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Zen Stone Tutorial?


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I'm not sure what you're asking? How to stack stones and photograph them, or do you wish to make the entire image from scratch?

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Hi EER,

I was looking to make the zen stones from scratch. I'd like to make individual stones and stack them however I like.

I bought your e-book last night, but haven't had time to read it yet. For those that don't have a Kindle, you can download the free Kindle for PC reader.

Thanks for your help.

SC

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I put something quick together to give you some ideas :).

You can make own stone texture or use premade one, I used WelshBlue´s which he generously shared. You can find it in his gallery http://forums.getpai...lue-air-cooled/.

I used Shape3D to make a base stone http://forums.getpai...showtopic=18968

and then you can use different distortion methods to shape the stones to your liking, I used Bulge.

-------------------------------

I started with this texture http://i616.photobuc...es/1texture.jpg.

and here are some steps with screenshots:

zen1.png

Open new image and copy and paste your stone to different layers.

zen2.png

Shape the stones to your liking.

zen3.png

zen4.png

Use Selection tools and Move pixels for final adjustments and placing of stones.

zen5.png

Then I ran AA´s Assistant to smooth the edges and added some shadows and background, result is this:

zenstones.png

Edited by Ella
sig_garfield.png
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Ella,

What a great tutorial. Easy enough that even I could follow it. This is exactly what I had in mind Thank you very much.

Here's my first attempt. I couldn't figure out the shadowing, would you mind explaining? If anyone has any other tips, please chime in.

Thanks again Ella, and Welshblue and Yellowman as well.

post-89692-0-62046300-1351979206_thumb.j

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Basically it is what jim said :), I didn´t save all the steps for shadows but here are some which might help.

I used Drop Shadow for shadows between stones and for bottom shadows I used 2 black filled ellipses and applied Gaussian Blur. Bottom shadows are each on own layer so you can play with settings and blur to get the right look.

zenstones_shadows.png

zen7.png

zen8.png

Edited by Ella
sig_garfield.png
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ZenStones_zpsa453466b.png

Compare yours to Ella's and you'll see the shadows are more constrained to the surface of the stones (roughly designated by the red ovals) below each of them, don't overlap into the background (designated by the blue arrows) and are darker.

You've got the right idea. A little polish and you've got it made!

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I bought your e-book last night, but haven't had time to read it yet. For those that don't have a Kindle, you can download the free Kindle for PC reader.

You've made me a happy author!

I put something quick together to give you some ideas :).

Something quick? Gosh Ella - that's impressive! :star:

I'm going to ask you to post this in the Tutorial section. Please?

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