How you work with images.

[TheJinxy]

Curiosity I am just wondering how you guys work when making sigs or backgrounds, or anything. I know how I make them and will never change because I like simplicity, and high detail, yet people like Ragzie prefer lost of random shit, which because I dont use images like that I cant say how it works.

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How I work
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I prefer using GIMP, and I will set it to what I need ( Sigs for me are 500x150 )
I will open up the render first, and then find a simple fractal to go with it, if it is under the wrong colour I will simply edit it to the colours I am in need of. This might take me 5 mins might take me 2 hours 500 images of just Anime renders is kinda tedious and doesn't always load them first off.
Then I move onto colouring, this to me depends on the render strength, it will be either too light for the dark fractals I have or to dark, I often use colour to alpha, to sort this. I will use it on both and do it both ways ( colour to alpha white, and black ), from there I spend about 50 clicks of each on and off to find which actually works better.
I always add a simple small Gaussian blur to the image, just so it flows a little better, it wont be huge ( 2-3 points nothing more really works ). As for text, I always fuck it up and just find probably the same way of doing it every time but takes me forever.

Now all that shit is done, nothing huge for me, I get onto the most important part of my work; shadow manipulation, this is a big role for me because it give most images that little pop, bringing it back to life, this can take me from 5 minutes to 2 hours, I might over or under do it and return to it after a break to either scrap it or restart it.

I can spend 2 minutes and make an awesome sig or spend 2 hours and make shite, thats why im just asking you guys whats your process?

Code:

http://img267.imageshack.us/img267/6118/thejinxwork.png Shadow

Code:

http://img4.imageshack.us/img4/8084/thejinxworkns.png No shadow

[TheJinxy]

Pl0x dont delete ragz, its just a question, and a little help, took awhile to type..

[Ragzie]

if u want i can give u a cs5 dl link, it's full so u can add brushes.
last sig i made

i start off choosing a colour that goes well with the render and use the cloud render for a background, i build on it by adding brushes and changing the layer to darken/lighten.
i have a few layers where i use different brushes and change the layer properties to etc etc, i then add a border and if i want i add a lighting effect.

[Ragzie]

oh and those tags only took me around 5-10 minutes, i was new to photoshop so it was confusing getting to grips with it.

probably the only "simple" tag i've made

[Chesluk]

Find an image I want to use, get rid of any specs/background, find a good color and use it for a smoke render, then it's just brush strokes and lighting effects. Almost everything I use is under the filters. All done in CS5.

[Laef]

I've done a bunch of different things that I've learned through practicing and just testing out features of PS that I hadn't tried earlier. A lot of my earlier things looked like shit. lol

I usually start out with a white canvas (usually 360 by 120 or 140). I add Cloud layers on, then plaster a few layers of my render onto the canvas so that it covers the entire thing. I do some blurring/ try a few blending options that look decent and try to mask the Cloud layer with a colour that's similar to my render in order to get near perfect blending.

From here on, I either place my render where I want it and do some modifications for it so that it can fit the background, or copy the entire image I see, add it on top of itself and do a Gaussian Blur (3). Then I change the opacity and/ or fill as well as add or take away some Contrast. In most cases Adding Contrast and Diminishing Brightness makes the image look fucking sexy. :3

If I don't like the way it turned out I either undo what I've done or make the entire thing Grayscale and add a Gradient Fill Layer that fits with the render/ background. The rest is just fine tuning the colours, layers, text, and borders. I've learned new things slowly over the years, but practice makes perfect or whatever the fuck. :p

[Chesluk]

In most cases Adding Contrast and Diminishing Brightness makes the image look fucking sexy. :3

ikr?

[TheJinxy]

In most cases Adding Contrast and Diminishing Brightness makes the image look fucking sexy. :3

ikr?

Only if you eat eggs though.

Cheers Loofy c:

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