cjmcguinness

Excellent, I like it. However, there's one thing that doesn't look quite right; the angle/perspective of the table compared to the chips. The attached image will demonstrate what I mean; it looks like the viewing perspective angle of the chips and the table are quite different, in my (very rough) estimation the chips are rotated to an angle of roughly 87 degrees, and the table is somewhere around 75 degrees (you will see the difference in the arrows I have overlaid). You should be conscious of this sort of perspective/angle difference, as matching the two will give your images more realism. Hope this helps for future work. -CJ

Something I made using Jake2k's 3D text tutorial.

Excuse me for bumping a previous post, but thought I'd put it out there again...

Glad you liked it, thanks. I've updated the original post with revised instructions for accessing Median; but rest assured, the dotted line feature is still very much alive and well in 3.30 Beta 2.

My vote goes to Pyjo - great job, on the mouth, glasses and hair.

Here's a sample of my work with Paint.NET over the last 12 months. Digital Art Table Games Glass Widescreen Dark Art Miscellaneous Photography and Photomanipulation Pixel Art All* above work is 100% Paint.NET. * Flames in Three-Cubed rendered in Chaoscope Enjoy.

This is probably my favourite and most accomplished piece of art, to date. I later adapted it for use in my signature and avatar. If anyone is interested in how this was created, please read the tutorial

I was having a hard time imagining how some of the actors that have been cast to play well established roles in the forthcoming Star Trek movie (unfortunately not due until May 2009) might look, so tried my hand at a bit of photomanipulation; let me know what you think. Simon Pegg as Lt. Commander Montgomery Scott Original Scotty & original Pegg John Cho as Lieutenant Hikaru Sulu Original Sulu & original Cho

This is an abstract piece I created a couple of months ago and posted in the old Pictorium. It's one of my pieces that I am most proud of, so would like to share it in this new Abstract thread. Enjoy. If anyone is interested in how this was created, there is a tutorial

How did you come up with canvas size of 2400 x 1200? Thank you. There is a check box in the Canvas Size dialog that says 'maintain aspect ratio' - the initial canvas is in a 4:3 aspect, 800 x 600 (for every 4 pixels across, there is 3 pixels down). If you change the width figure, without unticking the aspect ratio button, the height box will automatically change to keep the new canvas to the same ratio. Untick the 'aspect ratio' box and change the figures in the width and height boxes independently, to 2400 & 1200 respectively. Regards -CJ

What you need to do is cut out the main focal object from the picture and place it on a separate layer. Take a look in the Tutorials section for 'Cutting out images, the easy way". This will show you how to cleanly select out an area you want to keep sharp. Method would be, start with the image you want to manipulate and duplicate it [CTRL+SHIFT+D], so the same image is repeated on both layers. Cut out the focal image on the top layer (basically, remove the background - using the technique in the aforementioned tutorial). Now you can blur the bottom layer (unfocus, motion, gaussian, it's your choice - depending on what effect you are going for). Finally, once you have completed the blur on the bottom you can merge the top and bottom layers so you can save finished image as .PNG or .JPG or .BMP - whatever is your preferred image format. Hope this helps. -CJ

Stock used: Teeth and smile lines/creases (just the teeth, not the lips) Hair and chin.

Wow! - Madjik you've really set the bar high for this competition, amazing work.

Make sure you press CTRL+D to deselect any active areas before you run the Gravity plugin, or press CTRL+A to make sure the entire canvas is selected.

I clicked on that link and the following error came up: You have attempted to visit a page that poses a security risk to Intel. Information Technology (IT) blocks pages that use Social Engineering attempts to gain access to the Intel network. Here's the image... I've also updated the link in my previous post, just in case it does pose some sort of security threat.

I've got another suggestion, if anyone's interested - what about skinning a car? There was a competition last year on deviantART - Skin a Scion The details page is still available with download links to the cars you could use. Also, take a look at some of the entries - including the winning one - to get an idea for the kind of manipulation I have in mind. We could choose one of the stock images provided in the competition page, or choose a completely different car (but perhaps steer clear of BMW's - we don't want to upset anyone, if you know what I mean ). I think it would be fun and challenging to do a 'Pimp my Ride' type of manipulation. If we are going to stick with the model-makeover theme, how about this picture of Sophie Dahl?

