I wish everyone would tell us how they do these neat things. That used to be one of the 'rules' for this part of the forum, didn't it?

Yes, Liz, it did. In the days of the great TW. Please do tell us, as some of these are so very clever.

Here is a collaborative effort. I had posted an image of my bicycle generator configured as a pinwheel mount on the Pix-a-day thread. Guruoftrivia took it and exaggerated the contrast and rotated colors coming up with an image he thought reminded him of a futuristic soldier holding a weapon of some sort. I then painted some more onto it to enhance the man image and make it more of a hat tipping idea drew a flying saucer shooting a ray beam and with motion lines for effect.
Anyway, I present a mixing of skills (mehaul/guru/mehaul):

Brilliant Image Mehaul and Guru.

I love what you've both done with this, very, very creative :-)

You're right Liz I should say what programs are used at least. It's a way for people to know what the programs are capable of doing.

All of mine are done either in Xara Xtreme, CorelDraw or Corel PhotoPaint. The broken forum is done in Xara Xtreme and the crumpled one in PhotoPaint. These programs have the tools to do such things.

The pictures aren't difficult to produce if you have the programs and have been using them for a while. An explanation of the steps may not mean too much without the reader also having the programs. I don't think many people do. I can only say it is just some trickery the programs are capable of and me having a little practice with using them.

I think the cut up forum and the sphere are great. I have no idea how they were done.

Why Trev, Thank you kindly.

TW, thanks for the explanation. That's all I need, is to know what programs make these fun images possible, with just a bit of a "how I did it"

Mehaul, great image, but just a little bit scary!

I use Photoshop. It has a feature called 'actions' which are a bit like mini-programs that you can build yourself or download. I often put frames on my photos for example and created an action that resizes the image, puts a single pixel line round the image in a dark colour, then puts a bigger light colour edge round the whole thing. If I'm doing that on a set of, say, 12 images going through those processes can be time-consuming. Basically I add the effects I want on one image and record the steps as I go along then all I have to do on the other 11 images is click on a button and Photoshop will do everything for me. You can also use actions to adjust images, add lighting effects, vignettes, tints, etc.

The action I used to cut up that image is based on one I downloaded. I have changed it a bit to put some movement in the final image so that it looks as though a breeze had ruffled the pieces. I think that looks more natural than a simple grid.

I hope this makes sense!

That makes lots of sense, and inspires me to investigate what I might be able to do with Photoshop! Thanks!

I have Adobe Photoshop, but rarely use it, because I don't enjoy all the "layering" aspects and it's really not that easy for a beginner to learn. Plus it takes up too much RAM on my (very old) computer. It's a VERY powerful program in the hands of a willing and able participant though!

I also use Jasc Paint Shop Pro, Roxio Photo Suite and have three or four video editing programs. But for simple resizing, or lightening a photo that is too dark, I almost always use ACDSee. It's quick, easy to use and isn't a mem hog.

Personally, I believe that "fixing" a photo by "pumping up" a certain hue/saturation, or anything else the camera didn't do on its own is more "image art" than "photography". I admit that I grew up with a Pentax SLR, with REAL FILM and multiple lenses and filters, so perhaps I'm showing my age and need to "move on with the times" lol.

I have downloaded a few freebies over time that do specialised things (like text shadows and 3d capabilities as they were necessary for the dozen or so websites I've built for folks), and this program is one of them ... it's called (gasp) "Shape Collage". There's a "free" version and a "pro" version. The pro version you have to pay for, so naturally it does things the free version doesn't do, but the freebie is still kind of fun anyway. Here's my offering for February 14th : )

First attempt starting from a drawing



Picture started life as a blue circle with a red 12 sided spiders web in the centre,increased the line thickness to 10 pixels then distorted the image and altered the colours

I really like that Gees63, it has a calming feeling.

That's booooootiful Gees. Very Celtic feel to it.

Some good creations being turned out here! I downloaded and tried 'Shape Collage' Jakeroo. Interesting to play with.

