BlissC

Ah, yep, I see what you mean. I'll have another play with it tomorrow after work. Thanks.

Hey, there's no need to be rude! I'm not complaining (and I never said I was an expert on software design - I really wouldn't have a clue where to start, but I do have a lot of experience with usability in web design working with people with visual problems and trying to design accessible GUIs for web apps, hence my comments) - I was simply offering some, what was intended to be, constructive feedback on the usability of the software and pointing out that the new-style selection could cause some problems for potential users. I was under the (obviously misguided) impression that you might welcome feedback from users, but if you only want positive feedback I'll keep my views to myself in future. PDN is an excellent piece of software, and has a lot of advantages over other graphics software (some disadvantages as well, but then no software's gonna be perfect and meet the needs of everyone all the time) and I'd estimate that I do probably 75% of graphics work now using PDN. PDN itself is great, and generally I think the new version's great, as I said in my earlier post on this thread. I regularly recommend PDN to people, which is something I don't do with software unless it's something I've used myself and had a good experience with. One little niggle about one small feature is hardly complaining about everything. :wink:

Well this is my first attempt (I've used it with a background from cjmcguinness's "How to make insides" tutorial, which seemed quite fitting). Still needs a lot of work, but I've got the general idea of it.

Thanks - that's the sort of effect I'm aiming for. It never occurred to me to try BoltBait's bevel plugin. I tried Shape3D but the shapes were too round (though thinking about it, I guess with a bit of distortion they could be cell-like. I'll have a go with your method though and see what I come up with. Thanks!

At the moment I'm working on a site I need to illustrate with different types of human cells. I'm struggling to find anything suitable to fit in with the design of the site on the stock photography site, so decided to try and create some of my own, but they're very amateurish and one-dimensional. I did find a Photoshop tutorial on the web for creating red blood cells (sometimes I've found that I can adapt Photoshop tutorials and "translate" them into PDN), but couldn't replicate the same effect with PDN using it on this occasion. I've had a search around the forums and waded through tutorials in the hope of finding some sort of effect that either looks like cells, or that could be adapted to create cells, but haven't found anything suitable. Obviously there are various shapes and sizes and textures of cells (textures aren't too much of a problem because with the various texture effects in PDN it's pretty easy to create all kinds of textures) but I'm struggling to figure out how to do flatish but 3D cells, and for example red blood cells which are 3D "disks" with a concave "dips" in their centre. Any suggestions or hints for how I can do some fairly realistic (or at least not that look they've been drawn by a 5-year-old using Paint) cells?

Hmmmm...not sure on the "pretty good software" thing :wink: but I don't think the new-look UI looks MS-esque - if anything it's got more of an Opera or Google Chrome feel about it. Of course because PDN originally came out of a Microsoft project, it's hardly surprising that there are some similarities with the MS look, but then again all UIs, whether on a Windows, Mac or *Nix platform tend to be pretty similar because it makes it easier for users to switch between platforms. I wouldn't agree that the lack of "dancing ants" makes it 10x harder to use (at least not for me, but I do find it more difficult) but potentially for some users it could make it a lot more difficult. Would it be possible to have the "dancing ants" as a user selectable option on selections? I think there is an important accessibility issue with selections. As far as I'm aware there aren't any accessibility standards for software in the same way that there are for web development, but one of the important points in the WAG guidelines for web design is that you don't rely on colour alone to distinguish between changes in states (i.e. hyperlinks gain/lose an underline on hover or some other indication of the change). For those with visual problems, it's often very difficult to differentiate between subtle changes in colour, and especially when you've got an area selected that's not on a white background, the change in colour on selection isn't always very obvious. You might argue that people with visual problems wouldn't be using graphics software, but you'd be surprised who uses different types of software. The "dancing ants" would probably benefit, apart from users with visual problems, very young users or older people who aren't very used to using computers because it's a very visible indication an area's selected. You'd also be surprised how many people have some degree of colour-blindness and have difficulty differentiating between colours. If you want to maximise your user-base you need to make it easy to use for as wider range of people as possible. The other thing is that a dashed outline, usually animated, has become rather a convention in graphics software, and when people are used to software doing a certain thing, when something doesn't do what they expect it to potentially it's very confusing and makes it less usable for them.

