Non dairy Diary

Dot dot point point trait

Someone asked for a tutorial about dotted lines. You should be able to do some using this tutorial and this other one I made about brushes, but sometimes a simple example is nice to get a good approach to a board subject.

Quelqu'un m'a demande un tuto sur les points et les traits. Vous devriez pouvoir vous debrouiller avec ce tuto-ci et puis celui-la , mais parfois expliquer un point de detail est une bonne facon d'aborder un sujet plus large, alors voici. Ce tuto est en Anglais, mais vous trouverez la traduction ICI.

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First of all. As in  geometry, a Photoshop line is composed of a multitude of points. If the space between points is short or non-existent, then the line will be continuous. The first thing to do to understand this is to open the brushes window and create a brush with a spacing superior to 100% (look for: brush tip shape, spacing). See? Dots.

Then you will want some  more fancy  dots, maybe create a line that looks like stitches or suggest the flight of a bumblebee.
For this, you will need to draw a picture of a stitch, like this:

Or a simple rectangle, like this:

Make a rectangular selection of your point/stich/rectangle, and then do Edit>define brush preset. It works better if your point is an horizontal shape.

Then you need to open the Brushes window. Go to the "brush tip shape" tab. Select your new brush preset.

Define the spacing. Save the brush. Try the brush.

It doesn't work. It looks like this.

And you want it like that.

Go to the brushes window, click the shape dynamics tab, and choose Angle Jitter , 0%, with Control set to : Direction .

Et voila! You are now a happy bumble bee.

Brosses Photoshop (3, et on arrete)

If you want to share your Photoshop brushes:

1. Make sure they are saved in the library :
in the brush tool, right click then save. The "save" icon looks like this : 

2. Then open Edit>Preset manager

(click for bigger)

3. Use the command ⌘ key, select the brushes you want to save as a set.

4. Click the "save set " button, save an .abr file

5. Upload to your favourite server. You may have to zip it.

6.Put a link on your blog, and share the fun!

Here's a set of flying piggies for you to enjoy : remember, if you manage to accomplish 6 impossible things before breakfast, pigs will fly!

Download cochons.abr

This set is for personal use only, no commercial use, no redistribution, no no no. Put a link to this post if you liked them!

©  delphine doreau 2008

A l'intention des artistes cros gentils qui veulent partager leurs nouvelles brosses, voici comment faire, avec mes excuses, je n'ai pas Photoshop en Français. Cliquez ici pour la traduction!

Brosses Photoshop (2)

If you have an older version of Photoshop and are not able to use my CS3 brushes, you can use this picture with my first brush tutorial, and then learn to parameter your brushes with this other tutorial about Photoshop Brushes. These images are free to use for non commercial projects, please draw your own brushes if you want to sell your pictures!

Des petits details en plus. Pour ceux qui on une version ancienne de Photoshop et qui n'arrivent pas a utiliser mes brosses CS3 :

-Utilisez mon premier tutorial sur les brosses , en selectionnant la fleur qui vous interesse dans cette image:

Vous pouvez ensuite utiliser mon autre tutorial sur les brosses pour les parametrer. J'ai note que la personne absolument vertueuse qui conchie les copieurs avait aussi utilise mes petits pois, alors je vous les ai rajoutes comme ca y'a pas de jaloux. J'ai explique autrefois a cette personne comment faire du dore sur Photoshop, je crois qu'elle a besoin de se rafraichir la memoire alors je vous ferais bientot un tuto aussi. :)

Usage non commercial ( dessinez vos propres fleurs si vous voulez faire un usage commercial), merci!

Pour la personne absolument adorable qui desire partager les siennes, je ferais un tuto la prochaine fois :)

Photopaint tutorial

Comme d'habitude, je vais avoir besoin de votre aide pour la traduction Francaise des termes Adobe? Merciii

I already made a tutorial about Photopaint, but this one is far more simple. Some people were not able to read the animation so I added a few pictures to help. Just click on the icons to see them.