Thanks for the kind words. The imaging programme used is IrfanView free to download for personal use with some free Photoshop filters and effect downloads from the web. A Scot to the end using freeware



The same starting point as number1 thumbnail top left of image

Gees: It's amazing how just about ANY image can be "warped" into something COMPLETELY different (apologies to Monty Python lol) isn't it?

Here's a couple of links where you can "play with art" online, without having to download ANYTHING (or potential viruses/annoying cookies):

FotoFlexer

Pizap (ignore everything else on the page, just click on the big green "start box" to play with images)

You also have the ability on those to upload your OWN photos as well as to save your finished products to your own computer, without signing up for ANYthing. They're kind of fun and there are several other possibilities out there on the www : )

Jakeroo: thanks for the links.At first look FotoFlex seems to have the same photoedit as Photobucket I am finding I use different programmes for different effects.

I am wondering if I am spending too much time working with images on the computer


Or maybe its just old age

You might also want to check out Iaza. It's got some useful features.

Thanks Guru some interesting effects
I had a picture of Mollie that was a little out of focus as she moved too close to the camera. Using Serif PhotoPlus X4 cropped the image and used a pencil sketch effect and have ended up with an appealing picture



The lack of sharpness does not matter and no longer distracts from the cute puppy expression

That is gorgeous! Sweet puppy

I took the thired image from this page (created by The_lioness33) and turned it into this:



Steps of creation (with fotoflexer):
1. Uploaded the original image twice.
2. Flipped one, lined the two up.
3. Using the cutter tool, I separated the iris from the rest of the right half of the image.
4. Changed the hue of the right iris.
5. Made all but the iris of the right eye grey scale.

I also cropped out the frame lioness included. Hope you don't mind me using your image!

Tellywellies posted a photo of last week's supermoon in the Photo a Day thread - to save you looking it up, the image is here:

http://tinyurl.com/6g6t3xx

I really liked that, and I wondered what would happen if I merged it in some way with another image. Hmm... A while ago I took some pictures of the West Pier (what's left of it) at Brighton & Hove. Here's one of the photos I took SOTC (straight out of the camera):

http://tinyurl.com/6yxnwq4

So I put the two together and what I got was this:




What I did:

1. I got Tellywellies' permission to use his image.
2. Using Photoshop, I opened my image of the pier and converted it from being a "background" to an ordinary layer.
3. I pasted the moon on top of it, as layer 2.
4. I selected the moon layer and chose the drop down blend option "Difference" - this compares the colours in both images and removes some based on brightness, and black/white content.
5. I then added a gradient map at 10% opacity just to add a warm tint (layer 3).
6. I merged all three layers, and set the selection tool to circle - then holding down the Shift key I selected the "moonblend" as a perfect circle and made a copy of the selection (CTRL+C) which I then pasted (CTRL+V) on to the image as layer 4.
7. With the circle still selected, I added a 3 pixel "stroke" around the edge, partly because the edge of the moon wasn't sharp (because in real life the light of the moon is diffused) and partly because it acts as a frame to hold the image together. The stroke used a colour selected from the blended image. Then I deselected the circle. (If you deselect circles too soon it can be a nightmare to do another one with exactly the same dimensions - been there, regretted that.)
8. Then using the "eye" in the layers menu, I deselected the merged image (i.e. the original three layers that I had merged into one, not the moon on its own) so that it didn't show and added a new transparent layer underneath the blended moon. I then picked a darker colour from the blended moon and used the paintbucket tool to fill the transparent layer.
9. I cropped the image so that it was square and saved it as a JPG file.

Et voila!

Very good flopsymopsy. It shows that there really are seas on the Moon.

Recycled Flowers



Simple change a picture of the heads of 2 daffodils in PhotoPlus X4 using Kaleidoscope in the Effects menu. Adjust number of images and angle to get desired effect then flood fill background with chosen colour

My posting "More Spring Flowers" from March Photo-a-Day kaleidoscoped and then edited in the Photobucket editing suite. Mainly just rotating the colours.