pdnnoob

Just shortening some of the explanations around here... It seems to me that, even though you are making a new layer and pasting, you aren't pasting on to the new layer. Make sure the new layer is selected before you paste. To not have to deal with the whole copied background alpha issue, simply copy your desired area, click the "add new layer" button, and paste. Clicking the new layer button should automatically select the new layer as well. If you still have the problem, check the layer window to make sure the new layer was selected.

awesome plugin. I use it quite often when following photoshop or gimp tutorials that need extra blend modes. Only problem I'm running into is the fact that it only affects one layer and not all the layers beneath the layer that I run it on. To bad Rick hasn't added all these to the list of layer blend modes yet

o wow...4 way tie for first atm...looks like you need to leave the poll open for a bit longer XD

yay! more emotes!!! XD

csm725:3 yy10:2 csm725 wins! A close battle, but I think I'll have to go with csm's sig, as N00Bz said, "for the simplicity." My eyes had no idea how to interpret parts of yy10's sig. I'll join with this

entry #2 is (ok...most likely) winning this :3 I'm not even going to bother with this competition lol

The feather selection tool is leaving slightly blurry pixels around the edges still. I liked the old feather, but I guess I'll have to stick with AA's assistant now I had to use feather selection multiple times just to get rid of the pixeled edges that all selections have, but it still left enough of the pixels to make an obvious pixelness

Definitely voting for #6. And if I didn't like space scenes better, that would definitely be my desktop background for at least a week O.O Nice work, whoever made that!

yay! thanks guys! I'll be thinking of the next theme soon Just trying to figure out what can fit in the category of "Wallpaper of the Week"...

Thanks for the quick response! Needed it for the mosaic comp if you ever want to see what it can do ^^

lol you removed textile right when I needed it XD any way I could get it back? I agree, it was rubbish, but it has its uses...(I've used it once in my entry to the monthly realism competition )

I agree. That picture has improved significantly. Looks much better ^^ I'm just being really picky now...could you move the fuse so that the end is connected in the center of the top of the bomb? If you were to put things in perspective, that would mean slightly higher and to the right of the center of the ellipse that makes up the top. Once again, huge improvements! Nice work!

lol I see XD In that case, it's almost perfect...just add those 3D effects (or blend it like chrisco mentioned) and you'll be all set! I loled when hexratt posted the bomb (which is nice btw...). That is the first thing I thought when seeing your pic ^^@hexratt nice bomb. I would suggest you made the burning part of the fuse glow red a little (add red in a color burn layer?) and make the flame a little more 3D (some behind the fuse and some in front). If you made the piece that overlaps the fuse as it shoots off towards the bottom right "behind" the fuse, it might give you a 3D flame effect.

looks nice, but I would suggest getting rid of the red or replacing it with a more realistic shine (instead of cartoon-style rounded lines shape). What is it supposed to be? if you found an example picture on the web, you could work towards making it similar to that, down to that last detail.

OMG you KILLED the epic feather plugin >.< What happened to true feather!? I am not looking forward to using aa's assistant as a replacement

Ahh ok. ^^ Note to self: don't argue with admin, especially when admin's decision goes in your favor

Thanks! I don't know about you guys, tho, but I'm seeing a tie in the votes between me and Kemaru...9 vote each.

hello? is this contest ever going to end?

I apologize for all spelling errors. It is way past my bedtime @Falken That is one sweet nebula and...pretty much everything else in the pic. Except the stars. There aren't enough to give it a "space-ee" feel. It looks to me like headlights on an oddly lit foggy day. If you add more small stars (noise with lower coverage and max intensity), it will give the nebula less of a murky/stuffy feeling and more of an in-the-open feel. Also, on the bright stars with the cool shine, the shine all needs to be oriented in the same direction (or the flare or whatever you call that). Sparkles like that are produced by your camera lens, so it shouldn't be even the slightest bit random. @Mayor_McSteeze Your orb looks nice and shiny, but a little too blurry. Shrink it down to increase quality. Also, make the lighting on the inside (the swirly green part) match the lighting everywhere else. Either put the dark spot with the shiny dots or opposite the dots...not in between. That will give it more of a glowy feel and less of a "2D image set in glass" feel. Like chrisco said, get rid of the weird blurry blue spot on the bottom right. It looks...weird o.0 With the shadow, I think you should replace it with a drop-shadow directly behind the orb and blurred because, I don't know about you, but it really looks more like a half-sphere sitting on a white table than a side view of a full sphere. Your wall texture looks great! I don't know what else to say about a wall texture. Not a texture expert here

Are you trying to directly copy the table? (select table, then copy) or are you pressing the "print screen" button on your keyboard? The second one would be the correct way to do it because the table itself isn't text that you can paste in pdn.

like I said, I realize Ash is presenting a technique to the community, but some minor notes on how the final product can be improved would be useful for those that do follow tutorials to the letter. About making cobblestone walls look better, try to line the shading up with the rest of the room. Figure out where the light source is coming from, then rotate the cobblestone to make it match. Also, near the edges, you may want to run some distortions to make it appear to be the shape it is instead of a flat image. Those two things are all I know how to fix in these situations. There are other thing like perspective (on each cobblestone) that are off, but you'll have to figure those out yourself...I'm still noob in that area

It would be nice if the colors were in hex with an additional value (0-255) for alpha. How do I interpret what actually is there and how would I use it? I see the "AARRBBGG" note, but "F4" for an alpha value doesn't mean anything to me and I can't plug it in anywhere in the pdn program. Any comments? Help? Something? Sounds like a cool plugin, but I would like some clarification on how it is used. EDIT: I found the answer...all the double digits are written in hex (FF being max and equal to 255), but I have to open the windows calculator to convert from decimal to hex (I'm obviously not a computer geek, though I plan to be one someday ). It would be nice if you could make this a little more convenient XD EDIT: I am really answering all my questions today XD. So I figured out that the last six digits in each entry can be copied and pasted into the "hex" box when I click "more" on the color palette. However, I still have to convert the first two digits to decimal so I can plug them into the "Alpha" box...could someone teach me how to do this quickly without the calculator? Thanks XD

I like it XD. Just being picky, but if you could add a part where you make the lighting on the left and right objects (your door and window) match that of the walls they are on, you could make the room look much better. At the moment, they look like objects taken from a separate image and thrown on without proper blending (in other words, they are too bright). I realize you are presenting a technique to the community, but if you mentioned a little something about things like that (and why they happen), you would give people a head start on making their pics more beautiful than if they just copy what you did in the tutorial. I love the tutorial tho! Nice work!

nice. I like it XD The only thing I would complain about is the shiny spot on the one you twisted, but even I don't know how you would keep from distorting that XD

Thanks for all the nice comments! About the icicles, I'm sure there are ways to fix it (a little twisting and bulging perhaps) but I'll leave that to our creative pdn users Also, in step 10, I'm thinking thicker icicles may actually be better as long as you don't make them so thick you can tell they aren't pointy. (EDIT: new find: icicles are less uniform if they are thicker.) EDIT: another thing to note. When using a thicker text, skip 12, 13, and 15. In 14, just lower the opacity of the only motion blur layer to 150 and you should be fine. EDIT: example with thicker text