For this tutorial you will need Photoshop ( any version ). You also need to be a bit of a Photoshop artist.
You also need to  know how to use : layers, pattern stamp tool , and the filter average.

If you don't know how to, please check the Photoshop Help!

1.First of all, pick a photo. It's always easier with a large picture. Crop it if you like, but from now don't resize or crop it anymore.

2. Select> All , then Edit>Define Pattern.

3.Duplicate Background layer

4.Apply Filter>Blur>Average. This will fill your layer with one color.  Make a nice background for your picture. This color is the mix of all the colors of your picture. If your picture is well balanced between light and dark and colors, you'll get a gray. Usually it's a brown. Don't worry about this. You will get a background color that will most likely fit your painting.

5.Make this layer a bit transparent until you can see the photo, but not too much or it will make your work uneasy.

6.Choose the pattern stamp tool. Use your photo as the pattern.Click on the arrow near the tiny icon representing the patterns to choose your photo from the library. Click the options : aligned, and impressionist.

7. Right click, pick a nice brush. The key thing is to use a brush with scattering . You can download here a brush I find fun to work with:

Download del4yo_brush.zip

8. Create a  new transparent layer.

9. Paint. Begin with a large brush and paint the shapes of you photo. Faces, house, tree etc. If it a portrait, define the surface of cheeks, hair, etc. It's messy, a bit gooey, don't worry. Follow with the brush the forms of the surface (as in : if it's round, make circle movements).

10. Use a smaller brush and paint  details, following them more closely. At this point, getting tired of the process, I created a new layer under my painting layer and with the tool brush (not the pattern)  and I painted a background with large strokes.Then, I came back to the paint layer.

11.Continue to paint with a smaller brush. Zoom, unzoom, look at the details closely. Hair and small lines like a baby mouth are hard to catch. Click on the visibility icon of your larger  to check with the original photo under it from time to time. At this point, creating a group of your layers above the photo could be a good idea.

Tip: if you are afraid of loosing effects you like, create new layers  each time you make a new step in details.

12.This is far the most difficult part. You need to be able to draw a bit.
Make the underground layer with only one color 100% visible. Then create a layer on top of your painting. Getting back to the brush tool, with a fine brush and picking the colors where necessary, define light in the eyes, repaint strokes of hair (painting flesh on it and redrawing if necessary) and all the tiny details you couldn't get. It won't be perfect. It won't look exactly like the picture. But it will look like something you've made, and this is good.

The key of this tutorial is to adapt painting technique to Photopaints. I learned Academic painting when I was a young student, and I've been taught 2  very important things:

-Going from generic to details. Structure is an important thing.

-Following perspective and shape with strokes.

Then I learned this all by myself: Have fun. If I don't, it's crap.

Et voila! Happy little bushes! I hope you will enjoy this technique. Try it for some scrapbooking!

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White wall

(transparent screen with a twist, end)

If your screen is in front of a white wall and you don't want to move it to take a picture, follow these steps:
Download my whitewall texture ( a white wall has a texture. This one is for a white wall painted with a roll, approximatively 2.5 inches behind a flat screen)

Download white.jpg

A very interesting picture indeed.
You will need my birds too, or any picture on a transparent layer:

Download burds_make02.png

Then:

1.Open white.jpeg in Photoshop. Add a gradient layer, in multiply mode, to recreate the shadow on your wall ( there is always a shadow, if not there is too much light in your room, or not enough, go to the beach instead of working there, it's not good for your eyes).

2.Copy and paste my burds. Double clic on the layer. Add a drop shadow effect with a

opacity: corresponding to the density of the shadows on your wall
distance: corresponding to thedistance between your wall and the birds
size: corresponding of the way your shadows are blurred on your wall.

