Apollo702

Making any of the single elements can be done very quickly. Also, one would need to have appropriate fonts available for such work- and grabbing them can be a project in and of itself. Something along these lines could easily be done with PDN. However, the sheer volume of elements means it would take many hours to put together and complete.

Some time freed up- and maybe it could be fun. Pro tip: The easiest way to make PDN projects easy is to download every working plugin(don't forget Gmic!) and play around with them, do some of the tutorials... The net result will be one can have some serious firepower available and then it's just a question of how for your imagination and ambition can go. Starting note and pro tip #2: When doing photo shoots there is a simple difference between pros and average people: Normal: Click. Pro: Click click click click click click. "OK, now stand this way." Click click click click click click click. "Tilt your head a little more this way." Click click click click click click click click. "Now, loosen up for face and give me half a smile." Click click click click click... By the time the process is done 90+% of the shots will get discarded. Only keep the best of the best and only release a minimal number of them for best results. Now, lettuce explore the reason for the head swap. Look at the animated image. The composition was well planned as the head is perfectly tilted to allow the beams to travel at the perfect perspective in which they can both be seen traveling at an angle upwards and we can see the beam(s) at a slanted top view sufficient to see the beams from below. Compare the angle here. The beams would angle upwards- but it would result in a side view- which would not allow the perspective enabling the detailed view of the beams that the OP likely is looking for. Again, this is why we plan these things in advance and then take gobs of pictures. pro tip: When doing creative work it often times is necessary to sacrifice some degree of accuracy for getting a finished product. A relevant example is the head should be tilted not necessarily towards the eclipse. Tilt it for the finished product to allow the beam to show. Pro tip: Embrace making mistakes. Mistakes are wonderful! When the light bulb was invented they had over 100 failures. With each step they learned something. Eventually, they got there. When doing digital art it is even easier. We can always take more pictures, programs such as PDN have digital histories, layers... So, if anything ever goes wrong it is easy to go back and work it out. My version needed to tilt the head at a different angle, hence the swap to an angled head(and switching the angle of the glasses). Redrawing faces is very difficult and time consuming. This allowed the perspective on the beams from above. That was the priority and why a downward tilt was chosen. One could select an upward tilt and change the POV. Now, lettuce start making the crazy beam(s.) 1. Open a new layer(one may wish to rename each layer for it's purpose. It helps considerably when one has many layers going...) 2. On the new layer use the line tool and extend 2 pink lines starting from the eyes to the edge. Make the angle of them expand modestly outwards as they expand. Play with the color, width and angles until suitable. 3. Open a duplicate layer and draw a temporary line connecting the 2 beams at their origins. 4. Use the paint bucket and fill the enclosed area with white. Optionally slightly lower the opacity now or at any point later. 5. Use the magic wand, select the white area,copy, paste as new layer, delete the joined lines layer. The result is now we have the white fill on it's own layer to gussy up as we see fit. Later on, consider reducing it's transparency perhaps 10-15%. Note: See perspective? Now we can see the beam from an angle top view! 1. Create one more duplicate of the lines layer. Use one of the outline plugins and give the lines a thin, slightly darker pink outline. This will give an outline on the outer edges of the pink lines. Likely, do not add inner outlines. Probably later on blur this layer minimally- if at all. Reduce it's opacity ~75% either with built in functions, plugins or the layer controls. This will be a details layer. We can make as many detail layers as we wish as we go on for extra fun fun fun! 1a. Optionally, temporarily reduce the visibility of other beam layers or make them invisible to see full results of the layer being worked on at the moment. We can always go back and adjust them to any level of visibility or blend modes as we see fit. 2. Go back to the pink lines layer. Duplicate it at least 4 times. Do the splinter and glow process as shown in Pixey's version using 2 of the new layers. 2a. The reason for the 4th layer is it is an unaltered version of the pink lines. For now, make this layer invisible. Duplicates of originals are here to keep around if one wants to play with things some more later on. 3. For this version, after merging the layers down, give it a slight bokeh blur. Oh no! There is a mistake! The beam isn't close enough to the eyes. No problem. Use the move tool and stretch each beam related layer diagonally up and to the right until they are in better position. Ah, that's better. Now we are going to add some detail to the inner section of the beam. 1. Open up a new layer and with the brush tool make 2 pink semi-triangles angling with the beam with a width of about perhaps 4-5 and then optionally add in some minor details with a bush of 2. Deliberately do not make them too perfect. Add some flaws. If you don't like the results, one can always go back as many times as one likes and see what can be done. 2. Duplicate this layer. Give this version a slight outline with a modestly darker pink and give it an average blur with only a 1 radius. 2. Hit the original version with a stronger average blur of ~6. 3. Merge the top layer down. Optionally give them additional small blurs(your choice of the type.) Perhaps hit it with glow with all settings at near minimum. Reduce opacity ~10%. Optionally trim excess bleed towards the eyes region with the eraser tool. 1. Add a new layer. On this one we will use to shape tool and make a small filled shape white triangle. Make it longer than wide. Bonus tip: When working with PDN get used to this. Add layer, add layer, play with layer, merge layer... add another, and so on and so on... Some complex images can easily gone 20,50,100+ layers. It's worth it. Get it? Got it good! 2. Use the move tool to spin it so the bottom lines up emanating from one eye and use the tool to resize it to taste. Work this process a bit for best results. 3. Duplicate the white triangle layer twice. 4. Use the move tool to put them roughly in line. Adjust each to be just a tad different. 5. Merge the 3 down into one layer. Optionally, detail with a small brush or eraser tool. 6. Hit it with a medium settings glow and a small blur of your choice and again, reduce opacity ~10%. Yowzah! 1. Open a new layer. 2. Move this layer down 2 layers. It will be below the other beam details and above the white layer. 3. Draw some long uneven light pink blobs with the brush of ~15 width and opacity ~50%. These blobs will appear below the other details. 4. Glow it to taste and then give it modest splinter and average blurs. Adjust transparency down to taste. 1. Go back to the white layer and give it a mid to strong glow. 2. Duplicate it twice. 3. Duplicate the additional long blobs layer once. 4. Optionally manually draw outlines to all inner pink sections. Make them flawed and not always connected. Use a thin brush and opacity less than half. 5. Adjust all beam layers opacity down to taste- except for the white layers. Keep adjusting them until there is a proper balance. 1. Open another layer on top. 2. Sample an outer section of the beams to grab a partially transparent and slightly pinkish sample with the color picker tool. 3. Either manually draw or use the lines and shape tools to get a 4-6 lines and long triangles in roughly a crown pattern emanating from the eyes region. 4. Glow and blur them. 5. Adjust transparency down 50%+. 6. Use any color tool to adjust the pink towards more of a red. 7. Make any last minute adjustments. 8a. Optionally save in PDN format in a "Masters" folder. This way it is possible to go back and make adjustments. 8. Flatten 9. Name and save as PNG in an appropriate folder. Here is version 2. The tutorial took a bit to put together. Get fast with PDN and this sort of work can be done lightning fast! Have fun!

