ventor1

Here's my effort: I've turned my wife into an Avatar! lol

Didn't know they existed... Downloading now!!!

After searching the forum and stumbling upon a few bad attempts at creating a disco ball, I thought I would put forward the following creation - which I am sure can be further improved. You will need the following: Shape 3D AA's Assistant My sparkle effect - set up as a custom mini brush 1. Create a new image (600 x 600) with black as the background layer. 2. In a new layer set grey (808080) as the background color, and create a white grid (effects/render/gridlines) at 23 for both vertical & horizontal spacing. 3. Using the magic wand, randomly select grid squares and fill with color 0062Ab. 4. Repeat the above step with the following colors: 007474, 00000, 00F3E9, 0064AB and FFFFFF. You should end up with something which resembles the following (note the outer grey border around the squares is the PDN background, and not the desired effect): 5. Run Shaped 3D at Half Sphere Map (Repeat) setting, and turn off Lighting and Specular Hilight. Play with the angles, although I ended up opting for: Axis 1 @ 18.4, Axis 2 @ 1.7 and Axis 3 @ 13.0 6. Create a new layer above the ball, and as per the below image create an ellipse with the ellipse select tool and fill with a black - white radial gradient: 7.Set the layer blending mode to additive, deselect and apply gaussian blur with the setting at 60. 8. Go back to the ball layer and using the magic wand select the area outside the ball. Now go back to the above layer and delete the selection. 9. Deselect and apply a gaussian blur with the setting at 1 to the ball. 10. Apply AA's Assistant (I am addicted to this plugin) with the sharpness set at 3 to the ball. You should have the following: 11. Merge down the top layer and using custom mini brushes, apply sparkles generously to the white squares. 12. Apply glow with radius @ 6, Brightness @ -57 and contrast @ -24. 13. Create a new layer below the ball layer and using the ellipse select tool create an ellipse bigger than the ball and fill with white. You should have this: 14. Deselect and apply a gaussian blur of 60 and set the layer opacity to 60. You should have ended up with this:

I love this tut! Not for what it is; but rather for the doors that it opens!

Rules will always be broken in err or as a deliberate means of flaunting them. It's human nature to do so and I personally believe that making any changes and/or adjustments is probably just a waste of admin. time. The rules exist as they are, and you break them at your own peril! Ever read a warranty/guarantee from cover to cover on an electrical item that you've brought? ...somebody will now answer yes! V

Done - thanks for the tip!

Nice touch. :-)

Fantastic tut!

I searched the forums beforehand and couldn't find anything regarding rain drops. With the exception of a couple of differences, our posts are almost identical... right down to the white dot!

Thanks guys. I never thought I'd find the time to put together my first tut. - first of many I hope!

This image will be required for this tutorial *** Note: there is an existing rain drops tutorial (Erasers Rain drop) - Great minds think alike! There are only a few slight differences throughout the middle parts of the tutorial and the previous tutorial imagery no longer exists.*** 1. Open up the image provided and create a new layer above it. 2. In the new layer create an ellipse with the ‘Ellipse Select’ tool. 3. Create a linear gradient with black set to primary and white as secondary color and deselect (as per below): 4. Set layer properties to ‘Overlay’ 5. Apply ‘Drop Shadow’: Widening radius 2, blur radius 5, and everything else set to default. 6. Set paintbrush to secondary color (white) and paint a spot as shown below: 7. Apply ‘Glow’: radius 10, brightness 0 & contrast 50. 8. Apply AA’s assistant with all slide bars set to the right. ***Layers 9 & 10 are optional*** 9. Duplicate the layer a few times, reposition and resize the layers and use bulge to change the shape of the drops as desired. 10. Merge all water drop layers. 11. Duplicate water drop layer, set layer to glow with opacity set to 75. Done!

