20% Time 2/18

This week has been just a little bit different from usual.  First of all, it did take me a long while to even find an interesting tutorial to do.  I found a lot of ideas, but none of the tutorials I saw all sounded like they would have something cool, but the people who wrote them up were either newer a photoshop than I am, or just don’t have anything that I haven’t learned yet.  I finally saw a cool ‘purple abstract’ by John Ward from teamtutorials.com.  So, I got into it, taking loose notes on the tutorial on a PowerPoint document.  The only thing that I needed from the site was the zip file of ‘trance brushes’ in order to make the proper shapes.  So I went home, downloaded it, put it in the brushes file on photoshop, opened a new document, and found out that those particular brushes would not work on my version of photoshop (it’s 7.0).

So because I am not good with brushes yet, I decided to create a picture that I was inspired by from a tutorial by Like.Nota at Likenota Productions.  It was a tutorial for a watch, but it also was very complicated, so I went off on my own and made a picture that looks (almost) exactly like the face of my own watch.

 cc watch obsession by late night movie

Before starting anything, use the auto-select layer feature, it will make things so much easier.  Just click on a shape and it will take you to that shapes layer.  Then, make about four consecutively shrinking circles (ellipse tool +shift to make it a circle).  The bottom one needs a light grey-white reflected gradient, low bevel and outer shadow (make sure not to overuse the global light selection because the shadows will get too dark).  Then the second circle, needs to to have it’s path loaded (ctrl-click on the layer) and then go to the bottom circle’s layer and hit delete.  It should create a shadow around the second.  The the second only needs a black-white reflected gradient (make sure all of the ‘linear’ of gradients go in the same direction, but do not be exact).  The next circle will need another reflected grey-white gradient.  The last circle will need a beige-green/gray angle gradient.  There will be a line, but it will get covered by the hands. 

 cc watching by jurvetson

Go back to the last circle and use the pen tool to make arrow like shapes.  Then use a pillow emboss (use global light for this so the shadows don’t get all messed up) and duplicate it about seven times, rotating it each time.  Then, go to the third circle and use six elongated versions of the arrow shapes (except change to a slightly sharp bevel) and place around the dial.  Two to the top left, two to the top right and one in each bottom ‘corner’.  Put in the numbers, and create three very small rectangles at the very top and place them around the center for the hands (make sure to use one to cover the line from the gradient).  Finally, go to the third circle and make a rounded rectangle with a green/beige color.  Make a few anchor points with the add anchor point tool in the middle.  Then use the direct selection tool to take the sides of the rectangle and drag up.  Then round the middle points with the point conversion tool.  Lastly, add an inner shadow to that shape, and a slight drop shadow to everything else and you are done.

Go here for the picture

(For some reason, the file dosen’t load properly)

The Water Buffalo Of Tears

We recently watched this video by Robert Thompson entitled 4 Generations: The Water Buffalo Movie, during Web Class. While watching this video, a group consisting of Christina, Christine, Jeff, and I took collaborative notes using Google Docs. The video informed us how Robert Thompson came across a post written by Phillip Greenspun entitled: “Water Buffalo: Worst Possible Christmas Present?”.  It spoke about how Thompson came across Greenspun’s webpage that had discussed an organization that would give a needy family in Asia a water buffalo when a donation was made.  Greenspun had later found out that the site’s fine-print said that the money for the water buffalo just went to a fund and that the buffalo itself was a  symbolic gesture.  Thompson later commented on his blog post that:

The only reason this is a crummy present is because…they don’t actually give anyone a water buffalo

 Rob Thompson also stated that:

I’m an American living in China with my wife. I live in a small, mountainous town in Yunnan (southeastern province)…  After reading your blog I drove out to the fields and I asked local farmers (who are poor and the lowest class in China) whether a water buffalo would be a good gift or not. They said a water buffalo would be “zui hao de liwu”, or “the best gift” without hesitation.  

 cc some rights “hello mr water buffalo” A_of_DooM

 I think that this was a very interesting idea.  Even though a donation to a charity is not bad, direct help is definitely a lot better; not only for the recipient, but the giver as well.  When a person gets direct contact with their benefactor, they know that someone cared enough about them to go to their presence and give it.  Other means can seem too impersonal and the recipient could end up believing that the gift was just an afterthought.  Also, donations almost always end up being less in reality because many organizations take a percentage out to support themselves.  At least, that is what I believe, but I do not have the only opinion.  Check out Will Richardson’s and Karl Fisch’s Response to this story.

20% Time 2/11/08

This week, I had a little bit of trouble trying to find a good tutorial.  I was afraid that I might have to go back to some of my B.B. (Before Blog) work.  Luckily however, I finally found a tutorial by cute.ninza at photoshoptalent that actually scored a 9.29 out of 10.  So I could not pass up this chance to see a good quality piece and quickly went through it.  It was actually very clear and easy to follow, but I still messed up in some places.

On step 4, instead of getting a smooth, silvery water look, I always ended up with something that looked like Venom from Spider-man.  I just found out that I kept getting the following image because in channels, the image is always in gray-scale.  I might look into some more effects that you can do with this shape, because it in itself is quite interesting.

cc some rights reserved “coral reef” by Sam and Ian

First, I found a picture of a reef on creative commons and slowly masked off the background and some fish.  Then, on a new layer,  got a dark blue/black gradient.  Then by going to the channels tab on the layer palette and making a new channel, make some difference clouds and drag them a little higher than halfway up the page and using a really soft edged brush to smooth out the bottom.  Then you do that one more time, but go to sketch-chrome and put in low detail, high smoothness to get a silvery water look.  However, since I could not do it correctly, I had to use a white brush and then chrome it over.

