Tay just a quick question, do these tricks work in Photoshop 5.5?

Hey Al, I would like to share with you some photoshop tricks that I have learned. These tricks deal with the realm of what I would call "special effects". For the purpose of demonstration, I have kind of "overdone" these tricks... so as it stands they look a little gaudy, but they do a good job of showing you what they do. I noticed a lot of people on MMFT who win the competition tend to use similar tricks, and if it's stupid special FX that get votes (as opposed to art and creativity), then I think it's time we even that playing field. LET'S GET STARTED.

1. Okay, here's your original Saber Falcon image:



2. The first thing I did was add some motion blur to the background. First I used to lasso tool to select the mecha (because we want it to stay in focus since the camera is moving with it), and then I went select=>inverse which makes the program inverse the selection we made with the lasso tool. In other words, we know have everything selected EXCEPT for the mecha. Now we can apply our motion blur filter. I played around with the strength of the blur until it looked good, and set the direction of motion in a diagonal from the top-right of the image to the bottom-left of the image (because this is the motion the mecha is travelling in). Once I applied the blur, I used the smudge tool to blur out some of the parts where I did a bad job of the selection. Now the image looks something like this:



3. Okay, the next thing I did was I noticed that the white parts of the mecha were a little grayish looking, so I adjusted the contrast and brightness (layer => new adjustment layer => brightness/contrast) to make the image pop a little more. As you can see, I upped the brightness by 17 and the contrast by 7, but really you gotta just play around with it until it looks good.



4. Alright, now we start adding light effects to all the weapons flares. Basically I just take a big brush with soft edges and colour around the areas that should be "bright" (like fire and lasers and lights stuff). It's important that this layer stays ON THE TOP of the other layers because it needs to affect the whole image (all the other layers) to make it look convincing. Also, this layer should be set to either "screen", "overlay" or "lighten". For this image, I liked the look of "lighten" so I went with that.



5. And here's what it looks like on the image:



6. Next, I wanted to add even more sense of motion... because I think this mech can probably fly pretty fast. So I added speed lines. Basically all I did was take the line tool, select a black colour and then scribble lines over the whole picture (using that same diagonal line of motion as I did in the motion blur). I did it a few times... first starting with a 1 pixel brush and then 6 pixel and maybe 2 more times with even bigger brushes so the lines are all different sizes. Then I took my eraser, set it to a soft-edged eraser and cleared out the part in the middle where the mecha goes because I don't want all these scribbly lines going over it. Here's what the lines ended up looking like:



7. Now, we don't want the lines to ruin the whole picture, so we need to make them sort of see-through-ey. I set this layer to "overlay" and it looked pretty good: it let some of the background through, but the lines were still visible. Here's those lines on the picture:



8. Alright, we're pretty much done here. The special effects have been applied. But I'm thinking there's so much colour going on that it's a little random. Plus, there's a ton of blue coming through and the image feels a little cold (the space is blue-ish and the mech is blue-ish too). So I wanted to add a subtle gradient so it looks like the colours are all sort of blending together in some sort of order (rather than random splotches everywhere) and I decided to use a warm yellow and red gradient to warm up the cold parts of the image. I just made a gradient and set that layer to "color". It was way too strong so I reduced the opacity to 30% and it gave us a nice subtle warming effect. Check it:



9. And now, lastly... I ALWAYS, ALWAYS adjust the saturation of my image before I finish it! Sometimes you think your picture looks fine, but then you adjust the saturation and realize the colours were washed out. This step has helped me a TON over the years. Make sure the adjustment layer is on top of the whole image (because we want to effect everything). To get this adjustment layer go Layer => New Adjustment Layer => Hue/Saturation. Turns out this image was pretty good, so I didn't need to do much to it. I only upped the saturation by 27 and the lightness by 6, but it makes a nice difference.



10. Voila, here's the image with "special effects" applied!





I hope this info is useful for you! Don't let anybody else know these trade secrets! KEEP THEM FOR YOURSELF AND BE BETTER THAN THEM, BWAHAHAHAHAHAAA!!! If you can't use these skills for good, at least use them for evil... it's such a waste not to use them at all.

See you saturday, bro.

Percy, I am up for that challenge:



"Okay here's the deal: I'm gonna distract all of you with my big floppy donkey dick while I covertly touch this tit."

Crash and burn for Saberfalcon!

Told you, you should of voted for me. Now the best I can hope for is second place, and a prize of weaker value then the first place prize.

2nd voting round ends March 22nd. So get your votes in!

Maybe next time we can roll in the pizza pies.

Finally I got my phone back!

It actually got repaired and finished on Feb the 19th! (2 weeks after I brought it in)

They basically misplaced it at another location for a month!

Man, P, I kept waiting for the rest of the picture to show up. Took me a second to realize where the caption-joke was. Well played, sir.

Also, I can't wait for Jere's counter-pictures. It seemed like a digicam-off last night.

Thanks to the multitudes who came, by the way. And I was worried about having way too much pie. Silly me. Next year I'll be sure to buy more. And maybe I'll even order in advance from Vi's instead of just showing up long after they've sold their last whole pie, looking like an idiot.

Jere, your eyebrows look like they're going to take flight...


hope pie day was fun for everyone... i slept.

yo check it, is that THE V Von?

I just put up a few pictures from Pi Day. I might put up the movie files later.

Oh, by the way:



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