A shadow is always softer and lighter than you think.

et voila, instant transparent screen, just add water!

copyright del4yo  2007

Transparent screen with a twist (2)

Here is the real result on Krysalia screen, far away in France when I'm in San Francisco. Thank you so much Krysalia. The result I shown yesterday was a simulation. It's so much fun to work with a friend you never met, I love blogging!

copyright del4yo & krysalia 2007

If you have a plain white wall behind your screen, don't bother make a picture, I'll show you what to do on my next post!

transparent screen with a twist

Desolee, pas de traduction francaise cette fois-ci, je n'ai pas trop le temps...
All images copyright del4yo & krysalia. Menus are from Photoshop CS3.

Today we will have a lot of fun, adding some quirky graphic birds with realistic shadows to a "transparent screen".

Please, please don't say " I can do this with the effects in Photoshop hahaha". First, not everybody has Photoshop and this tutorial can be applied to other graphic softwares if you are just a little bit clever (you will need layers, though). Then , there is no "perspective" option in the Photoshop effects and that's the interesting part.

1.First of all:

make a photo of what's behind your screen. (thanks, krysalia!)

crop the image to the portion corresponding to your screen.

2.Then:

Download burds_make02.png

3.Copy and paste this image (burds_make02.png) in a layer. Copy, move, etc. to your taste:

It's fun, but it would be more realistic with shadows matching the real ones. Let's do it!

4. duplicate this layer, then select  layer 1. Lock the transparency of the layer1

5.Fill with black (d,x,⌘+delete key).
If the shadows in your room are blue, or brown, use a blue or a brown instead of black.

6. UNLOCK the layer. Use the blur filter, to match the way the shadows are blurred in your room. Notice that the more close an object is to a surface, the less blurred will be the shadow.

7.Play with the opacity of the layer until the shadows match the real ones.

8. Make the duplicated layer visible. Use the transform tool ( in the Edit menu) so the shadows will match the other shadows in your picture. Note the light direction and just follow it!

Et voila!

9. Use it as a desktop background .  There is quirky birds behind your screen!

(This is a simulation)

Aging your patterns

Now you know how to make your own patterns ( a tutorial here). But still, they have this peculiar digital look and you would be very pleased to add a little texture to give them more reality. I'm going to show you today 2 very quick ways to age your patterns.

1.First, scan a sheet of paper. Colors are better, a lot of grain is welcome. Cut a  square the exact size of your pattern ( here 256x256 pixels).   Or half, third if you want to repeat it. I make all my patterns in  a restricted array of sizes to be able to mix and match  (512x512, 256x512, etc).

2. Apply the filter>offset  with (here ) an offset of 128 pixels. A seam will appear in the middle of your picture. Make it invisible with the stamp tool or the healing brush tool to create a seamless pattern.  Then you can make the grain more visible with one of the Sharpen filters.

can you see the difference with the precedent picture?

3. Aging with no change of the original picture colors.

Desaturate your picture ( ⌘+shift + U)
Then apply the filter>Other>High Pass. Set the radius so the picture keeps only the grain. Too large of a radius will create a seam. This filter keeps the grain and equalize the picture to a medium gray.

4. copy and paste this texture in a new layer over your pattern ( here my bird pattern). Set the layer in overlay mode in the layer palette. Change the transparency of the layer to your taste, et voila! A bird pattern on paper.

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Here is another solution:

3. Aging and yellowing the picture.

Prepare your paper texture as in (1) and (2). Then using Image>adjustments>curves and Image>adjustments>hue saturation, change your texture to a pale yellow one with a lot of grain.

4.Copy and paste this texture in a new layer over your pattern ( here my bird pattern). Set the layer in multiply mode in the layer palette. Change the transparency of the layer to your taste, et voila! A bird pattern on paper, with just enough of yellow to make it look vintage.

Comme d'habitude, j'ai besoin d'aide a la traduction que vous trouverez ici:
Je patine mes textures

 

Brushes Tutorial

Cliquez ici pour la traduction francaise du tutoriel sur les brosses

It is not the easiest thing to understand how to make your own brushes in a graphic software.