One of them I managed yesterday, but nothing today - I'm rather like Pryochild in that my eyes focus differently (or rather one focuses, but the other one doesn't) because the nerves that control the eye muscles are damaged on one side (hence often when reading or using the computer I just use one eye, because it's very tiring trying to get both to focus in the same place). It's probably more my problems with depth perception (which are partly to do with the focusing thing) that does it though - when I have eye tests at the hospital they use something similar to the "magic eye" pictures on glass plates during part of the test and I can never see them either. One tip for anyone with "normal" vision but who just can't seem to see the images though is if you wear glasses for short-sightedness to try it without. The lenses in glasses compensate for your eyes not focusing where they should on the back of the eye on the retina by bending the light to change where it focuses in your eye. Because with these sort of pictures you need to try and focus "behind" the image, glasses can make it difficult because they force your eyes to focus, so to "see" the images you have to overcome the focusing effect of the lenses as well as your eyes' natural tendency to want to try and focus.

This looks great - I always wondered how this was done! I'll have to give this a go! I used to love these when they first came out, but these days I have great difficulty in seeing them because a few years ago I was diagnosed with a neurological condition that's damaged my vision and amongst other things left me with very little depth perception and double vision (I tend to either use just one eye on the computer or wear an eye patch so I don't get two of everything). I have prisms in the lenses of my glasses that controls (or tries to) it, which improves things, but only rarely can I make these sort of images now. Is it possible to make these if you can't actually see them yourself, or do you actually need to be able to see the 3D effect to be able to do it?

Just popped in to say nice work on 3.5.1! I was very impressed with the automatic update (so much easier than when software either tells you there's an update available and gives a link and the link doesn't work, simply tells you there's an update available and then you have to go off and find it, or doesn't notify you when there's a new version available so you either only find it accidentally, or trundle on with an outdated version). I have to say that I miss the "dancing ants" though too (if only because it's a visual reminder that you've got something selected) and I've noticed the issue with the line tool as well - I thought it was just me. It's incredibly difficult to get an absolutely straight line and to be sure you've got a straight line, because even when you know you've got a straight line because the pixels are all lined up and you're zoomed in quite a bit, the flashing little square dots along the line (the handles you use to create curves etc.) don't seem to be all lined up - either they seem just ever-so slightly off-centre from the line or some seem to be slightly below, some seem to be dead on-centre, and some seem slightly higher. It may just be an optical illusion, but it's a tad irritating. Anyways, having said all that, so far, with the little time I've had available recently to play with 3.5.1, it seems very nice, and I like the new UI look - not that a huge amount seems to have changed visually, but with the new icons/buttons it makes the toolbar look more 'clean' somehow. Good work!

Unfortunately it didn't quite work out as a background for what I was intending. After playing around with clouds and waves and twists and stuff, and some shapes and bevels and the gold text tut, I ended up with this... ...still a little rough around the edges at the moment, and I'll probably tidy it up a bit more at some point, as I'm planning on using some of the various pieces I've done over the last couple of months or so for a range of cards to raise funds for a charity I'm involved with, but this is the current state of it - version 1 anyhow!

Well I've not had much time to play on PDN recently due to the pressures of work, but at the moment I'm working on a Valentine's image for my forum (for our "topic of the week" feature) and decided to use the "A way to make...Insides!" abstract/texture for the background of it. I've discovered, while trying to soften the effect after the crystallisation a little that surprisingly the Splinter plugin (with default settings) seems to make it softer and somehow a little more "visceral" somehow. I'm not sure yet whether it's going to work with what I have planned for the image, but I'll post it if it seems any good, but this is the effect of running Splinter after finishing the "insides" tut... Before... After...

Yup, them grapes have stopped floating now! :wink: At the risk of repeating myself again though....WOW! That really is awesome OMA!!!

Another one with text using a background I did from another tut for a new year pic I did (fits the weather here in the UK at the mo - it's very cold!)

Well I've not tried it on text yet, but I've tried it on a pic of a scalpel I was working on a couple of weeks ago and wasn't happy with, and I like it! Nice effect and easy to follow. It'll come in very useful. This was the original pic I did using a combination of the various chrome techniques. Far too shiny and not good at all... And this one's the same pic, but using the effect in this tut - still needs some work, but much better...

Thanks. I've not had any time to work on this unfortunately this week due to an idiot on my forum who's incapable of reading the rules and has caused a ton of grief and I've spent half the week picking up the pieces from the fallout :x I'm going to work on it this weekend though. I did make a start on a 3D version in chrome with glassy balls for the molecules, which is looking good, but it'll be no good scaled down for the banner, but I can probably use it larger elsewhere on the site. I'll have a play this weekend though and see what I come up with.