PDN Tips and Tricks

[-Expiration-]

68-69% is the optimal tolerance level for filling in a complete (no holes) outline with the paint bucket.

When making odd shaped gradients (circles, etc.), don't make a selection and fill it with a gradient. Draw your shape on one layer in your first color, duplicate the layer use the Recolor tool to change the duplicate to your secondary color, and use a transparency gradient on the duplicate. This retains natural anti-aliasing.

[LFC4EVER]

68-69% is the optimal tolerance level for filling in a complete (no holes) outline with the paint bucket.

When making odd shaped gradients (circles, etc.), don't make a selection and fill it with a gradient. Draw your shape on one layer in your first color, duplicate the layer use the Recolor tool to change the duplicate to your secondary color, and use a transparency gradient on the duplicate. This retains natural anti-aliasing.

To add to expired's tip, the optimal tolerance level he said only works for outlines that have a brush width of 2 or more. If it is a brush with of 1, then 49% tolerance is best (50% doesn't work for brush width of 1.

For the odd shaped gradients, you can do it by making a selection and filling with with a gradient. You just need to de-select, then use the Basic Anti-alias plugin, so the shape is now anti-aliased.

[Max Power]

If you have an outline for example for a cartoon figure, select the inside with the magic wand 68-69% and fill it with your choiced colour on a new layer under the outline.

When making odd shaped gradients (circles, etc.), don't make a selection and fill it with a gradient. Draw your shape on one layer in your first color, duplicate the layer use the Recolor tool to change the duplicate to your secondary color, and use a transparency gradient on the duplicate. This retains natural anti-aliasing.

Alphamask does the same^^

And if you duplicate the layer don't use the recolour tool, instead of that use Hue Saturation and curves^^

[Blooper]

68-69% is the optimal tolerance level for filling in a complete (no holes) outline with the paint bucket.

When making odd shaped gradients (circles, etc.), don't make a selection and fill it with a gradient. Draw your shape on one layer in your first color, duplicate the layer use the Recolor tool to change the duplicate to your secondary color, and use a transparency gradient on the duplicate. This retains natural anti-aliasing.

To add to expired's tip, the optimal tolerance level he said only works for outlines that have a brush width of 2 or more. If it is a brush with of 1, then 49% tolerance is best (50% doesn't work for brush width of 1.

For the odd shaped gradients, you can do it by making a selection and filling with with a gradient. You just need to de-select, then use the Basic Anti-alias plugin, so the shape is now anti-aliased.

Basic anti-alias doesn't AA almost straight curves well.

[-Expiration-]

And if you duplicate the layer don't use the recolour tool, instead of that use Hue Saturation and curves^^

Those would work too, but Recolor is more accurate, especially if you're going for an exact color.

[Max Power]

Alphamask does the same^^

Many roads lead to rome

I guess everybody prefers different ways.

[Grandmom]

Where may I ask questions? This all new to me, beginner.

[LJXD]

Start a new topic in the General discussion and Questions area

[Stephan]

Where may I ask questions? This all new to me, beginner.

Remember to use a descriptive topic title -as stated in the rules- to make sure your topic won't get locked.

[Gamer_World14]

Smoke Tutorial

For this tutorial, you will need the plugin effect: Dents <- click to download this plugin

1. After you do this, open a new image Ctrl+N or click (for this tutorial, I am just going to leave it as default 800x600 pixels)

2. Make background transparent by pressing Ctrl+A and Delete

3. Use brush tool with black to make a squiggly figure. Look at example... (my brush size is at 25)

4. Gaussian Blur the image (choose between 50-75 depending on size of black blob)

5. Go to Effects>Distort>Dents

6. Change values to match these below...

General Tab: Scale-100

Amount-50

Quality-2

Detail Tab: Detail-100

Roughness-30

Turbulence-2

7. If your image is too dark, go to Adjustments>Brightness/Contrast or press Ctrl+Shift+C.

Then change the brightness to your desired shade.

Final Render of Smoke should look something like this...

Just a quick tutorial I made that I haven't posted in the tutorial section...

[Ego Eram Reputo]

Gamer_World14: This is the wrong area for that sort of post. Why didn't you put in in the Tutorial section?

