Jim100361 - My Stuff

[jim100361]

Jim, so true. They are real. I like your humour too.

Now I must say that your taste is excellent! Mind you I truly prefer the fast back. More specifically, 1970 Boss302 in grabber green This one is for sale. I can dream.

Thanx, my personal preference would be the '65 Coupe Convertible (you can't beat drivin' with the top down - which I did frequently when I had my Jeeps), and like you, I guess I'll just go on dreamin'. I think the only way I'd ever acquire one is if I found it buried on my property - lol.

Here's my latest piece (slightly off-center):

Edited November 24, 2011 by jim100361

[barbieq25]

Pretty darned good outcome. Love those bolts but a teensy bit of Gaussian Blur or Feather would have smoothed them off a bit. Great choice in font & the background texture is something that I like a lot.

[jim100361]

Thanx. Yes, I have to keep reminding myself to use them (gotta start forming some good habits in order to improve my work).

[barbieq25]

We soon get into a groove where we feel comfortable in working. Really it is a matter of trial & error. Quite often I GB @ 2 almost everything but then I work in a 3200 x 2400 canvas & reduce to 25%. Doesn't work for everyone or all of the time either. But what I do really try to do is to keep as many layer as intact as possible so that I can go back & edit if I need to. Sometimes I create copies of the layer & just hide them. Of course I keep a .pdn as well as saving as a .png. Learnt that the hard way.

[jim100361]

Here's one I did of my wife:

[HELEN]

Your work is stunning! What lovely new additions. I really love what you did with your wife's picture. Very creative!

[barbieq25]

I agree with Helen. Very creative with the frame around the photo of your wife.

[jim100361]

Here's the re-do on the "Metal Name Plate" with some adjustments and additions:

[jim100361]

Here's something I toyed with using the Page Curl plugin:

Then I went to this:

Edit:

Add this:

Edited November 25, 2011 by jim100361

[barbieq25]

Goodness! I could never get the page curl to work for me. Deleted the plugin ages ago. I like what you have done here. Great thinking!

I love the rose petal one the best.

[jim100361]

The one with the page curls was a bit time consuming. Essentially here's what I did:

Place the background, then add a layer and place a grid - in this case the default was black so I had to change it to white. Adjust the grid spacing to suit your needs. Next, I would drop back to the background picture and using the grid as my guide, I would select an area and copy it. Then I would add a layer and paste my selection to it. Before proceeding, turn off the background and grid layer so you can better see what you are doing. Next apply the page curl to it (you would have to toy with it to get it to curl in the direction you want.) Next adjust the darkness of the curl. The page curl plugin has some minor problems with it. Only the underside curl portion would contain the image. So I then deselected, then used the magic wand for the side where the underside of the curl exists and apply to that. Then grab the eraser and erase it. Once again deselect and you will see there is a black edge remaining. Again using the eraser erase this edge. Then turn on once again the bottom layer to view your progress. Repeat the process creating a new layer for each page curl to form the tear out. Once you have a perimeter made of all the page curls, merge all the layers down. Next I would select a portion of the white in the center, and copy and paste it back in and then use this as a mask to erase any of the background remaining in the center. Once that is done you can use the magic wand to select the center and then erase it and save it as a gif. This then permits you to apply it over another background of your choosing.

The Rose Petals: As an after thought it came to me that before I overlayed the glass butterflies to it, I should've erased the white area (background) of the petals and then overlayed it to another (maybe lightly colored) background. Then I could've applied a very light drop shadow to the pedals as well creating a better effect. I may still do it just to see how it improves the picture.

And here's my latest manipulation:

You will note that this is the same Mustang from the earlie picture. There is one flaw in it though that I noticed (the others I corrected). When flipping the image and changing the color I had to correct first some elements in the layout. The little logo on the grill had to be flipped and the steering wheel had to be moved. The color adjustment changed the turn signal colors so I had to change them back to a redish color. The remaining flaw? The wipers lean in the wrong direction. I didn't know what I could do to correct them (other than maybe erasing), so I decided to simply leave them the way they are.

