a lovely rough texture this time.

Then the Glowing Edges filter became D, and I duplicated it and set it to Vivid Light over the New Base. This was actually what became the winning texture (set 1), and here is a piece of it, first as the Glowing Edges layer on its own,

then as it looks when set to Vivid Light over the Base.

And, just for fun, how it looks when it's over the Liquefied base.

I kept going, because this is fun. Various more filters and layer modes tried—the Difference mode is fun, you get a really nice dark blue with light glowing edges using Difference.

You can have a lot of fun with the Wave filters, too, but I ended up not being that interested in those, except for using F, which was a Sine Wave filter, on Color Burn over the New Base, which created texture 4 from the voting page. Here's the same piece of base showing you the textures, and also another view which maybe makes things clearer.

, and

And the other entry I did was the very top one, which as you can see was a combination of various filtered layers on top of one another. I used crops from this for texture set 6.

After that, I needed to make sure that I had Normal copies of the combinations I liked best, which I then cropped into squares. Some were 100x100 crops, others I cropped at 200x200 or some random size with the ratio set at 1:1 and then reduced to icon size. It's a matter of what looks good at the time. I selected what seemed like the most promising eight of each set. I doubt I could replicate that exactly, but I hope this seems like a useful and interesting method of turning a source picture into textures. I promise you it's fun!

Winner's Tutorial, Challenge #120 (icon) by pensnest

2011-10-27T21:08:25Z

This icon was made in PS5 on a Mac, and uses a Curves layer.

It's very simple, and I think having that 'tranquillity' text is what makes it. But there's also the matter of cropping. This first pic shows where the crop comes from.

Obviously the crucial part was to rotate my chosen base by 90 degrees and mystify you!

So the base, once I had reduced it to an appropriate size, looks like this:

My first step was to add a Curves adjustment layer, as is my wont in a long S-shape, to intensify the colours a bit and increase the contrast between the lights and darks.

I made a Merge layer and desaturated it. This is set to Screen, and then I masked off parts of the image so that the white stone and the paler parts of the sand become extra pale (you'll see the masking in the Layers Palette).

I then did another Merge layer of all this, which I set to Multiply at 60% so as to increase the contrast again.

That's all there is to the image; the text is in Trebuchet MS 11pt Regular, AV50.

The Layers Palette:

Reminder, Challenge #121

2011-10-27T20:59:04Z

Challenge #121 is open until midnight-your-time this Saturday. Anyone for Halloween icons?

Four entries so far.

Winners, Challenge #120

2011-10-21T23:35:26Z

I'm not doing banners for this one, since unfortunately the winner of both icon and texture challenges was me (icon #5 and texture #1). I'll put tutorials up as soon as I have a chance.

I would like to invite both immortalje and wunderkind_lucy to put up a tutorial for either or both their texture sets, as I like to see how other people go about making these things.

Reminder, Challenge #121

2011-10-21T10:24:43Z

The Halloween challenge is supposed to close this Sunday morning, so that you'll still have time after the voting to use the Halloween icons you make if you want to.

So far, no entries. I can of course extend the challenge for another week, and will do so if there aren't enough entries for a vote by Sunday morning.

Challenge #121

2011-10-16T21:41:04Z

Sorry this is late—I really wasn't sure if it was worth putting one up, but am encouraged to do so.

After prowling through quite a lot of Halloween images I couldn't decide between these two, so you get both. In consequence, this time you may make up to THREE entries. Comment to this post with your icon(s) and their url(s). Please don't use these icons before the voting is completed. All submissions should, of course, fit the 100 x 100, 40K guidelines for LJ/DW icons.

Remember, if you're the winner you will be required to post a tutorial, so make sure you keep notes on what you did! You will also be required to vote if you enter.

In order to allow you to use them for Halloween if you want to, this week I will close entries and post voting on Sunday 23rd October. Voting will close on the following Friday morning.

Meanwhile, don't forget to vote on Challenge #120.

Voting, Challenge #120

2011-10-16T14:37:20Z

Many thanks to the entrants who made this into a competition instead of a display. :-)

The source picture:

By dpawatts. Click to enlarge.

Challenge 120, part ONE: The Icon Challenge:

Please vote for your TWO favourites in order of preference. Voting is not weighted for the first count, but if there is a tie, order of preference will make a difference. As there were only three entrants, people who participated need vote for only ONE (not your own). All votes are welcome, but please be signed in—no anonymous voting. There will be one banner awarded.

Challenge 120, part TWO: the Texture Challenge:

1

2

3

4

5

6

Again, please vote for your TWO favourites in order of preference. As before, entrants need vote for only one (you may vote for two if you choose).

Voting will close on Friday morning, 21st October.

Challenge #120 - last minute reminder

2011-10-15T23:50:02Z

I was all set to give up on Challenge #120, but someone has entered! I'll probably not be putting up the voting until around 2pm tomorrow, so you have a few hours... go for it!

PS If anyone has difficulties with the texture frame, try changing it from Image>Mode>Indexed Color to RGB Color. I'm not sure why that happens...

Reminder, Challenge #120

2011-10-14T09:23:40Z

Challenge #120 still awaits your entries, and is open until midnight on Saturday. Anyone?

Winner's Tutorial, Challenge #119, by pensnest

2011-10-10T16:49:35Z

This icon was made in Photoshop CS5 on a Mac. It uses Curves, mostly.

I thought one of the most interesting things about this challenge was the variety in cropping. I did several different ones myself, and obviously this full-length one was the most successful.

The first thing I did was to add a Curves layer, which upped the contrast between figure and background.

Next up, the old-fashioned approach! A colour fill layer in 10234c, a rich dark blue, set to Exclusion. This emblued the picture.

Another Curves layer upped the contrasts again, and made it bluer, which I don't really understand but which I liked, so that was all right.

I did a Merged layer (shift+cmd+alt+E) to get it all on the top, then applied a Gaussian Blur filter set to 3.2.

This, I set to Soft Light. I like a Gaussian blurred layer, it seems to add a luminous quality to most pictures. Finally, I have some (fairly huge) cloud brushes from Gorjuss, so I applied a bit of cloud at upper left and lower right. I think they're probably in ffffff, and set on Normal at 85%, but I didn't note down the colour I used.

To show you where the brushes are, here's a shot of the brushes layered above a black background.

Here's the Layers palette:

And, the finished icon.

Winner's Tutorial, Challenge #119, by wunderkind_lucy

2011-10-08T01:59:49Z

Made in Photoshop CS5

Going from this: to this:

I used this image from Kristen Dunst's Marie Antoinette photoshoot. Crop, resize, etc. It's okay if the resized image is smaller than 100x100 because the background isn't even going to be in the icon.

Since the background is dark, this next step will be pretty easy. Make a new layer, and paint over the background with 000000.

This next step is one of my favorites to do on most icons. It gives the icon a shiny feel. Make a new layer, and paint a white blob over Kristen.

Then gaussian blur the layer at a radius of 12, and set it to normal 40% opacity. Notice the icon has a shinier feel now.

Next, add a vibrance layer, and input these settings: vibrance: 100; saturation: 100. You can probably achieve something similar by messing with the hue-saturation as well.

The next layer is another favorite of mine. I use it fairly frequently. Add a new layer of 404040, and set it to lighten 100% opacity. This also gives the icon a shiny feel.

Add this texture from bambinainnero's set Lazarus. Set it to screen 100% opacity.

Duplicate the base, bring it to the top, and set it to multiply 40% opacity. Erase the background.

Last, add the text. I used Helvetica Neue for the top part and Jellyka Saint Andrew for the bottom part in ffffff. I set the text to soft light 100% opacity. Voila! There you have it!

If you have any questions, leave a comment here.

Challenge #119: your thoughts on the challenge

2011-10-07T10:12:44Z

An opportunity for you to give your thoughts on the challenge image, what aspects of it you may have found easy or hard to icon, and anything else you'd like to bring up.

I should probably have posted this and kept the results until later, but let's see how it goes

Winners Challenge #119

2011-10-07T10:09:22Z

Congratulations to this week's winners:

First place: pensnest
Second place: wunderkind_lucy

Congratulations, wunderkind_lucy, it is now your duty to write up a tutorial for your winning icon by midnight on Saturday 15th October. Please title your post Winner's Tutorial, Challenge #119, by (yourname), tag it with 'tutorial' and '111-120', and 'ps', 'psp', 'gimp' or 'pse' as appropriate. Don't forget to state which graphics program you use, and to give credits for any resources used. Do give plenty of detail about how and why you did what you did. If you have an account on both DW and LJ, do please crosspost, otherwise I will put up a link.

Reminder, voting Challenge #119, and Challenge #120

2011-10-06T16:17:55Z

Quick reminder that voting for Challenge #119 will end when I get to my computer tomorrow morning (Friday).

Meanwhile you still have a somewhat unusual double challenge in Challenge #120. I'm hoping for some interesting offerings. Challenge is open until next weekend (end of Saturday 15th), so you have time to ponder.

BTW, should you have trouble accessing LJ, there is a mirror Severalplums on Dreamwidth.