There is discussion in the Photo Manipulation Contest discussion thread about a theme for the next contest and I suggested a 'makeover' type of manipulation, taking a plain photo of a model, with no makeup, and doing a complete makeover - including changing the shape of features, hair, etc... Mike.Ryan52 stated that this type of manipulation would require Photoshop and it's 'Liquify' tool, suggesting it might be beyond the capabilities of Paint.NET. I love a challenge, so I've taken the picture I proposed for the next contest and performed a complete overhal using only the magic of PDN. The main changes are:- Altered the position of the eyeballs so the subject appears to be looking directly at the camera, changed the shape of the nose; making it thinner, corrected the right side of the lips to make them more symmetrical, then composited the original face onto a different stock model - altering the shape of the face by shortening it to make it more round. Added a little bit of 'Soften Portrail' and Voila!

I've done loads of 'small' touch-ups on my own photographs and get some very good results with PDN - I just think it would be interesting to see what can really be done with the tools and plugins we have got. I know of the 'Liquify' tool in Photoshop and have seen some demo videos on youtube, but the real challenge is seeing what everyone can do without such a powerful tool. I've done some pre-tests on the picture I posted above and have been able to resize the nose, change the colour and position of the eyes and clean up the skin using various blurs. I know it's a longer, more drawn-out process with PDN, but that'll make it all the more rewarding. <> Here's what I've managed to do with the earlier picture I posted... I corrected the eyes so they are looking directly at the camera, adjusted the nose to make it thinner, changed the right-side of the lips so they are more symmetrical and then composited the face onto another stock model, shortening the head to make it more round; a little bit of 'Soften Portrait' and voila!<> But if anyone has some other suggestions let's hear them (or should I say, see them).

Congrat's Pyjo - great effort. I think a facial makeover would be a good idea, something like this before/after picture... There's some reasonably good stock available on deviantART, such as this... The idea would be to give the model a complete makeover - even going as far as changing the shape of features, changing the hair, adding jewelery, even putting the head on a different body, extending the original picture and/or placing the model on a different background. Anyone else like this idea, or have a different one?

Another method that I prefer to use is applying the Drop Shadow effect, with the X & Y offsets at 0, and adjusting the blur level - repeat 2 - 10 times depending on how much stroke/shadow/glow you want around the text. The latest update of the effect also allows you to add solid shadows of varying thickness (widening radius) - you can get border effects such as this... Drop shadow is part of KrisVDM's effects package.

Duly noted and now corrected... What I did was... 1. Expand the canvas size to 3000 x 3000 (secondary colour transparent) 2. Run Polar to Rect effect (angular offset 90) 3. Create a new layer and insert the text, for width, where you want it to go (in this case between the stars) 4. Select and squash the height of the text to best fit. 5. Run Rect to Polar effect on each layer separately 6. Crop to get rid of exterior blank space 7. Align text as required to fit exactly.

While I was beavering away, Ash beat me to it. I used a different method, involving Polar to Rect, add the text, then Rect to Polar. If you want full details I can write them up. -CJ

There was a major discussion thread on this subject about 6 months ago - Reorganising the Forum - Making Tutorials a top level index. (please do not reply to that thread, as it is very old and against the forum rules) - the outcome of which was that I created a categorized tutorial section in the Paint.NET Wikibook started by usedHonda. I haven't updated this in a while, but check it out, you'll find some of the best tutorials listed there, in a range of categories. I really should get round to updating this with some of the best new tutorials...

how did you so that. Its amazing and smooth I used the techniques in cjmcguinness' tutorial "make a chain" to "tie" it Cool, it's good to know that some of my older tut's are still being looked at, and techniques are being adapted for new uses. Excellent work; raising at a slight angle and putting the shadow behind gives real depth. -CJ

Stock Images used - Luke & Lars Homestead