Marilynx

I will emphatically check the author's website, because I very much liked the font you used in your tutorial! And I will also check your second site. I'm gonna lose my mind with this. I have learned that for physical covers, one need 1800 x 2700, 300 dpi, plus a suitable bleed, and MAY need wrap around for the whole book. But for e-books, they want it in a ratio of 1/1.6, 300 dpi prefered, also with a .25" bleed. Once I learn your tutorial, I have a feeling that I am going to be doing it so many times I will have the darn thing memorized!2-3 times for each book -- and there will be 7 books in the series! (Geeze, I wish I were a clever programmer who could figure out how to automate this! Because seriously, I like this letttering effect better than almost anything else I have seen!)

If I can find the right backdrops and a commercially usable font (really liked the one you chose, but noted that someone asked about using in commercially in 2016 and apparently never got an answer!) I hope to use it for the covers of the books I have been working on. Still trying to get the right DNA -- may post about that elsewhere. But no matter what I've tried, from Text Formations to other tricks has given the lettering for the cover the right kind of boldness to stand out. This may.

THis is SUCH a cool technique. I am not sure I understand all of it, but have DL the effects packages -- already had Boltbait's, of course -- and figure out where they go. I know what I want to use it for... I just hope it will work.

Oh, great! I will go see about adding it in. Thank you!

Well, the metal-making part of it is still my favorite method for acquiring it. I know that there is supposed to be a metallize in the newer PDN, but I do not really like the way it comes out. It appears that just "Glow" can have the same settings as FASTGLOW, so I am going to experiment with that. Currently working on a silver Chinese dragon done ouroboros fashion, with a black pearl in the middle.

Thank you! Apparently, it does still work.

I was doing something with BarbieQue's Jewelry Making Tutorial. It calls for Fast FX Glow in Step 10. This is an older tutorial, so is this add-on still around? If not, what can I use instead?

I did manage to get Dynamic Draw to work... but it appears that in order to change colors, you have to go out and then come back in again?

Thank you. Sorry for disappearing. First anniversary of my husband's death.

I don't understand. I can't get at the brushes, They're in that .abr file that I can't open. So I can't navigate to them. I think this mess is why I gave up on added brushes before. I don't understand it, and I don't know what I need to DL or what to with it if I can find it.

I never put ANYTHING on the desktop, and wouldn't have the faintest idea how. THe programs I use regularly are on a toolbar at the bottom of the screen. There are three files in the ABRviewer zip, the .exe, a .exe config, and a miscutil.dll. I thought I read in the thread that ABRviewer was no longer needed?

Well, I have tracked down ABRviewer, but I don't know what to do with it. Where to put it, how to open it and use it.

But what program did you open it with? PDN will not open it.

Well, I found this topic, which looks like it might have different brushes to make things easier. However, I have munged that up. (I suspect the paw of a Dachshund in the issue.)

Yes, I have placed it in the Filetypes folder, after unzipping. (I read this entire thread before I started.) This is the Zip as I DL it from www.brusheezy.com. I opened the zip and removed the file. But somehow, after I put in the same folder as the dll, it got permanently associated with being opened by PDN, and I cannot undo that as far as I can determine. Working in Settings, It wants me, not to REMOVE PDN, but to select something from the MS store to substitute for PDN, and the choices it offers me do not look like anything that would open this type of file. Retouching_Brushes.zip

I do not understand. I have put the file in file types. I DL an .abr file. Somehow, it's gotten set to opening with PDN, and PDN can't open it. I don't normally set permanent "open this file type with this program" so I don't know how to undo that. (I am apparently screwed. The "always use" apparently can't be undone without going into the register and I really do not like that. It makes me VERY nervous.) But its setting means I will NEVER be able to open any .abr file on this machine. And since PDN can't open the file, how the bleep do I get the .PNG files that apparently PDN CAN read?

