Lets do a Photo Edit instructional thread...

cosmicB

Take one of those fractal pix, and stretch it out with your photo editor...

cosmicB · Posted: Thu Aug 30, 2007 2:14 pm Post subject:

Seems someone is working on writing software for doing flames and auras in pix editing...
I'm looking forward to test driving their software...

http://www.dennis.ca/weblog/wp-content/uploads/2007/08/love_1024x640.jpg

boingo · Posted: Fri Sep 07, 2007 6:14 pm Post subject:

I mostly use Paint Shop Pro for my photo editing. It's surprisingly easy to do the type of photo effects used in advertising banners and posters.
I find the most common tools I use are cut & paste and opacity adjusting.

monosodium · Posted: Fri Sep 07, 2007 9:42 pm Post subject:

I used to use PaintShopPro a while back, it was very good for what I needed it for at the time. Nowadays I pretty much exclusively use Adobe Photoshop which for some jobs is really a sledgehammer to crack a nut, but I love the control and the ability to load the compressed raw files off my camera.

Also-ran is an open source tool called "the gimp" pretty much the tool of choice in the (spit) Linux world, there are also builds for windows and mac. This has the benefit of being free, and better than PaintShopPro last time I used both side by side.

Here is my number one top-tip for photo editing. Avoid it if you can.
Seriously, Learn to work your cameras folks. If you can get the picture better in the camera at the time then do that instead, take each picture more than once on different settings, just take the picture again even if you can't change the settings. The amount of time you'll spend taking a couple of extra frames can save you hours of heartache later. Learn to use the Histogram if you have a digital camera, this too can save you heartache.

If you can't follow that one then there are a few things you should do before you fire up the photo editor too.

* Calibrate your screen. Nothing worse than touching up the colour / levels only to get a print back and find that everyone's a slightly pale & pasty version of themselves.

* Do not touch your original files. Not ever. Burn them to CD / DVD before you start buggering about with them. In the digital world, gone is gone, especially when you've saved over the file rather than deleting it.

* Never delete a picture "off the camera". Always get the files onto your computer & check them there first.

There are some really good articles already on photo-editing and retouching, I might post some at some point.

cosmicB · Posted: Sat Sep 08, 2007 11:29 pm Post subject:

Winners of a fractal contest...

http://www.fractalartcontests.com/2006/winners.php

boingo · Posted: Sun Sep 09, 2007 6:52 am Post subject:

Having taken in excess of eight thousand digital photos, I rarely change anything about them other than shrinking them for emailing or occasionally cropping a photo to get better framing.
I like to take photos of different objects and scenes to create new things and places that didn't exist in the first place.
One creepy thing I've done with a few photos is to erase people's mouths or eyes, or blending their fingers together into lobster hands, things like that.
I use the colour grabbing tool and air brush set to about 40% and only covering a small round area, then spray just a tiny bit next to each area as I constantly swap back and forth between grabbing the near by skin tones and air brushing out their lips, or whatever. I'll also use the soften tool to help blend in any pixelisation. Sometimes the smudge tool helps too, but I try to avoid using it.

I actually did one of my own head where I erased all my hair, eyebrows and eye lashes. Then I replaced my eyes with cat's eyes and added goats horns and a flaming centre horn which was actually a nose horn from a photo of a Rhinoceroses.
I want to add another pair of horns too, to help complete the Daemonic look. lol

cosmicB · Posted: Sun Sep 09, 2007 11:02 am Post subject:

A heck of a lot of quality artsy pix...

http://www.flickr.com/photos/nzdzeni/1274058529/in/photostream/

cosmicB · Posted: Mon Oct 08, 2007 5:02 pm Post subject:

Brand New Computer Art Software...

http://students.washington.edu/bitsed/qosmic/

cosmicB · Posted: Mon Oct 08, 2007 5:39 pm Post subject:

Speeding-up your keyboard keying...

Those antique keyboards with their high raised keys is what is slowing your keying down a lot... Using one of those antique crap keyboards is like filling your pockets with lead to run a race... Those old style keyboards force you to raise your typing fingers way up above the keys, while low format keys avoid that extra work in keying... You simply slide your fingers across the keys, avoiding part of the process... You can nearly double your keying speed with a low profile keyboard...

Checkout the "NexXTech illumFX Keyboard, model 2618708"... Try one in a store...

[Nexxtech, you owe me one for this...]

monosodium · Posted: Mon Oct 08, 2007 8:30 pm Post subject:

cosmicB · Posted: Fri Oct 12, 2007 9:16 pm Post subject:

Freeware fractal generator "Apophysis" is doing super computer art pix...

http://content.techrepublic.com.com/2346-10877_11-168889-1.html

cosmicB · Posted: Sun Oct 14, 2007 2:06 pm Post subject:

Annie's Fractal Gallery

http://fractal.sphosting.com/gallery1.html

cosmicB · Posted: Sun Oct 14, 2007 2:34 pm Post subject:

http://www.sofotex.com/Visual-Fractal-download_L70345.html

I haven't tried this fractal-making download yet... I know nothing about it...

cosmicB · Posted: Fri Oct 19, 2007 12:21 am Post subject:

http://www.skinbase.org/rate.php?skins=44772

This artist has weird new ideas swirling in that delicious mind....

cosmicB · Posted: Fri Oct 26, 2007 10:30 pm Post subject:

Here are a few artists who are big into mandalas and kaleidoscopes...

Many of them illustrate extreme depth... as in "riding" some of their works and themes is like a roller-coaster ride into cosmic thought processing...
Have a pardy...

http://www.flickr.com/groups/kaleidoscope_eyes/pool/