Today I will show you what kind of variables you can use. I'm not going to explain you how to do one brush, but what is the process to make a brush. I think it will help you to do your own instead of copying mine. It's more fun!

The examples shown here are made with Photoshop, but this tutorial will help you to make your own brushes in any software, like Painter, Gimp, etc.

I will explain here how to use some different options like shape and textures.

Please read your software manual/help before sending me the usual email "where can I find the shape/texture/whatever preset in my software?". 
In Photoshop you will find most of the parameters I'm talking about in the brush window.

1. Brush presets, brush shapes:

The shape is the basic element of a brush. It can be a simple circle, but any shape will do, like a star, or here a felt pen dot on paper, scanned and sharpened. It will define the shape of your stroke. If you want to reproduce an existing media, imagine a section (slice) of the tool : a chalk is a grainy square, a paint brush a cloud of tiny dots, a crayon a grainy round dot, a felt pen a soft square.

A computer brush is made with tiny dots or shapes. If the spacing between the dots is small or inexistent, the stroke will be continuous. If there is a lot of space between the dots, the stroke will be discontinued. Here, the felt pen shape is used with no spacing. The star brush has a lot of spacing between the dots.

2.Using Pressure:

If you are the lucky owner of a graphic tablet (I recommend Wacom tablets), then you can link the pressure as a variable on your stroke. The most common variables are size and transparency. 

Here, the more pressure you apply on the tablet pen, the more the brush will be big or transparent. Note the difference of effect with the same round shape.

3.Spacing and rotation.

You can add an angle jitter to most brushes. You won't be able to see it if the shape is a round dot ( that's actually very interesting if you are trying to re-invent the wheel). Make tests with a rectangular shape, with a large spacing (200%) until you find the right kind of rotation for the stroke to look like a seam. A random jitter is applied on the star stroke (1). Rotation can help you vary a stroke to make it more whimsical.

here is a tutorial to make whimsical brushes like the star brush

4.Texture.

In a lot of softwares you can add a texture, or pattern parameter in your stroke. Here is the stroke, my brush shape, and the pattern I used. The stroke will be transparent on black, opaque on white, semi transparent on gray (and colors), like through a mask.

I used two examples to show you how it works. Texture parameters can reproduce the feeling of drawing on paper, and help to make a painting stroke more realistic. Some texture brushes are able to react to pressure, the more pressure the more grain. A big texture pattern can slow down a brush and make it difficult to use.

Learn how to make patterns here. (bilingual)

5. Soft texture, sharp texture, brush preset.

If your texture is not very contrasted as in (4) (soft texture) , the effect will be more smooth. A sharp texture (contrasted) can help you reproduce mediums with a lot of grain, like chalk or charcoal. Textures can be named patterns, textures, or papers, it depends of the software.

Mixing different parameters, like here texture+brush shape, will help you get closer to a realistic effect.

6. Dual brushes.

Photoshop (only) allows you to mix two brushes, one being used as a main brush, the second as a mask. It's a bit like the texture, but a brush has a restricted surface ( shape) when the texture is repeated on the whole working surface. The intersection of two brushes, each one with its own parameters, can give a wide array of different brushes. It's quite memory demanding and can slow down the rendering of the stroke heavily.

Here is my favorite brush in 3 steps: first the intersection of two shapes, then adding a texture pattern.

7. More random effects : color dynamics, scattering.

When you paint while mixing your color on a real palette, your stroke will have a slightly different color each time. Some softwares reproduce exactly the palette (like Painter) or the mixing effect ( like Art Rage). Photoshop and Painter can introduce a variable of hue, color and saturation in your stroke. In Photoshop it's called color dynamics. I use it with low variables (1 to 5%) to create subtle effects. The effect is accented on the right to be more understandable.

