jim100361

Here's my latest piece: EDIT: And add this:

Thank You, as I stated near the beginning, " Elsewhere (in my gallery) I have a similar picture which has some sealife added to it. Since this is going to be graphic intensive, I will not be adding any in this tutorial."

Thank you everybody (I guess the new kid on the block can teach some things). I look forward to seeing some results from others!

OK, first here's the revision (yes, I agree - it's a better representation setting to overlay and adjusting the hue): Now a before and after I did to create fangs (also found in the tutorial section) utilizing the Liquify plugin: Before: After: I had to try the Liquify method because pics in the existing tutorial use painting to shape fangs and the colors didn't match up and it was easy to tell they were painted. I believe the method used above is probably the best method for anyone wanting to create fangs as it essentially reshapes the existing tooth and thus no off colors.

I have Alpha Masking, but I don't know how to use it to cut stuff out - I've used it for items where the background is already blank, but I don't know how I would use it to cut out something from a filled picture (backgrounds, etc.). Could you give me instructions?

Well, I was on the right track. There is a way to get the right effect and get it natural looking. Here's the original: And here it is using the liquified plugin (utilizing the push feature - similar to smudge):

From the tutorial Contouring Text to the Background: Ha! They thought they had me beat! lol

LMAO - Quick, call the Fashion Police!!! But seriously, look around some of the other galleries and simply let your mind wander. You'll think of something! And I love your smiley - It somehow reminded me of this:

This tutorial is available as a PDF. Click here to view or download it In this tutorial we are going to go from this: To this: We will combine the first picture with this one to obtain the effect: Note1: Elsewhere (in my gallery) I have a similar picture which has some sealife added to it. Since this is going to be graphic intensive, I will not be adding any in this tutorial. Note2: In selecting my "subject" photo, you will note that it includes only a bit of vegetation (in the background). I intentionally didn't want to have to deal with hiding and/or otherwise erasing more than necessary to accomplish this. Additionally, it is also absent of heavy shadows which could detract from the effect we're striving for. Note3: Likewise, the underwater view I selected had very little sealife in it (at least I was forunate enough that the selection itself had it in the left side allowing me to "hide" it). 1. Start by opening the picture of the ruins in PDN. 2. Select the magic wand and use 45% as the tolerance (as seen below) 3. Click on the clouds near the center, it should look something like this: 4. Next, select the eraser and set the Brush width to a very large number (this will permit us to erase much of the background with a minimal amount of swipes) as shown below: 5. Go ahead at this point and erase the sky: 6. Select the Magic wand again, and then click in the open area as designated by the arrow and then erase it: 7. Next, click once on the selection tool, then click somewhere just outside of the picture to deselect the area we just erased. 8. Again, select the eraser (and you may now change to a smaller brush) and erase the remaining portion of the sky as seen below: 9. If you didn't resize the eraser brush please do so now to the size indicated below. We will now erase the tree from the background. 10. To accomplish this, click on the magnifying glass a couple of times and adjust your view using the slider on the right and bottom to center the tree in our window. 11. Erase the tree and any other artifacts that may exist as shown below (again, using the slider on the bottom and/or on the right to move about): 12. You should now have something like this: 13. Next, import your next layer (the underwater scene). From the menus, I used "Layer>Import from file" and browsed to and selected my image. 14. In this example, my underwater scene is smaller than the ruins that I'm working with, so I will now resize it. Simply click and hold with the mouse the little circle on the corner and drag it down to the corner of our existing picture to make our picture fit to the same size 15. It should now look like this: 16. Next, on the Layers pane, click the down arrow to move this layer down and it should now become a background to our image of the ruins: 17. You will note in our example we can still see part of one of the dolphins visible, so next resize from the lower left corner of our selected picture and drag it further left and down until the dolphin is well hidden behind our scene. 18. Next, from the Layers pane, click on our original background so it is now highlighted as shown: 19. Go to the menus and select "Color Balance": 20. Move the sliders to the settings shown below: 21. Next, using the selection tool, select the background much like I have below: Note: Please note that I have used the walls as a rough boundary 22. With our area selected, go into the menus and navigate to "Unfocus" as shown: 23. Use the value of 7 and click the "OK" button: 24. Next, with our area still selected, from the menu, navigate to and select "Brightness/Contrast": 25. Adjust the sliders to roughly the same settings as shown below: 26. Next, select the whole picture and navigate to and select "Unfocus" once again using 10 as our value: 27. Once again, in the menu and with our picture still selected, navigate to and select "Brightness/Contrast" and ajust the sliders as indicated: Note: If you were worried about it before, you will now see that the background is no longer "glowing" as it was previously. 28. Next, from the Layers pane, select the underwater scene, duplicate it, and move it up to the top 29. Next, from the Tools pane, select the "Gradient" tool and "Linear" mode and sweep from the upper right to the lower left about 3/4 of the way through (if the dolphin begins to re-appear backup in the opposite direction until you can not see it - we don't want a ghost dolphin in our picture): Note: This will give the illusion of the beams of light from the surface eminating onto our ruins as well as changing the shading a bit in the background. 30. Once again from our Layers pane, select the ruins again. 31. Navigate through the menu again to "Brightness/Contrast" and adjust the sliders once more as shown: You should now have the completed undwater ruins scene:

I think maybe a touch of motion blur to the jets and not so sharp (maybe unfocus just a tad or lighten them) might help this. EDIT: Here's an (very quickly edited) example of trying to give a little life to a picture of an A-10 in flight: I added just a touch of motion blur and some trailing smoke and vapors.

