cjmcguinness

On the theme of car conversions, check these out: What would you get if you could mate two cars? Mate a car 1 Mate a car 2 Mate a car 3 Mate a car 4 Mate a car 5

I have only been a member of this forum for just over 3 months, but in that time the membership has grown exponentially and the number of posts in the General Discussion area for a "How do I do this..?" when more than one tutoral already exists leads me to believe that newer members are struggling to locate the required tutorials due to the weight of tutorials being posted each day. There have been numerous threads in several different places within the forum discussing better, more convenient ways to approach the posting and moderation of tutorials. I would like to add my own suggestion, regarding the reorgnisation of the forum to allow easier navigation to required tutorials. Currently "Tutorials" resides within the Paint.NET discussions index. I would propose that it is now time that "Paint.NET Tutorials" was promoted and given completely it's own section. Within this index, tutorials could be organised according to categories, such as: Paint.NET Tutorials > Tutorial Submissions > Basic Tools & Effects > Digital Art & Drawings > Effects & Adjustments > Miscellaneous > Photo Manipulation > Signatures & Avatars > Text Effects > Textures & Patterns > Web Graphics, Buttons & Layouts. (These are just some suggested category names, perhaps 10 categories is too many, the amount of categories and the way they are organised could be decided my the admin/mods or suggested by forum members via a vote) The first in the list "Tutorial Submissions" would be the place where users submit new tutorials. All sub-categories would be locked so that new topics cannot be posted by forum members, but topic replies are allowed. It would be the duty/responsibility of the moderators to review the newly posted tutorials and decide which category they should be moved to. Mods would have final say where tutorials may possibly fall into two (or more) categories. Also, if a mod decides that the post does not constitute a tutorial it would, at that time, be moved to the Q&GD area. If this reorganisation was to take place it would also be a good opportunity for the moderators to go through the list of almost 500* existing tutorials and classify them, possibly deleting some of the closed and obselete threads. I would wager that a large number of the users visiting/registering on this forum are looking for tutorials to help them to learn and explore the power of PDN. I think by giving tut's a categorized section this would help them find what they are looking for and massively cut down on the unneccessary "How do I..." posts in the Q&GD section. I'd be interested to know what the moderators and other forum members think of this suggestion and what categories you think would be suitable for organising current (and possible future) tutorials. Thanks for reading. -CJ *490 as of 00:30 GMT, 2007-06-25

100% PDN - no stock images used. The quote used in the sig is by John Ruskin

I came across a very similar PS tut a while back that I tried to recreate... Glass Ball It uses a slightly different method, perhaps combining elements of the two and a bit of PDN creativeness might help. Anyway, I'm going to have a go at reproducing this and will post results.

A little something I've been working on tonight, inspired my Madjik's LightRays effect.

I can't believe it... I was going for the Weather Forecast angle as well. Even had all these icons created: Oh well, back to the drawing board.

Madjik Just wanted to say I love this plugin; great for backgrounds; nice job. One small point, though, regarding the "Number of rays in the circle" slider (and this is not a criticism, just an observation). You cannot render an odd number of rays, yet your slider/arrows and the text entry box allow for selection/entry of odd numbers. Would there be any way you could get the slider/arrows to go up/down in increments of two? Maybe I am being a bit picky! Probably just jealousy as I'd love to be able to write plugins.

Something like this..?

OK. point taken. I've redone the Square Button (it may be slightly different as I was struggling to remember all the steps from the first time I did it), changing the reflection to a diagonal and adjusting the drop shadow to bottom right.

Welcome to the forum and excellent work for a first sig. I suggest you familiarise yourself with the forum rules (paying attention to Rules 4 & Rule 13). You should change the title of your thread to something like "How do I add Glitter & Glow to a picture?". Also, adjust the size of your sig, as the maximum height in this forum is 150px. Regards CJ

I've been having a go at square buttons on and off for a while as well; this is about the best I have come up with. I can put together a tutorial if anyone's interested, but it may take me some time to remember all the steps.

This is the best I could do... Original: Edit: Had to remove both kids from the picture (and the rope!) I did this very quickly - with the Clone Stamp tool. If you take more time you can probably get a better result.

By popping out, do you mean bursting through, like this?

For my method you could always start with an Ellipse rather than a circle. It wouldn't come out as 'fat' then.

