Imageshopping Tips and tricks.
 

This thread is for all the amazing avatar and sig creators of Animesuki to share their knowledge with noobs like me. :heh:

You see I really like making sigs and avatars, but I have to admit I am quite shit.

What I would like to see in this thread is all your little secrets about borders, fonts, colour Handling, resizing tips inserting fonts, inserting pics, removing tricks ect.
(I highlighted borders cause thats what im currently having trouble with) :uhoh:

So basically this thread is for you to pass on some tips and maybe show off a bit with your l33t skills. :)

Thankyou.

Well, it might not be exactly what you wanted but here is a thread about how to make animated gifs (and thus animated avatars)

http://forums.animesuki.com/showthread.php?t=642

Hope this helps

here is some stuff poeple did...

Some of the stuff there blew me away :/ ... and the asuki's own hellcat was just killer ...

As for tips ... other glow looks pretty cool. Try messing with the setting on outer glow.

Well this did help me out a lot when I first saw it, but im now quite confident in my gif ability.
But the concept of it is correct, maybe if there was a brief tutorial about the tips and tricks that can be used in photoshop for instance, or how to make your sigs and avatars look cool and flashy.
Yes I have also seen that thread, but that just makes me more jealous. :heh: There is some truly great works of art in there.
And thanks ill have a little look that glow effect thingy.

I can help. You can check out my fanart thread with my work. Im a bit rusty havent created anything in a month or so.

I have made some new stuff but it's in a folder titled "stop using filters you retard they look like crap, just give up"

lmao

Its just me but I hate using filters. Dont know why. Just like creating things on my own.

I don't even know what you mean by filters. :mad:

When I said I was a noob, I really mean't it, ive never done anything with graphic design, not even in school.

But I really wanna learn.

So anything you tell me would be greatly appreiciated*.

I don't know if you have photoshop or not, but lets say you do. On the menubar, there's this button labeled "Filters", these are filters. The filters in Photoshop can do some pretty amazing things, but they're nothing compared to what you can do with other photoshop tools. There are also filters that you can download, these can be handy, but also make an entire picture for you in a second or so (you don't learn a thing if you use these.)

NOTE: The link I'm about to give you is only of use if you have photoshop. If you do not have photoshop, it's pretty useless.
http://www.good-tutorials.com/tutorials/8
These are tutorials about the basics of photoshop.

Thanks a bunch Necrodeath, photoshop is what I try to use. :heh:

well, i have a few tricks, and i guess i don't mind sharing them.

i think the biggest trick is that if you want something to look perfect, zoom in as close as you can and do it by hand. It will save alot of time rather than trying to learn some half-assed method.

Photoshop is probably the best program you can use. Some say that others are better, but i never found anything that is. But if you are going to use photoshop, get in the habbit of using adobe image ready that comes with photoshop rather than the main program. it has most of the same features (if not all) but it saves alot of time with things. For example, Image Ready has an option where you can save optimize that saves everything visable, so you don't have to flatten image and then save. Image Ready is also what makes animated pictures, so if you wanna get into that, it is best to use Image Ready by habbit.

Use several layers. One for each color you use and for each picture you add. often times the magic wand tool that selects everything by a certain color is quite useful, but it can make things look sloppy when it doesn't pick up certain pixels. It really is just better to leave things as seperate as possible so if you need to focus on something, you don't have to work out the problems later.

Hue/Saturation is my favorite tool. i just thought i'd point this out specifically. it can change colors, change brightness, and is just all around useful as hell when you don't think something looks right. I'm sure most people already know about this, but EVERYONE should use it.

There are many tricks to making borders, i ussually just do it by eye. One trick i liked tho was making a small square in each corner (or slightly away from the corner, depending on what you want your border to look like.) and then use the squares as guidelines.

Thanks a lot ppl, Im taking It all In.

I will master this photoshop lark In no time. :heh:

Keep the tips comming. :)

What's my favorite trick you say?

Brushes !

google 'vbrush' and there should be site that offers a whole bunch of premade brushsets.

with brushes you can get something like this. (just made it)

oh, i forgot one tip. if you want to make a picture look less flat, you can make one or two sides of a border fatter than the others. it gives the illusion of a button. usually just the bottom is good enough, but you could also do the bottom and one side. or the top and one side for that matter.

Thanks I just downloaded some brushes, don't really know what to do with them, but thanks, ill figure it out. :)

Edit: I just have to be sure, do I extract these brushes to photoshop or my fonts folder?

Gimp 2
 

An Infared Red trick for kittens & other animals:

What we will use for this example:


1. Open image into GIMP.
2. Duplicate the layer.
3. On background copy, invert the layer color an then set the layer mode to darken only at 100%.
4. Use the Predator script at default settings. (Script-fu/Alchemy/Predator)
5. Set glow layer to Saturation at about 70%.
6. Flatten Image
7. Blur image using the standard blur filter at default settings.
8. After bluring, use the unsharp mask filter to give the image a more high definition look.
9. Save image.

With a little further editing, you will get something like this:


It's not a standard IR trick, but it seems to work well for this image,.. or so I would imagine. But basically you can do some really cool stuff with the layer mode settings alone to achieve different effects, but only when you work with multiple layers.

that is the ugliest kitten i've ever seen.... i can't believe there is a picture out there somewhere with a kitten so ugly....

ah well, nifty little trick if you like predator movies... i don't tho. i hope the aliens kick their cowardly technological asses. ^_^

Im gonna share a couple of custom effects. later but for now.

Always add texture to your background. The basics are grid and scanline.
Simply make a new image wiith transparent background 2Height 1Width and draw a black(or any colour you need) on one of the pixels and save it has a texture for scanlines.
Make a new image transparent background both 3 in height and width, draw a cross using 5 pixel in black(or whatever color you like) and save has a texture for a grid.

These are the basic and are usefull for may effects, theres also other patern you can draw like that just experience a bit.

Tip 1

Fill a sig. Somtimes sigs can be empty, simple. Somtimes you need to add things to fill it out. This is were your style comes in. What I use is Custom shapes, brushes, image blending and photomanipulation. Like my sig for example. I have some shapes in there (butterflys) a little brush work, and then some custom things I did with my own style.

Alot of people on this forum see a pic crop it and use that as a sig. thats all cool but to me thats not really a sig. I hate that. Do some things to the pic. Anyway sorry that was a rant I was holding in for a long time.

well, from my experience all I did was try every single brush and special effect available, until I got confortable using them, The best brush is the "difuminador" (no idea of the correspondant name in Corel in english, difuminator? probably not...) that makes the borders smoother. I also use objects (almost the same as layers) to add various pictures and blend the nicely.