[Gamer_World14]

David.Atwell told me to post it here because it was too simple to put in the tutorial section, but now he said I could post it in the tut section but it would have to be locked.

[Ego Eram Reputo]

David.Atwell told me to post it here .....

Apologies. I stand corrected :oops: . David knows what he is talking about having just reorganized the tutorials section.

[Gamer_World14]

yeah, that must have been some tough work to do that...and him being the one to also add the old tutorials by hand to the new section... that must take forever.

[david.atwell]

Took a little time, yeah. :-) Let's keep on topic, though, please. If you want to keep discussing how awesome I am, please go to the . ;-)

[Kemaru]

If you want to keep discussing how awesome I am...

_____________________

You can make nice flowers with the Fragment plugin.

I don't know if you knew this already, though.

^An example^

__________________

You can make a stylish halftone effect with the Glass Blocks plugin.

^An example^

[PyroTechniques]

You can add to an active selection by holding down ctrl while you select. So, if you have something selected, and you want to select something else but keep your original selection, just hold down ctrl and select.

You can also deselect specific areas of an image (a.k.a. subtract) by holding down alt and drawing your selection. (took me forever to figure that one out... )

[Blooper]

Just a pointer guys, it's not worth it to add things to this post that are already in the Help Files. Don't worry about it if you have in the past, but please don't now that you know.

[Overkill]

Not sure if this has been mentioned before, but you can give your text a nice boost of definition with the 'Film' plug-in which gives it a nice grunge feeling to it. It kind of reminds me of the scrambled picture you get when losing a connection to a TV channel.

First off, you can download the plug-in from over here.

So, open up your piece and write out your text (by my experience the effect you will try to achieve works best on white color). After you've done that, duplicate the layer. Apply the Film effect on the top layer. Calibrate the settings to your liking and render the effect. Next, click on the bottom layer and select everything but the text with the 'Magic Wand' ( ) tool. Keep your selection selected and click on the topmost layer and lastly, hit delete.

Here's an outcome on how the effect should look like.

[caneut]

This is a thread for little tips and tricks for PDN you would like to share.

1. When drawing a line with the line/curve tool :LineCurveTool: , right-clicking the handles will make the curve a bézier curve (look it up on Wikipedia if you don't understand what it is).

2.To remove the white in a picture, use the alpha mask plugin without loading any image, with invert selection on. Duplicate this layer a few times.

Examples:

You can see the background of the shape is white.(255 luminosity)

The white is turned to transparent. The dark an image is, the more opaque it is.

[Edit] If you're cutting out an image like the one above, that is pretty much black and white but with a gradient for antialiasing, you want to change the brightness to -100, then -100 again and contrast at 100.

If a technique you want to post is in the help files, don't bother - the idea here is to see how other artists here function. :wink:

I hate when people tell you about something and recommend it but don't give a link. Any one know got a link to were I can download it? I tried search already, didn't work.

[Down]

If you set the search to specify a certain section(like plugins...>_>) then query it, it gives much better results.

viewtopic.php?f=16&t=24491&hilit=alpha+mask

viewtopic.php?f=16&t=2178&st=0&sk=t&sd=a&hilit=alpha+mask

[LFC4EVER]

When using Expiration's method to create gradient text or something, keep the lighter colour layer on top, and apply the :AlphaChannel: gradient to the lighter colour. It'll result in a better looking text.

Just thought i'd let you guys know.

[LFC4EVER]

When using Expiration's method to create gradient text or something, keep the lighter colour layer on top, and apply the :AlphaChannel: gradient to the lighter colour. It'll result in a better looking text.

Just thought i'd let you guys know.

[Malazar]

Okay I guess I can add a tip: If you use the Inside Out plugin you get some a cool looking orb effect. Use this on something to make it look like an orb such as this:

^^click for large^^

Now nobody ask me for a tutorial. :wink: There is a link in my sig "My first Tutorial".

[Malazar]

Okay I guess I can add a tip: If you use the Inside Out plugin you get some a cool looking orb effect. Use this on something to make it look like an orb such as this:

^^click for large^^

Now nobody ask me for a tutorial. :wink: There is a link in my sig "My first Tutorial".