Then, I just made a new layer, and ctrl-clicked on the first new channel (alpha 1)  and filled in the selection with white, set the blending to overlay, and reduced the opacity a little.  After that, do the same thing with alpha 2, just reduce the opacity a little more.  Then just get a large soft white brush and get a large circle of “light” at the top.  Then, I just got another layer with the alpha one selection and painted white, and zoom blurred it at 100%.  This gives you a ray effect.  Finally, you can move the light behind the water (and reduce the opacity if you have to).

The last step of the tutorial I did not really think would work right, but I did it any why just to try.  Open a new document and get a black background with a lens flare (on a separate layer) in the center.  Transform the flare (ctrl-T) to squish it into a oval and then change the blending to lighten.  I then duplicate it and rotate to make a symmetrical 8-point star, flatten it (ctrl-shift-E), and enlarge it to fill the whole canvas.  The last things you have to do are to use wave (at 155 generators, wavelengths between 752-794, amplitude 6-34, and set to wrap around.  Then copy the layer twice and twirl one layer 354 degrees and the other -354 with the blending mode to lighten on both.  Then just merge again, desaturate and use auto-levels to brighten the picture.

This is just for some artistic rays in the water.  Just take the image you just made and drag it to the ocean picture form before.  Then just position it the way you want and mask off any parts you don’t want to show.  Then I set the reef picture to the top, copied the rays and set those to the top and masked it again.

Overall, I thought it was a neat picture, but it just took me too long.  I need to find something simpler next time.

20% Time 2/7/08

Well this week I had very interesting time looking up some things to learn.  At first I did not think I was going to get anything, but finally, I stumbled onto, not one, but two tutorials.  The first one I found is actually an animation (it’s a curve that has a moving shine).  And the second, if you are not familiar with some techniques photographers use, will blow your mind.

The animation actually came out really well, I think, and the best part is that it is not a hard technique (that is always a plus).  The original tutorial was by Elie El Khoury, found on tutorialized.com.  So first, get an appropriate canvas size and put black in the background, and a dark color into the fore.  Then, render some clouds and get the pen tool out.  Go ahead and draw a free form line (four anchor points works good) with the pen with the paths option selected (up at the top) and get a new layer.  Once on the new layer, get a 4 pixel brush.  Now, this was one new part to me -when selecting the brush, there should be a little tab “brushes” by the upper  right (If not, just go to ‘window-brushes’)  Then once there, you can totally customize your brush.  In this instance, you need to go to “shape dynamics” and place the selection to “pen pressure” - this is important.

Next, get the pen again with white in the foreground and right click on the pen’s path.  Now go down to where it says “stroke path” and set it up for “brush” and ”simulate pressure”.  There should be a streak of white along where you made your curve with the pen earlier.  After that, make another layer and repeat those steps, just with a 5 pixel brush.  If you did it correctly, the streak will become a brighter white.  Then, create an outer glow on the second layer using the brightest form of the dark color that you used, and also a 20% color overlay.  After that, deselect the little eye next to the third layer (on the layers palette) and jump to image ready.

The last few steps to this tutorial are fairly simple.  Just select the third layer and make a mask (a little rectangle icon with a circle inside at the bottom of the layers palette).  Then, use the airbrush to get rid of the visible third layer.  Then, deselect the little link icon in the palette and change your brush to white.  Finally, go to the farthest side of the canvas and draw a vertical line.  You will only see it on the palette.

FINAL STEP: Copy the layer down in the animation window.  Then just use the selection tool to move the line all the way to the other side of the page.  Here is the coolest part: use the tweens button at the bottom to create 50, or so, slides that use only the position of all layers.  From here, you can use whatever time settings you like and you have it.

I think it has a little bit of an aurora borealis in it, no?

I also happened to mention earlier that I found something else that would blow your mind, here it is.  I found out, in a tutorial by Denny Tang, that those dramatic photos you see of hobos and old people are actually photo-shopped using the plastic wrap filter to accentuate the wrinkles and darken the picture!  I would have posted my results, but I could not attain any decent close-up photos.  Until next time… 

Blogs In Plain English

Okay, this is not really my own title.  This was actually the title of a video by Lee Fever that I saw today about blogs that was only three minutes.  For the most part, even though I have been doing this blog for a couple weeks, I did enjoy this video.  The way that the author was able to break down each area of blog information and condense it into three minutes was quite impressive. 

In short, the video explained why blogs came about in the first place and why they are good to visit and have.  Basically, all kinds of information are a kind of news, and it matters differently to different people.  Web-logs allow specific “news” to reach “large groups of small audiences”.  In other words, people listen to the informtion they like to hear.  Then, it goes on to say not only how you can start a blog (with an idea) and how blogs work.  The video talks about the posts, comments, and ease of publishing that a blog incorporates into a personal site.  The last thing it brings up is blogging communities where people of similar interests interact on each others’ sites.

I think that the author did a great job in taking all the important information about blogging and being able to condense it down for a listener, all with interesting graphics.  I believe that the video was adequate for people who have some background information, but not really good for people who are brand new to the idea of Internet web-logging.

cc some rights reserved  ”gwegnerfeatured.jpg” by MikeBlogs

I unfortunately do not believe that it is the best solution to learning about blogs because it goes just a little too quickly.  In fact, it probably would have been faster for you to just watch the video instead of reading through all of this, but this synopsis kind of prepares you so you know what to listen for.

Download Video: Posted by leelefever at TeacherTube.com.