I also used scattering on this brush. Scattering will spray the shapes or dots on your stroke with a percentage of random. An example will explain it better than words:

8. Choosing the right effect.

On this brush I tried to reproduce a chalk effect. First thing I did is to look at chalks, then trace on paper. The square from of the chalk wasn't very important to me. But I was very interested in the heavy grain and soft texture of the paper. It has a random quality I tried to reproduce.

I tried pattern grain,rotation and scattering...What is your favorite?

 

That's only a few of all the parameters you can use. As I said, it depends of the software, you can find more or less the same effects. What is really important is not the parameters, but the results you will reach. I had a lot of fun creating gazillion brushes, but I only use 10 to 20 in my illustrations, 5 to ten in my paintings, and I add one or two specifically for each professional project I work on.

The best way to create a brush is to know what you want to do. There's millions of possibilities. Do you want to imitate a brush on paper? Copy embroidery seams? Do you want to create a new way to use wrapping paper motifs?

Then you need to analyse what's is important in the effect :
the grain in the paper, the stitch in the seam, the scale of the motif, the hair of a brush.

The main parameters are :

1. Brush shape
2. Stroke transparency
3. Paper grain
4. Stroke randomness

When this is done, transfer these parameters to computer brushes:
the paper will be a texture, the stitch a shape , the motif will be repeated on a pattern, the hair of the brush can be reproduced with tiny dots.

If you follow this logical path you can make very creative and personal brushes.

Enjoy!

Seamless pattern Tutorial

Sorry please come back later for translation.

Et un tuto Photoshop pour Laure qui se demande comment j'ai structure le motif de Tampopo d'hier! Je me suis inspiree d'une structure de papier peint classique dont le raccord se fait sur un rectangle.

Je ne pense pas que c'est un tuto facile, aussi attention, lisez moi attentivement!

1. J'ai ouvert un nouveau document avec une taille en pixel facile a travailler : 512x600 pixels. J'ai ensuite trace un losange dont la largeur et la hauteur correspondent a 2/3 de la surface de mon motif. En suite j'ai dessine dans ce losange en respectant une regle stricte: a chaque fois que je depasse du trait avec mon dessin, je reserve un espace equivalent ( du blanc) a l'interieur du losange sur le cote correspondant au raccord. Par exemple mes feuilles depassent en bas a droite, le losange est donc vide sur une proportion equivalente en haut a gauche.

J'ai dessine ici 3 affreux bouquets de couleurs differentes pour que ce soit plus facile a suivre, sur un layer transparent. Il serait normalement plus fute de les faire plus homogene, le but de cet exercice etant de "perdre l'oeil" de telle sorte que le motif ne paraisse plus repetitif.

Si vous avez passe cette etape, le plus dur est fait!

2.Dupliquez le layer de  dessin.  Faites une symetrie d'axe vertical sur le nouveau layer. Ensuite ouvrez le filtre " offset" (Filtres > Divers > Décalage) et deplacez le motif de 50% en hauteur seulement.

Vous obtenez une guirlande verticale qui tient exactement 50% de l'espace du motif.

3. Groupez les deux layers, applatisser le resultat sur un layer ( toujours transparent). Dupliquez le layer resultant. Cela revient a avoir deux fois la meme guirlande sur deux layers differents. Sur l'un des layers, reutilisez le filtre Offset , avec un deplacement de 50 % a l'horizontale et de 25% a la verticale.

4. Ouf c'est fini.Une fois repete plusieurs fois le motif doit tromper l'oeil de telle sorte que la grille de repetition  ne soit pas trop visible.

Je rajoute souvent une couche de dessin pour rendre le resultat plus harmonieux. Ici on aurait un tres beau papier peint pour des toilettes de Barbie, hum.

Cette image est une repetition du motif,vous pouvez telecharger le motif final ici:

Download bouquet_rouge04.jpg

Il y a bien sur d'autres structures possibles, selon des geometries differentes, mais en regardant autour de vous, vous serez etonne de voir combien de motifs utilisent le meme systeme de repetition!