I wish I could draw this well

From the same website as the last I found a great tutorial on turning an object into a line drawing.  To give it a go I used one of the photos I took in San Francisco while my mom, sister and I were standing in line waiting to eat breakfast in a tiny joint called Dots.  I love the curved window and the stone work.  The tutorial uses a long barrel revolver as an example so I thought I would try something completely different (of course).  I ended up with this...

(More after the jump...)

My Sister as Pop Art

The quest to figure out Photoshop continues.  My latest tutorial was for a Warhol-esque halftone from a photograph, and this is what I ended up with:

It is a simple, yet complicated tutorial (depending on your familiarity with Photoshop...most of this stuff is new to me).  I learned several things from this pop art tutorial from melissaclifton.com.  The most important is that I need more photos of my sister because most of mine are candid type photos she wouldn't be impressed with me using, second is that you want clothing and hair to be different tones from each other for this kind of transformation (which I don't have), and third is you want the starting photo to be very low contrast (contrary to logic) which I worked with by fiddling with highlights and shadows. For as dark as the end result is, it was mostly a black mass before, and I almost gave up until I seriously lightened the original and started over.  The original photo after the after the jump...

The waxy path

I finally did a Photoshop tutorial for making a wax seal that I have had my eye on for weeks but put off  (knowing I would want to individualize it)  and when I took it on, it DID end up sending me off in several directions that I am thankful for.  Because of it I ended up getting a basic grasp on working with the pen tool (never used it before) and then I was pushed mentally to come up with a logo that could fit within the seal -- I love the logo I came up with so much that I think I will stick with it for a while.

The following set of seals shows my progression of thought...

I finally found the paint bucket

...and the polygonal lasso and the burn tool and and several things I have never seen before. (what does the exacto knife do?)  Well at any rate, I no longer have the feeling that Photoshop is broken, or since I got the program at a reduced price (because I bought a Wacom Tablet) that I got the cut-rate version.  I was truly getting upset. 

I was thinking about uninstalling and reinstalling till I right clicked on the lasso (hadn't tried that yet) on the side tool bar...and there were all the lasso's.  Then I did it for every tool -- total relief.  When I told my mom, who has Photoshop but hasn't used it in years where it was that I found everything, she says "oh yeah, that's right, sorry."  It only took a month to figure out.  Now the only thing I can't find is the impressionist brush...anyone?

There is a lot to be said for intuitive programs and failing that, a set of basic instructions, neither of which can be said for Photoshop.  Even so, I wouldn't be without it.

Header #2

I have made another header picture, and so far I quite like it.  I made it from another tutorial, and though I changed parts of it to fit the idea of the blog better, I really like the original idea from Graphic Tutorials found here.   It is called "Text Within Text".

The cloud background I made myself in Elements a number of months back when I discovered the impressionist brush: 

Just in case I decide to play musical headers (highly likely because there are so many other text tutorials I will end up doing that I have try out as a header), I will put the picture of it here as well -- as a record of my continuing remodeling of the blog.  This one is a definite improvement on the last one, don't you think?

-Header #2-

Chocolate is the new text for the day

I did a full scale photoshop text tutorial and though I messed up a bit (I was too far along by the time I realized how and why -- the shadow should be directly below the letters).   I think it still turned out really great! I will definitely be using this, and parts of this, tutorial again. I would tell you how I messed up but I doubt anyone else will do the odd thing I did. (now I have to figure out how to reset my rulers because of the odd thing I did) [click on chocolate for a larger image to see how metallic the lettering seems to be]

-the more I look at the word "chocolate" the more it looks spelled wrong-

I want to thank PSAwesome.com and Eren Goksel for the tutorial that can be found here.

Step one, make something that interests you but you aren't invested in.

I am not actually a master of Photoshop CS4, but I did finally make something with it. The new header up top -- which I probably won't keep for long before it starts to bother me -- gives me hope that I will be able to grasp the workings of CS4 eventually. Hey, the window alone was 5 layers! I also followed two tutorials on making rain: one using noise and another using dots.

[edit: It bothered me, I took it down, look below]