My day is a little jammed up. If I can free up some time, I could include a full tutorial- but it could be fairly long and involved- if anybody wants it.

Here is a more subtle example of these principles in action: Look at the almost exact same angle of the Whoa! What's that? A chain leading to the angled face and then offset diagonals(The first 3 dogs form the triangle) and straight lines in verticals and horizontals (mostly defocused) in the background. I have this one in just about every natural color of dogs such as greens, reds, blues, pinks, purples and all their variants. The colors are a complete misdirect. They grab the attention- and they are not the real story whatsoever...

There is more than simple red vs black and white going on in the sample image. Upon further review, look at areas such as the face and neck. There are multiple gradients there between red, black and white. Each of those is going to mean multiple layers alone and then a blending together. However, there is far far more going on than that here... Then look at areas such as the lips, the eyes, the ears, the earrings, the collar and the background wall. Each of them got a different red treatment. That is the simple issue. Take some closer looks. Bonus: Also consider how other areas such as the hair dropping down and to the side to the body vary in gradients from dark to grey. Then look at how the chain sets up the diagonal to the eyelids all the way to the earring's metal sections- and their precise cross angle. The background uses cross diagonals and square fills. Then be aware of her tilt vs. the diagonals of the background. The straightness and angles of the background set up her curves. Somebody put a lot of planning into this one. Bonus #2: Upon further further review this really almost is all fractals and golden algorithms . It is a series of split triangles- even included in her curves- which create the golden algorithms . The red is a misdirect. A lot of planning went into this one. The OP's name is "Hex" and his question likely was in code. There is far more than one plugin at play here...

Perhaps this?

