Marilynx

That is a very cool effect. I have your Texture Shader, and it's obvious that I need to play around with it. In fact, it may be the solution to something else I am tinkering with.

It's the Chinese character ovals for my chain. As MJW pointed out, the reflection from gold ought to be, well, GOLD, but the effect I ended up with, quite by accident, gave it, I thought, a look as if it were part yellow gold and part white gold. I was following BarbieQ25's steps 5-12, but I did some kind of tinkering with the values, and now I don't know what I did.

Mop buckets are rather essential in this kind of situation. Thanks for your work, all of you. (And thanks for the sign... slippery floors are no fun.)

I haven't played with Shape 3D enough to be sure, although some of the effects I get I like better without the lighting. And yes, I know highlights on gold might be gold, but I liked the effect I got of almost a white gold and yellow gold mix -- in fact, I've been trying to figure out what I did for that effect in case I want to use it again. Haven't been able to duplicate it, and of course, by the time I decided I liked it that well, I had already closed the project, so I couldn't check my steps and settings. Annoying.

Now, that is a different gemstone from the tut I was following! You can't go and show me something like that without telling me how you did it! And the same on that cage! Looks like you have a total of four loops going around the gem, with a piece in front to attach the chain to? That's pretty nice!

That's an interesting effect, MJW!

Many thanks to Admins and Moderators! (In the old days, ya'll were called Sysops (system operator), with a Wizop (wizard operator) at the head.) Trying to keep up with the robots is the pits. BTW, the place where one can find one's posts might be mentioned in The Rules, also -- because this software is different from a number of forae I know, and I didn't know where to find them until someone mentioned it. Good luck in stemming the tide!

I was pretty pleased with the outcome of combining the ideas. I've had this particular Image in my head for a number of years, but am insufficiently the artist to create something like it by hand. I like the look of that slightly less-than-opaque gem. Just tinker with the layer opacity, hmm? Am I correct that you had two layers, one in front and one behind the gem, each with all eight of the ovals, kind of making a "sandwich" with the ring layers the bread and the emerald the filling? Yes, the chain set up you have there is precisely what I'm after. I had looked at Welshblue's Chrome Effect Chain Link tutorial, but hadn't yet played with it. Can you use any picture for that? Or even any layer? I assume you used that method for putting the links "through" the characters? THat is, using the transparent mode of the radial gradient to fade out the part that goes "behind"? Did you use Layers => Rotate/Zoom to change the angle of the pieces on different layers and then merge them together once they were in place?

I can experiment with the globes -- one of the first things I attempted was that first tutorial you referenced. <grin> Got sidetracked with pearls and things from trying some of the others. Maybe I'll go back and study them to see if there's anything I can use -- that's a potentially worthwhile suggestion. And it may apply to more than just this project. I tried the AA's assistant on a copy of one of the rings, but I wasn't crazy about the results. (It did do a nice job on that logo I was touching up, though!) The touch of Gaussian blurring and the photo-softening, not to mention the glow in BarbieQ25's tutorial for the metal seems to give a smooth enough edge. Any thoughts on how to do my chain?

Can't claim credit for that opal -- it was from the linked tutorial. I just played with the colors somewhat, since I have seen Australian "black" opals and really liked some of the colors. <g> Another Lynx!

I will file the use of "clipwarp" away -- I have a number of items calling for a silvery text. Dear me. I can spend a bunch of time watching those videos! The duplicate layer for one over and one under was the 1a and 1b -- I studied your design most carefully, although I stumbled on the sequence of the layers for under and over effects entirely by accident. I don't know that I'm good enough to be doing tutorials yet -- I've been using PDN less than two months! I would have to go back and find precisely which plugins were used on the parts of BarbieQ25's tutorial I borrowed, and likewise on Ash's, for the gem. But thank you for the compliment.

Thank you! That would have saved me a number of headaches early on!