Here's a quick tip for making that teardrop shape... Draw your circle and fill it with a radial gradient, of some colour. Then crop to the dimensions of the circle. Like this... Then use the Octagonal Quad Reshape/Matte plugin. Select 'Reshape' keeping it at 4 control points. Drag both the top left and top right control points to the top centre.

This is the best I could do, swapping the heads...

Here's my go... I duplicated the layer, applied the Portrait Effect on the bottom layer and set the blend mode of the top layer to Multiply.

A couple of ideas. 1. Cut out main image, paste on a new layer. Duplicate. Zoom blur on bottom one, interlace on top one. 2. Cut out right-picture completely, paste on new layer. Cut out player and paste on new layer. Zoom blur again on background. I also cropped the edges and added a drop shadow. Just a couple of ideas to jazz up signatures and draw emphasis to certain areas.

I have updated my earlier post with screenshots of the Bullet Holes in Glass procedure. I have also added a couple of extra steps at the end. Let me know what you think.

Suggested method for creating bullet holes in glass. I saw a photoshop tutorial that used this kind of method, but required an Stylise effect called Wind - PDN didn't have anything like it until the Gradient Barsplugin. 1. Make a 500 x 500 blank canvas. 2. Set Primary colour to Black, Secondary colour to Transparent 3. Use the rectangle select to select an area at the bottom of the canvas, the whole width, right up to 50px from the top (essentially you are selecting the whole canvas except a 50px section all the way across the top) 4. EFFECTS > Gradient Bars: Top=0, Scale=100, Seed=0 5. CTRL+D to deselect and use the EFFECTS > Rectangular to Polar plugin. 6. Use the Magic Wand tool, Tolerance at 75% and click in the centre of the white cirlce - press [Delete] 7. EFFECTS > Blurs > Zoom blur amount=50. 8. ADJUSTMENTS > Invert colours You now have a bullet hole that you can place over glass.

Try, WINDOW > Reset Window Locations

This tutorial is available as a PDF. Click here to view or download it This tutorial will show you how to create Gel 'Style' web browser buttons. Like this: You will require the following plugins; click the links to download and install: Polygon/Stars EdHarvey Effects Drop Shadow Start with a canvas size of 500 x 500 pixels EFFECTS > Render > Polygon/Stars: Rot=90, Size=100, Star Depth=0, Vertices=100, Brush Width=2, Anti-Aliased=Yes. This will render a circle the exact size of your canvas; perfectly centred. Use the Magic Wand tool (tolerance at about 50%) to select the area inside the circle. (This area will remain selected throughout the remaining steps, except for the very last one). Press CTRL+SHIFT+N to create a new Layer. With your primary and secondary colours set to Black and White (default) respectively, select the Gradient tool and set it to Linear Reflected. Right-Click just above/left of centre of the circle and drag a gradient to the bottom right corner of the canvas. ADJUSTMENTS > Curves: and set the Luminosity like below: EFFECTS > Distort > Lens: Amount=200, Quality=5 EFFECTS > Portrait: Soften=10, Lighting=-20, Warmth=20 Create a new layer [CTRL+SHIFT+N]. Change your Primary & Secondary colours to a Dark and Light shade of your chosen button colour; I am using Green. On the new layer, Layer 3, select the Gradient tool again, this time changing it to Radial. Right-Click just inside the bottom of the selected circle and drag your gradient up to the top. Still on Layer 3, press CTRL+SHIFT+Z to go to LAYERS > Rotate/Zoom. Adjust the Zoom level on the layer to 0.90x Press F4 to access the layer properties for Layer 3 and change the Opacity to 200 (you can adjust this yourself for the best outcome with your chosen colour). For the finishing touches, delete the background layer (you no longer need this). Select Layer 2 and EFFECTS > Blurs > Radial Blur: Amount=5pts Select Layer 3 and repeat the Radial Blur (press CTRL+F, to repeat last Effect). Finally, still on Layer 3, press CRTL+D to deselect the circle area: EFFECTS > Drop Shadow: x=0, y=0, Blur=3, Colour=Black. Press CTRL+F and repeat the shadow, twice. You are now free to deposit whatever controls or text you like on the button; also try some different colours.

My go Stock Image: Light Cycle & Tron Font

Some more cars (along the original theme). And since we've delved into the realm of modified animals...

This is not a SOTW entry, just something I was messing about with when Vista was mentioned as a possible theme. Anyway, it looks like the theme won't be Vista now, as Tron seems to be favourite. I haven't even started thinking about a Tron themed entry, waiting for the official start :wink: