*~Here's How I Did That... Tips and Tricks~*

Okay..it's been another while since anyone posted some new tips and tricks here.... but here is another one!

Creating simplistic backgrounds, DeeDee's way

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Cool I'm gonna go play around with this one. I've been thinking too much lately anyways.

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One colour technique that I was taught by someone I consider something of a master on another site (I was so damn lucky to catch one of his LiveStreams) I found incredibly useful.

All done in Photoshop, and pretty much all you need is to start with the darkest shade of the colour you want. And then use light grey and white. That's it. Set the brush to about 10% opacity and flow, 0% hardness and highlight on a new layer.

I started this picture with only base, dark colours, and then highlighted up. Sure, I used other stuff for a few things (a layer to make the hole thing darker as it went left to right, and the pen tool for the mono-wire lines) but the rest was pure grey and white;



I'll probably still mix it up a bit with other colour techniques, but it's incredibly useful on stuff like metal, hair and fur. It'd probably look even better with some other brushes, given I was only using a default brush

Quote:

Originally Posted by Zwillinger GG, I would tell you that "I am killing you with my mind", but I couldn't find an emoticon to properly express my sentiment.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Captain_Photon NOTE: The Incarnate System is basically farming for IOs on a larger scale, and with more obtrusive lore.

i've used something like this technique before, it's really useful. I didn't use greys though, used blue for the shadows and white for the highlights and just varied the opacity of the layer i was on for depth of shadow/highlight. It's just one colour and white on top of the flats. This pic was done that way:



becomes this:

Someone asked me to explain how I made the referencesheets for Haymaker Hannah and Healing Impulse and put it here, so here goes.

I'll take Hannah's picture as example.

I used Paint Shop Pro X4 using only basic stuff as that's all I know for now .

First I made screenshots in CoH and picked out the one I wanted. With the crobtool I cut out the piece I wanted to keep and used the eraser, with hardness: 0 to erase the background around Hannah. It helps to zoom in to get rid of all the background, even the colors that blends in with the character.

To check if I got it all I added a new layer underneeth Hannah's layer and filled it first with a dark background, erases all the white colors still around Hannah, then filled the background with a light color and erased all the darker colors that were not supposed to be there.

Then I went looking for a suitable background. I did this on the webs, looking in sertain colours and only big pictures. Then I pasted it on the layer with the backgroundcolour so it will appear behind Hannah, as a background.
I used the Move tool to get the best part of that background behind Hannah and pressed CTRL+D to actually drop the background on the layer. I did the same for another screenshot.


Then I resized the largest picture to the same height as the smaller one. And saved that image.
I opened a new image, with the height of the picture I just saved, and calculated how much space I needed to add both pictures and a text area.
I used the Fill tool to fill it with black (in this case). Then I pasted the pictures, each on a side.


Now it was time to add the background story. I used the Text Tool, put the colours on purple, adjusted the size to my wish and started writing. The preview appeared immediately and can be alterated at any time using the Text Tool, because the program saves it as a new Vector layer.
I typed, making sure the text fitted in the space I reserved for it.

Using the Text Tool again I added the title. The program save it on a new Vector layer.
Then I add another raster layer on top of what I have sofar and pasted the two signes I found on the webs for "Natural" and "Tanker". I may have had to resize them a little to make it fit better.


TADAAH!
I hope I was clear enough about how I did this.

Made sense to me, nice add Reporter.

One --> Artz Giveaway <-- To Rule Them ALL!

I will settle this. ORANGE FTW! - Ex Libris

Indeed a nice add! I use Paint Shop Pro too, not the newest like you, but the basics are still the same. I can actually do this without having to translate the tools! (they are often called differently in other programs) *cheers happily*
Thanks for adding this Reporter!

You make me wanna make a new refsheets *giggles*

CoH Fan-Art Sale still several slots open!

Read my in-game stories and check out my DeviantART page.
- coXso - It was a memorable time filled with art!

Lots of great tips and advice here, thanks! I like how many of these techniques can be applied across different programs.

@Sakiya: Totally agree, I've learned several things from this
thread already and am looking forward to trying more stuff out.

Quote:

Originally Posted by DarthDelicious Indeed a nice add! I use PaintShop Pro too, not the newest like you, but the basics are still the same. I can actually do this without having to translate the tools! (they are often called differently in other programs) *cheers happily* Thanks for adding this Reporter! You make me wanna make a new refsheets *giggles*

Fixed that for ya DD.

One --> Artz Giveaway <-- To Rule Them ALL!

I will settle this. ORANGE FTW! - Ex Libris

Exactly what I said, CR.. *nods innocently and blushes*

Thanks

CoH Fan-Art Sale still several slots open!

Read my in-game stories and check out my DeviantART page.
- coXso - It was a memorable time filled with art!

Cool thanks for posting an alternative method Snow Globe. I haven't had too
much chance to play with layer masks myself yet but I can see many ways they could be useful.
Cheers!

One --> Artz Giveaway <-- To Rule Them ALL!

I will settle this. ORANGE FTW! - Ex Libris

I should note that quick masks and layer masks are the same thing as far as photoshop is concerned.

Any mask is a grey-scale image. The really great trick is that you can use these masks to make partial or even "soft" selections where the selection is at partial strength. You can use these complicated selections with filters to adjust the strength of the effects. You can also use them as soft cutting tools.

Triumph: White Succubus: 50 Ill/Emp/PF Snow Globe: 50 Ice/FF/Ice Strobe: 50 PB Shi Otomi: 50 Ninja/Ninjistu/GW Stalker My other characters

Hadn't thought of trying that. Hmmm.
P.S. What's with the clowns?

One --> Artz Giveaway <-- To Rule Them ALL!

I will settle this. ORANGE FTW! - Ex Libris