My idea for this was partially inspired by a piece from Red Ochre's gallery, here. I have had, in some of my writing, long had a talisman described as an enormous emerald in a gold wire cage with a chain of the Chinese characters for Truth and Enlightenment. So, I started out. First, I created my emerald, using the tutorial by Ash, here. Then I created a single horizontal gold wire loop using the techniques shown in BarbieQ's tutorial, steps 5-12, here. I then duplicated the final layer of wire loop seven times for a total of eight loops. I made a New Layer and placed it above all the others with numbering to help me keep what was where straight. The first layer was left as it was. For the remainder, I used Layers => Rotate/Zoom to change their orientation. I was working only with what I assume was the X-axis, the first variable on the UI. Layers 2 and 3 were rotated at 22.5 and -22.5 degrees. Layers 4 and 6 were rotated at 45 and -45 degrees. Layer 5 was rotated at 90 degrees. Layers 7 and 8 were rotated at 67.5 and -67.5 degrees. I saved the file. It looked about like this: Then I duplicated each of the wire layers twice, naming then, respectively 1a and 1b, 2a and 2b, 3a and 3b, 4a and 4b, etc. I moved the original layers 1-8 down below the emerald and its green and white radial gradient background. I saved again. (Actually, I saved more frequently than this, but this would be the minimum.) I then selected the emerald layer, and, using the magic wand, clicked outside the emerald to select everything but it. Then I used Ctrl + I to invert the selection so only the emerald was selected. Then I started on the duplicated layers. On 1a, I erased the lower side of the wire, only over the emerald. On 1b, I erased the upper side of the wire over the emerald. And repeat, on 2a and 2b, 3a and 3b, and so forth. Did a save after deselecting the emerald by clicking on its layer and hitting Ctrl + D. Then came the fun. Deciding which layer to have active, and what order the layers should fall in to get the best effect. Discovered I could modify which rings appeared to go over or under each other by the sequence of the layers. My best appearing sequence to date was achieved with these layers active, and in this order: which yielded this: So now I'm trying to figure out how to make this better. I'd really prefer a whole wrap rather than the partial wrap, but whenever I try that, I end up with it looking like a 2D image sitting in front of the gem, ala my first image. I also have to figure out how to make my chain. I have my Chinese characters on small ovals, thus: which should be linked somehow with small wire loops. But I'm not sure how. Any thoughts would be appreciated.

I'll be seeing her on Wednesday and will ask what sizes she might need. That last would be around 27" at 300 dpi. Of course, she may not know.... she knows horses and dogs, not graphics!

Wow! Thank you, Racerx! Having the bigger image will be great -- it's so much easier to reduce a size than to enlarge something. And the dogs and horses who benefit from this lady's expertise will probably thank you, also!

Well, thanks to layers, PDN, and etc., not to mention suggestions, this is what I finally ended up with. I'm not sure I am quite ready to try something this complex in Shapemaker, so the fact that this is only 5" x 5" in 300 dpi may be an issue for larger applications. But at least we'll be starting with clean, un-pixelated copy.

Wow. Just read the thread on that plugin. More things to learn. More learning curve. Can we say Immelman? I thought we could.... The idea of going through and recreating both those shapes is mind-boggling, but if I can manage it, it would sure simplify a bunch of stuff when running this particular graphic for her charity applications. (My doing this is my donation to the Cause. I have seen what this lady has done for injured animals that vets said should be euthanized... and a few months later, were not only walking but playing.) First I will get the static picture done. THEN I will see about trying this. Wow.

That seems to give a decent result. I probably should go in and do some detail touch up on the wings. She did change the font, so I didn't have to do that -- Effects => Text Formations => Circle Text gave us a nice arc. <g> I admit, given the font she had before, I wouldn't have chosen this one, but she liked it, so....

LOL. No arguments that this would be the absolute best way. Unfortunately, I don't have a camera other than my phone, and the banner is about 90 miles away.

The banner is about four feet by five feet. Doesn't fit on my scanner. Sadly, this photo is the best of about a dozen photos. (Really wish we had the original artwork!) I believe you're right about the sides... and I do not see a real difference between the left and right. So mirroring should work. Any thoughts on de-pixelating the edges? Would anti-aliasing work? Or maybe Effects => Photo => Sharpen?

This one's a charity piece -- the lady who did therapy on my 17.5 year old Dachshund and made his last days much more comfortable is setting up her own business. Horse and Dog rescue and physical therapy. She has some artwork which needs to be cleaned up so it can be used on flyers, t-shirts, etc. to raise money. It started with a pencil sketch which someone turned into a banner for her, but didn't give her the art file from which it was done. Also apparently, didn't give the pencil sketch back. I have a photograph, taken with a phone, of the banner. Pulled it into PDN, and cleaned it up considerably with the Magic Wand, then put a plain red layer behind it. But there's still a whole slough of loose pixels here and there. And the white is not as crisp and clean as it should be, not to mention patches of gray in it, and serious pixelation in some of the smaller areas. If I could find a free font which matched the one given, I'd just replace the lettering altogether. Did try a couple of font matchers, but none of their suggestions were even close. Any suggestions for how I can make this look the best it can? I'll also be turning this into a B&W for business cards and so forth. What worries me is that in 300 dpi, this is a small picture, so enlarging it for posters and things is going to be tricky. Any thoughts, suggestions, etc. for the best way to do this?