I only realized after posting this tutorial that there already exists a tutorial to make a screw head. :-( This is however a more specific type of screw head and the methodology is different! 1. Open up a new image (400 x 400 pixels) 2. Create a new transparent layer. 3. While holding down the shift key, draw an ellipse with the "Ellipse Select" tool. Fill it with a radial gradient (primary 808080 secondary 000000) 4. Cntrl-D to deselect and apply Noise à Add noise at below settings: 5. Effects, choose objects align and “centre both”. 6. Create a new layer and draw a rectangle with fill color 404040 (as per below): 7. With the rectangle selected, apply bevel at a depth of 10 and at 65 strength. 8. Duplicate the layer, flip it horizontally and set the layer properties to Additive and merge it down. 9. Now repeat step 5 for the rectangle layer (the below image is what you should have to date). 10. Go back to the first layer and select the outside of the screw head with the magic wand. Once selected make the rectangle layer your work layer and delete the selection. 11. Merge layer down and select “AA’s assistant” and drag all bars to the end (in a right direction). 12. Open up the curves dialogue box and select RGB as the Transfer Map. Deselect blue and drag the control point to position 100,237 13. Apply drop shadow with widening radius set to 3 and blur radius set to 5... the rest at default. 14. (optional) resize image to 200x200. End result:

The taper is created once you have carried out step 5 on a new layer and set the layer properties to color burn in step 6. This is an extremely well written tutorial and I can only suggest that you might have missed a step if your results do not replicate or come close to the end result. V

If you applied sinwaves and/or jitter to the grid and then a bit of blur, it would have turned out fantastic!

After completing the tutorial I went back and rendered the text with clouds, flames and outline object. I then re-created the reflected text in a new layer via mirroring and applied jitter in a vertical direction to that of the reflected text. I also filled the ellipse with darker flames than that used in the text and blurred it a lot more! V

Thank you for the great tut. Pyro! V

That in essence was the desired effect, so I'll take that as a compliment! lol

Removed white, polar inverted, duplicate layer and set to difference. Rendered flames on bottom layer, flattened the two and ended up with a Goth Church Window. Great tut. - this could potentially have an unlimited number of uses!

Great tut. Ash Thanks.

I love this tut. BarbieQ25. While I did things very differently, I applied some of your techniques which I will probably continue to utilise on other projects also. Thanks... V

I apologise if this is the wrong forum for this thread, however being that it is 'general discussion' I would like to take this opportunity to thank you all for the time and effort put into educating us all and in turn making us better PDN users. In particular I would also like to thank Rick for his ongoing development of a software which is right up there with the best of them... if not better. May you, your families and your loved ones have a safe, happy & healthy festive season!!!

Open the image, select the hand with the ellipse tool, centre the bulge crosshairs on the ellipse and apply a bulge of roughly 5. Duplicate the layer, slightly take out the diameter of the ellipse (move selection with CNTRL or SHIFT) and apply bulge again. Repeat this step 5 or 6 times. Do this again 5 or 6 times, however this time making the ellipse diameter smaller as you go. Under a microscope it might need a little bit of touching up, but generally it should suffice! My apologies to the woman in the photo... nobody wants a hand like that!

Me confusious! Can you upload the pic to give everybody a better idea of the task at hand?

Open the image. Duplicate the layer. Deselect bottom layer. With top layer selected, erase everything but the ball. Select 'Rotate/Zoom' layer and adjust the zoom factor of the ball as needed. Merge down layer. You now have a bigger ball, while everything else remains the same!

Bob, This sums up approx. 90% of what I do on PDN (assuming the threshold method doesn't give me the desired result), and I always follow these procedures: 1. Once I open up the image I create a new layer, send it to the bottom and with the paint bucket I make it blue. 2. Select the top layer (image) and use the magic wand at a low tolerance to remove most of the image background. 3. Use the eraser with antialiasing disabled to clean up any junk pixels. 4. Use the line tool (color set to same blue as background) to draw curves around object. Use control points to adjust curves as desired and then magic wand to delete curves. 5. Finish off the image edges with feather... and on the odd occasion I find myself using smart blur.