That's really interesting. So, you didn't bother with Color Replacer. You used Hue/Saturation to change the colors. Interesting. I will play with that. I have trouble finding the right combinations of Hue/Saturation to get the right colors. I see that you feathered her hair... but what setting did you use on the brush which allowed you to do that? Did you then make a copy of the feathering (I'm not sure if you feathered a copy of the original, or if you feathered on a blank layer and then merged them.) and then use Hue/ Saturation to make it red?

Well, I obviously do not understand what I accomplish with hardness, spacing and fill. And how that gets me to wispy stuff. FOr instance, you obviously did something different with the shirt to get it to look more "shirt like" but I don't understand what. When I try changing spacing and such all I get are dots..... like this:

What's a brush tool? It sounds like something I could and would definitely use! I like Smudge and use it for a bunch of things. My one annoyance is that you cannot zoom in if you are smudging a tiny area.

It's decent. But the hair doesn't look right -- not wispy enough on the edges. Not to mention I did something strange to her jawline. Yeah, BUT...! This one isn't going so well. This is for a character who is a priest.He's had a treatment called "Renewal" which makes him physically in his 20s despite being around 170. It is traditional for those who are Renewed to have silver hair. So, starting here: A photo I liked, to practice. (Looking for suitable one to buy. This is Orlando Bloom, from a fannish wallpaper.) Used Boltbait's Oil Painting on it. Added a clerical collar. Then I used Color Replacer. Uhm. No. Just.... NO, on #3. Guy looks like he's wearing some sorta weird shower cap! So, having made a copy of the hair before CR, I tried something else: Boltbait's Black & White. This gave a really nice silver, but the guy still looks like he's wearing a weird shower cap! I also copied the eyebrows to two separate layers and used Motion Blur on them to get a sorta hairy effect. (I tried Fur Blur, but the curls just Did Not Work for tiny areas like eyebrows.) Black & White gives me a real nice silver but I can't get the hairline to work, even with trying to copy just it to a layer and do Black & White on it. I can't feather it in.... I tried, on different copies, all sots of variations of Object => Feather, Gaussian Blur, AA's Assistant, and have not resolved either the inside of the ear or the hair line.

Okay, this is simply a picture of actress Amanda Tapping which I snagged off the web to practice on and learn with. I am presently hunting through the various royalty-free sites to find something similar which I can buy. My goal is to turn her into a red-haired green eyed person in a teal shirt. In the second one, made a little larger, I was able to use color replacer to change blue eyes to green (I have a palette set up with eye, hair and skin tones which I created from a site somewhere which listed colors. I'm in the process of using a tint/shade site to create those from, for instance, basic eye, skin, or hair colors so I have more lights and darks in the same tone.) I tried using the wand on all kinds of settings to select just the hair and place it on a separate layer, but in too many cases, the hair color was too close to the skin tone for the wand to separate them, even at very low percentages. So my next step was to use the lasso to cut out the hair, which sorta worked but you lose the feathery wisps. Tried Gaussian blur, tried AA's Assistant, but it still looks "clunky" in my estimation. I also played around with Boltbait's Oil Painting plug in, and managed the third picture. I definitely like picture 3.

Thank you. I remembered that there was SOMETHING which needed to be added to the hex but could not remember, for the life of me, what it was. And could not find the earlier discussion. It now works perfectly.

I remember discussing this some time back, but I can't apparently search mu owwn posts anymore, so I can't find it. I made a palette, and all the colors are transparent. THis is the palette: (for doing green eyes) 000000 020b0a 041713 06221d 082e26 0a3a30 0c453a 0e5143 105c4d 126856 147360 2c8170 438f80 5b9d90 72aba0 8ab9b0 a1c7bf b9d5cf d0e3df e8f1ef ffffff How do I make this non-transparent?

Actually, that's what I've been trying. But trying to cut out a head of hair, for instance, is kind of like, impossible. You just can't get all the wisps.

Yes, I'd figured that. BUt the problem is, when that big round brush sweeps over the skin next to either hair or shirt, it changes the color of THAT, too.