Okay, that's what I did -- on this one, I was copying the six digits from another website on colors, and did not include the FF at the beginning of each line. Easy fix. Off to correct the file.... many thanks!

Heyla, I've already successfully created and installed two palettes with my most-used colors on them. No problem. Just followed the directions here. Well, I seem to be doing a bunch with metallics, so I decided to do a palette with my metallic tone in them. Made it exactly the same as the other two, but when I installed it, all of the colors are set to an alpha opacity of 0, which was not the case with the other two. Sure, I can just slide it over to 255 on each color, but I'm trying to figure out what I did wrong.

I do understand the limitations -- I run a mailing list which, at its peak, was generating 4000 messages a month. It's slowed a trifle. I only have to read around 800 a month now. And yes, you can ASK people to follow guidelines. The conscientious ones will. The rest.... No human offspring here, but I have a rescue Beagle and an AKC champion longhaired Dachshund who are both strongly of the opinion that I spend entirely too much time on the computer, and that I would be better off spending more time with them. They could be right. I'll be MIA this weekend and next because we're going Barn Hunting (why would one wish to hunt for Barns? scorched if I know!). Ironically, it was Barn Hunt, a new dog sport (see www.barnhunt.com should you be interested) which is open to all dogs, regardless of breed or the lack thereof which led me to PDN. As mentioned, I needed something with layers to create Barn Hunt practice courses. PAINT, Irfanview, etc. just weren't cutting it. I think I searched on "graphics, layers." Found the program, researched its history a bit, and then dove headfirst into stuff. And discovered far, far more than I could ever have hoped for. Once again, my serious and profound thanks to everyone involved in the ongoing development of this program, the maintenance of this Forum, and everything else. Yup, I have a few grumbles (mostly having to do with threads that look like they are right up my alley, but which turn out to be missing screen shots or which have gazillions of busted links) but by and large, it seems to me that ya'll do a fantastic job.

THAT was all I was asking. Because, as I said, I actually did read the directions / rules. I'm weird that way. Found both places that SEARCH is referenced. Doesn't say it's different from the one on the Forum pages. Or that if you don't find what you're after in Forum search to try this one. This is where the different ways of learning comes in. My first PDN project was pretty straight-forward. Drawing sized boxes for a Barn Hunt project which needed layers. Had to figure out how many straw bales I needed to buy, and how many of what sized pieces of plywood I needed to have as supports to build some complex tunnels for dog practice. I first created a file with my scaled rectangles, and then started copying and assembling. And nearly lost my mind. I was really frustrated because I didn't understand the difference between moving pixels and moving selection -- never encountered anything like that before. No program I had worked with had anything like that. I also didn't know that if you have an area selected on one layer, you can't do anything outside of the selection on any of the other layers. Even though I read the directions on all of those, it didn't make sense until I actually did it. (Or had the program not do what I thought the directions said it would. My standard comment is, "I hate it when the computer does what I told it to do, not what I meant!") The plugin browser looks like a neat tool. Does it go in Effects? Or Adjustments? Or some place else? This was an additional frustration. Good directions on how to place them, plenty of earning not to mix them up, but no way to discern which ones went where. In most cases, the plugin operator does not say. Well, and old tutorials may also be confusing because the interface has changed since the screen shots were taken. Experimentation is always fun. The trick is remembering what you did in case you get an effect you particularly like. I could wish for the ability to do macros, so if there's something one does, over and over (like steps 5-12 on BarbieQ25's jewelry tutorial!) it could be set to do it with a minimum of fuss. Not likely, but it could be useful. What has confused me is the fact that there's a "Color" folder under effects, but then there are a whole bunch of Color-related tools (or should that be "colour"?) under Adjustments, with no (to my uninitiated eyes) rhyme or reason to the organization. There may be reasons for these, though, and I may simply not understand it.