Yeah, It's easy- I do bulk creations and variations all the time. Here is the process tailored for you: OPTIONAL STEPS IF YOU DON"T HAVE A BLANK UNIFORM IMAGE: We can take a uniform with medals and turn it into one without any. Pull up a copy and select the medals on the uniform with the magic wand. Play with the tolerance until it is as accurate as possible. Hit delete on the section(s) to wipe out the medal(s.) A zoomed in partial shot of the process should now look like this: If there are any unsatisfactory sections as a result, zoom in and manually delete any unsatisfactory sections with the eraser tool (probably)set small and then as low as 1-2 pixels for fine tuning. Clean up any remaining sections to your satisfaction. RULE: The basic tools and the army of plugins may get perfection with lots of fiddling of the tools/sliders/options... or darn close. Don't be afraid of trying multiple times and going back to the history and try, try try again. Expect to do some manual cleanups/adjustments to really nail it. Don't be afraid to go back and clean up even small annoyances to your satisfaction. Then on the voids of where the medals used to be select them with the magic wand tool and then use the Clone Stamp plugin. Again, play with the settings and don't be afraid to experiment and redo as for best results. In your case the best results will probably come with variations on sampling from top to bottom. Then it is time for more manual edits. Probably start with very small erasure of any unsatisfactory areas. Likely zoom in and out for close detail work. Next, use the Color Picker tool and sample a nearby correct color. Switch to an appropriate size Paintbrush tool (For small detail work shrink that sucker down!) and dab, dab, dab to fill empty sections and fix errors on existing areas. Repeat this process by grabbing other nearby colors as needed and dab, dab dab. Don't be afraid to also adjust the width, hardness... of the Paintbrush in this process. Repeat this process(usually highly zoomed in) until the results are satisfactory. Rinse, lather repeat. TIP: What is the Clone Stamp plugin? Go download and master EVERY working plugin. It sounds tedious- but you will LOVE the resulting firepower! The final results of the edited blank uniform should look like this: Now, Save(CTRL+S) or Save As(CTRL+SHIFT+S) the blank uniform. TIP: Probably save it in the PDN format when you expect to do more work with any image. If your work has multiple layers ALWAYS save it in the PDN format. It will remember your layers and make more edits/work easy. PNG is more for finished works. It won't save without mashing the layers down to a final product. RULE: It is a must to create new folders in your Pictures Library. Hit New Folder and rename at least these 5: Elements for individual components that are going to get used again to be glued to other work. Masters for closer to finished canvasses and works that are going to be used again. More Work for unfinished projects. In The Process(Or something along those lines) for snapshot saves. Fall in love with the In Process folder for long complicated works in case of freezes/crashes/irreparable mistakes... It will be a lifesaver! There will be much weeping and gnashing of teeth for when something goes wrong with long projects and all is lost... Repeatedly do periodic saves saves saves saves saves during the creation process. Optionally go back to this folder when projects are completed and then clean up the snapshots. (Your custom named ie, in your case, "Realism Unit Uniforms") Final Result Bulk Folders. Make and name as many of these as needed. NOW FOR THE MAIN PROCESS: Bring up a copy of the uniform without the medals. Every time this will be your starting element. Paste as layers any medals wherever they belong. Since the medals are on different layers it also is possible to move them around to your satisfaction. Repeat for multiple medals. With each variation save in a custom folder in your Pictures likely in the PNG format. Optionally take the folders and hit Right click/Properties/Customize/Change Icon and switch the icon from the vanilla envelope to a custom icon(such as a uniform) In the ICO format. Perhaps, for your projects the medals may change. Probably create a folder for them too- possibly in your Elements folder as a subfolder. Don't be afraid to juggle folders over time to suit your needs. If you want to create bulk variations on this process at once it's easy. Load or Copy the uniform without medals. The fastest method is to hit CRL+ALT+V(paste as new image) a bunch of times. Bam Bam Bam... This will create as many blank uniforms to put medals on next as you need. Your PDN will now have a bunch of separate images open. TIP: If you don't already have one- get a mechanical keyboard with blue(or a custom board with the rare GREEN😁 switches. It will cost a few bucks- but the upgrade over a mush board is AWESOME! Prepare for keystroke click click clicking addiction! Then Copy medals(CTRL+C for fastest results) that you plan on adding from wherever you have them stored. With each one hit CTRL+SHIFT+V(Paste as layers) on top of each blank uniform. Boom Boom Boom. Some uniforms may have single medals and some will have multiples. Adjust the process as necessary and create all the variations needed. When the session is done go to every successful variation and CTRL+SHIFT+S Bap Bap Bap the key on each one to save (as PNG) in a final bulk image folder. A sample bulk folder of variations of the same image(s) should look something like this screenshot: There you go! Good luck! FINAL EDIT: There were many image problems. Many uploads failed, there were many "200" errors, Upon pasting images directly they worked- but images at the end were refusing to delete. Cut may have finally got them. I crank out media rich tutorials- but I do what I can. For now, time has run out...

@HyReZ You can show that you don't care by staying the hell off my posts! I won't post on yours and you stay off of mine. LEAVE ME THE HELL ALONE!

I will say it once and that will be it. I will keep things hush-hush as a matter of policy and that is not going to change. I have seen other folks who perhaps owned a business- or had something that could have been misinterpreted, went into a forum and in their posts (probably inadvertently) gave out details that they perhaps should have held back and got accused of spamming. Perhaps they could have worded a thing or two differently and then the whole thing went sideways. I will stay mysterious because I am not going down that road. That is the last that will be said about this.

Why are you so harsh with me? This isn't the first time. If some day I ran over your puppy and didn't realize it I am sorry! I gave a context on the high volume of web browsing that I do and the infrequency of the errors. It is about narrowing down the issue. Also, I have to state that I am here for the art- not for anything else- otherwise I would come under attack for mentioning the tech use out of context. In recent times I have grown art happy.

For PM I never got the certificate issue. I can't help but wonder if it came from a fresh installation of it??? Do you run NoScript on any of(the compatible) browsers? As a side note; I probably wont ever go into detail about what kind of tech work that I do. I come here to talk about digital art. Just know that part of what I do is going on a ludicrous number of sites/pages a day and these script errors are rare. Right now my PM is down to 689 tabs and the only other (well known)site that gives it regular script errors is YouTube- and there may be an other extension conflict or two that I am soon going to experiment on fixing. It would be better if I didn't. It would be better if a senior member(perhaps you?) did it- and be prepared for the very special personalities of the PM developers... There is a chance that they may handle it well and beyond that I will say no more 🤐.

At the moment I am on a backup computer with 2010 hardware. I will test it on the soon to be rebuilt main rig and report back. Also, I should point out that I get the hangs much more on the main index. If I were to refresh individual pages/topics(such as this one) they are much less likely to happen.

That is a more precise description. I should have also noted that they tend to last in the ballpark of 10-15 seconds. As a side note(however helpful it may/may not be); My main browser is Pale Moon which I use for 99+% of all browsing. For those who don't know; it is long split off from FF and attempts to remain a true open source browser. The forum appeared to be very moody in it so I pulled it up in various backup browsers. For my crazy tech needs(that I won't get into here) I keep just about every browser installed for all kinds of testing/comparison purposes. If a site/page just can't work on PM I might try other browsers and see what happens. Lately, I had PDN Forum pages up in SeaMonkey- but the hangs seem to be the same. I also tested it out in FF(on the latest and a much older version) and the results were indistinguishable.

It's on the page itself. Here is a partial screenshot of one from a refresh seconds ago:

I want to learn some tips and tricks on edge shading!

I have observed regular script errors from Invisioncic. They are triggered with near certainty when refreshing the page(s) on the forum. I have confirmed this behavior on 3 different browsers. Does anybody have any details, solutions, fixes...? If needed I also could provide copy and pastes from the script debugger.

It still is some great information. I learned a lot!

@Seerose Wow. You made yours funky!

I loved the tutorials- but I had to do them a couple of times to get the results. When completed they looked great! Thanks! Having said that though, I think that there are a couple of missing steps and it likely would be best to switch the words "tap" to "hold." That would clarify part of it. Secondly, I am curious about trying this on more complex images. Many of the above images had relatively basic shapes against well contrasted backgrounds. An example is I have an image of a common ordinary garden room. I like rooms like this in real life because I am kinda plant happy. I started by duplicating, switching to the top layer and then starting CRE and selecting red(and just now experimenting with the other colors.) Since the wood in the roof almost has an orange to it I can't seem to isolate the red in the fern no matter how much I play with the sliders. So, my questions are: 1. Is it just not possible if the foreground object is too close of a color to the background? 2. And what about for complex objects with many contours(such as the fern.) Are there any tricks to manipulating these types of objects? Thank you in advance for any answers and ideas!