Edited November 26, 2011 by jim100361

[Aislin]

i like what you did with the latest one, but the front wheels kind look like they are floating even though you created some shadow... maybe where the wheels tough the road a very thin line of shadow would help? or some lil stones from the road in front of the wheel?

[jim100361]

or some lil stones from the road in front of the wheel?

Umm, that's where my "talents" fail me. Don't know how to do that without it looking like trash.

Here's what I did:

I re-did the shadow layer (sitting beneath the car layer) and added one more that was over the car layer. The first layer I made a bit bigger and a tad darker. The second layer I painted a over the tires a bit and then applied the gaussian blur so that they blended a bit into the lower shadow:

Any better?

[Ilke]

Nice stuff you have in here. Gotta love how you have plenty of ideas You don't seem to be in friendly terms with anti-aliasing though, but I can see you're improving faster and faster when it comes to that.

About the latest pic, I just gotta suggest something: Can you make the car's shadow not pitch black but a bit transparent?

And no matter what you think, your photo restorations are great.

[jim100361]

Thanks Like, I agree the shadow beneath is too dark and I will correct it as best as I can.

In the meantime, I came up with another piece. I've had some input from a couple people on this to help me, and though I was not able to do what I was originally hoping to do, I was able to modify the concept itself and work with that.

That having been said, I'll show you what I've come up with at the moment, but be mindful I will be modifying this once more.

Here's what I started with:

I then modified this to obtain some (slightly) thinner lines:

I used the resulting image to mask the first image to create this (and adding a touch of drop shadow):

Having done that, I brought in this image and lightened it up:

I then brought the latter 2 pictures together to create this:

What I intend to change is to pull some pieces out and scatter them a bit w/some rotations and then finish so it's not quite so "tidy" a picture.

[barbieq25]

Now that is really well done!

[jim100361]

Thank you, that shall we say, "warms me to the cockles of me heart"!

As I say, I intend to re-accomplish it (and maybe I'll create a tutorial while I'm at it).

[HELEN]

I would have never in a billion years realized that the puzzle piece wasn't a photo. The other photo manipulations are just as amazing! Wow!

[jim100361]

That does look really cool.

One suggestion tho' ... before you merge the jigsaw layer to the photograph, a bit of Bevel Selection will enhance the 3D look when you tilt it

Aww doodie. Oma suggested it too to me, but I was unsure about it. I didn't know if:

a.) I can apply to just the 2 visible sides (similar to doing a drop shadow)

b.) If after skewing and resizing if it would even be visible/noticeable.

Heck I can't even see the drop shadow on the puzzle (that's how bad my eyesight seems to be - even with glasses)!

Well, for better or worst, here's what I got accomplished up to this point:

EDIT:

Here's a pic I added yesterday in one of the tutorial sections:

Edited November 28, 2011 by jim100361

[Aislin]

the car looks sooooo much better now see you can do it, those are just tiny details but it makes a world of difference

nice puzzle image

[HELEN]

GREAT new puzzle piece! "Handle With Care" is awesome. I would've probably made the text a little bit lighter, but sometimes leaving it as is, marks your own signature, so to speak, to the image.

[barbieq25]

Goodness, look what you've done with the puzzle image now! Great work! I love the addition of th ewine & the cheese. I had to go back & make sure that it was not in the original photo. Very nicely done. Bravo!

[jim100361]

I'm not afraid to take advice. I explained my point of view to her on the advice she offered and I graciously thanked her for her assistance and support.

Advice is just that, it is advice. If I am/was working on a larger piece whereas I could more easily see how the plugin was affecting what I am/was working on, then I probably wouldn't have had a differing opinion at the time. But as I've explained, because of the skewing of the puzzle piece(s) and resizing, I did not think it would be a noticeable attribute.

Edited November 29, 2011 by jim100361

[jim100361]

I tried using the tutorial for the wavy flag using the alpha displacement plugin, but wasn't able to get the effect I wanted:

I tried using the tiger image itself as the background in which the concrete wall should've curved to the contour of, but it didn't seem to work. I don't understand what I'm doing wrong - except for the fact that the image itself of the tiger and it's background is essentially greyscale (black, white, and grey).

Here's what I was working with:

Edited November 30, 2011 by jim100361

[barbieq25]

Still looks pretty good to me.