Thank you, you're very kind (maybe too kind - I've still got a long way to go). Here is another attempt to transform a picture (again, I'm not totally satisfied with the result but I don't know what more I can do at my current level to improve it). BEFORE: AFTER: The ruins themselves don't seem bad, but the sealife are giving me trouble. I've tried softening, feathering, adding some transparency, adjusting light levels, unfocus, and color balance, but any attempt to fade them much more so they appear as more murky images so they will stand out less is giving me trouble as the results keep giving me more defined edges beyond what they are now. EDIT: One more attempt:

Yes, I adjusted it for the different pictures. In the case of the picture with the girl on the parkbench, because the logo was in the trees and there was a lot of dark areas from the branches, I thought the heavier black worked better. The newest image (I'm assuming you're referring to the "Hand of God" picture), I thank you. It's a funny thing about that picture: Originally I was contemplating some way to once again display a guitar in the image, so I posed the question to myself as to how I would do that with the background that I was using. My first thought was to add a view from a porch or deck, and place it in the lower left corner of the picture and with that I could then place the guitar leaning against the rails. This took my search into different modes, initially looking simply for "porch view" and then to "sunset porch view" and "sunrise porch view". I wasn't able to come up with anything that (excuse the pun) "struck a chord" with me, so I gave up on it (at least for now with such a dark background picture). So then I asked myself how else I could put a guitar into the photo. Since I already used a picture with a dock in the water, I didn't want to do the same thing, so I thought about "suspending" the guitar in mid-air. So I naturally had to take the concept further as I thought it wouldn't look right with simply that (most of the time (but not always) in the pictures I try to have at least 3 different elements added to the picture - the background, the guitar and something else). This way the picture doesn't become to overwhelmed by the elements and detract too much from the background - the guitars I choose are usually something that would go with the background (color-wise), in this case it's not may not be quite so apparent as other models, but this one is known as a "sunburst" finish on the guitar. Anyways to accomplish this suspended guitar I came up with the concept of God giving the gift of an Ovation guitar. So often times my original "inspirations" don't come to fruition as I initially invision them. Sometimes they just develop from something else that I planned. EDIT: As an afterthought (going back to the picture of the girl on the parkbench), I actually think the picture is still incomplete. As you can tell from the original background, it was more of a morning picture with some light fog in the open area of the picture. By adding the girl and bench, I had to adjust the picture with the haze and sunbeams and the lens flare as well as darken the underside of the branches a bit to create more shadow and likewise lighten the upper or exposed portions of the branches and added some shadow to the trees that are in the woods to further the enhancement to the photo. The result as you can see is mostly achieved except for one more thing, I think that the treeline needs some shadow extending out towards the open area a bit to further achieve the transformation, afterall from the lighting on the girl and the highlights added to the guitar, it is supposed to be a very bright sunny day.

I always start out using the magic wand, and after that it's just a matter of zooming in (enlarging the picture often to something like 600%) and then just erase a click at a time to erase everything else remaining. Most of the time I ever so slightly erase a some of the edge of the image itself to avoid getting light outlines. Also, using the magic wand, don't be afraid to adjust the setting as needed to highlight either more or less of the background (another thing I only recently learned about in paint.net). Anyways, it may take an hour to erase to extract what I desire, so you'll need patience.

Microsoft also has a gif animator (I think it's rather old) and it works on Windows 7 (I've used it). http://download.cnet.com/Microsoft-GIF-Animator/3000-18512_4-12053.html

I like the effect you've given this one. It reminds me of a patch or a print on a piece of fabric beginning to fade. Very nice.

Maybe this'll do the trick:

No harm, no foul. I searched google images since your reply and I agree. The flares can probably be adjusted in the following ways: a.) Some overlaps b.) Modify the angle more downward (probably more towards the girl seeing that is the brightest part of the picture). c.) Maybe adding a ring or two, as well as varying the flare sizes more randomly as opposed to incrementally. I didn't take offense, I just thought you were opposed to the flares themselves from an artistic perspective vs the method I used. Thanks for the input.

I've been using Paint.net for quite awhile. I just didn't know how to do a great many things. I never delved too deeply into the various effects that paint.net offered, so I've never really been able to put it to any real use. For instance, up until about 2 weeks ago, I wouldn't have been able to have done the last picture because I didn't know how to get transparency effect or the motion blur and a great many other things (like the light reflections in pictures, orbs, etc), and manipulating layers, etc. That is why I recently started visiting these forums and the tutorials and such. I wanted to improve my capabilities with it. Not to mention the advice people offer to improve my work, that is by far one of the best things here. It's always great to have another set of eyes with an artistic perspective to help.

And here's yet another piece: LMAO, you folks must be getting tired of my "Ovation Guitar" adverts!!

We're our own worst critics. You've got some great stuff.

Nicely done, though normally something like that wouldn't "tickle my fancy", I do like it.

I liked the second one better out of the two of them. Not to sound condeming towards your work/efforts, my own personal preference would be for it to be lighter though. Nice work!

1. Given how bright the sun is supposed to be vs the original background and wanting to provide a realistic perspective, I personally thought the lens flare (though not necessary) was a pretty good thought. It's okay though that you have a differing opinion, but it's simply a touch I wanted to add to it. So, no I don't hate you, you're certainly entitled to your opinion, but I agree in the sense that it didn't have to be added, it is though an "artistic" choice of my own choosing. Thank you though for the input. 2. I'll consider downloading and installing the pack you've referenced, though I doubt at this stage (of my development) that most of them will be of much use to me. I did like the sun flare effect though that is shown in one of the examples, but the others (sorry, my own preference) don't really "grab me". Here's a "fix/upgrade" from a previous piece that others have commented on: The Previous Version: