This is a place holder for my dragon sketch, just a sec. Yeah, it doesn't look very good, but my first painting in photoshop with an accursed mouse.
I wish we were living the Law of Consecration so the makers of the Wacom tablets would just give them away! grrr . . . . I hate not having one for this class. Anyway, the mouse isn't the best way to do this, but it's the best I've got.
The dragon is mythological in nature and I am going to refine it the best I can with this mouse. Workflow so far: 1 hr. 30 mins. to do this sketch. I've included Venus and Mars in the picture to show that I'm doing an interplanetary comet made up of the two bodies.
A poster mock up for a possible series on the BBC -- the British Broadcasting Company. If TheAdventures of Merlin can mess with with Sir Thomas Mallory's Le Morte D'Arthur, they can go off the wall and do a series with the Earl of Locksley and Marion's Daughter.
Lady Robin Hood, Tuesdays on the BBC 2. :)
Don't worry, the American Broadcasting Company or the National Broadcasting Company will pick it up. haha! Done in Photoshop CS5 with MjRanum's Stock and a photo of the Japanese countryside.
Not all Roleplaying Game images have to be renders. Sometimes, photomanipulations can do the job just as quickly and without a lot of hassle. Well, with a lot of hassle (white backgrounds are best for stock images, you know!)
Now we are going to use Mood Master to bring this altogether. Mood Master isn't, at all, compatible with DAZ Studio Advanced or Smith Micro's Poser 7. If you used DAZ Studio Advanced to render your jungle Queen, you have to stop with a low humidity picture. If you are still using DAZ Studio 2.3, then with Mood Master you can add humidity -- or jungle mist -- to your render to give it realism and form.
To do this, we are using a technique called "Post Production" where you overlay one image on top of another. Save your image and your combined scene. Call it Jungle Queen 1 or something like that. Now, open Mood Master and add it to your scene. As a result, all seven lights we've used to bring the picture together is removed.
You notice on your scene tab that Mood Master is added. If you press the plus on the side, you get several items. Click the one called Deep Fog and click on the eye to the far right. And you get a fog effect added to your scene. You can manipulate your fog effect on the parameters tab. MAKE SURE YOU DON'T MOVE YOUR CAMERA!
Best use the settings shown in the above screen capture, and RENDER! :)
After a few hours (it may take a few hours), you will get a render that looks like this:
Not very cool edge wise, but that's what we use our image editor for. :D
Now Open Photoshop (or your prefered image editor) and load both your Jungle Queen and the Mist picture you made before.
In photoshop according to the Mood Master manual:
1- Open a new picture that has the same dimensions as your Jungle Queen pic and your Mist pic, and fill it with Black. This is the Mix Layer.
2- Select your Jungle Queen pic and do Ctrl-A, and then Ctrl-C (on my Mac it's cmd-A, and cmd-C). Do Ctrl-V on the mix layer, this overlays your Jungle Queen on the Mix Layer. The new layer is Jungle Queen original.
3- Select your Jungle Mist picture and do the exact same thing, overlaying it on your Jungle Queen original. Call this top layer "Jungle Mist." Set the Jungle Mist layer to "Screen."
4- You can adjust the top layer as needed. I suggest an Opacity of 29% for our Jungle Mist layer to simulate humidity. Flatten the image and output it as a high quality .JPG file (or TIFF).
I joined the National Association of Photoshop Professionals today. Call me crazy, call me anything you want, I just joined them. I joined them to get a discount on Matt Kloskowski's book on layers. Layers: The Complete Guide to Photoshop's Most Powerful Feature, which you can get for $23.99 as a member of the National Association of Photoshop Professionals. For the price of signing up, I've got some nice benefits. Like watching back episodes of Photshop User T.V. at any time I like. I even get issues of Photoshop User Magazine (YAY!).
Next Time: Schrodinger's Cat -- Doing a report on the Thought Experiment that changed Quantum Physics.
I am a God. Oh, I surely must be. What began as a journey with Corel Photopaint 7 to make web graphics has gone full circle with Photoshop CS3 Extended. I can make anything with Photoshop working with the images that I have acquired and or scanned.
I have barely scratched the surface, and already I'm amazed at what I can do. Photoshop is used by Industry professionals to digitally edit images and make them better. You can also make web graphics and paint with Photoshop.
Photoshop is a tool with a seemingly infinite range of capabilities. Notice I said tool. Photoshop is neither evil nor good, because both producers of Playboy and producers of Ensign both use Photoshop to manage their graphics for their respective magazines. And those two magazines are as different as night and day. I use photoshop purely for educational and artistic purposes these days.
But as I said, I have barely scratched the surface.
What is wonderful about going to school is the cool things you can learn while going there. Take a class on Multimedia Essentials, and you are reintroduced to Photoshop. But not just Photoshop 3, 4, or 7 -- but Photoshop CS 3 extended.
IN just seven years, I saw Photoshop updated in what -- six or seven different versions. Photoshop CS Extended is light years ahead of Photoshop 4, which I used when I took a beginning Photoshop class at the same college. However, because of this new Photoshop version I had purchased last summer, I finally realized how Godlike I can be within the program.
Here is a great example of the new skills I've been learning. This is a beautiful, wonderful swimsuit model with a background applied to her. Yes, this is one hot swimsuit model in a glamour shot (which is designed to accentuate everything desireable).
I learned this skill through a video tutorial available here on Photoshop Planet. The tutorial is about using Photoshop's Pattern Maker to create a wonderful background for your photos.
