Preserved Topic: Light Zapish effect?

I want to make Light rays, i am not sure how to explain them... Like what mbridge did on
his unused Liquid splash image. I hope he doesn't mind me using it, it just rocks steady.
http://www.liquid.focalhost.com/images/splash.jpg It looks easy to do, but i
have been messing with photoshop 5 quite a bit and haven't gotten it. Call me a newbie
if you want, what is a good way to get bright white fading into different blues like this?

"expanding thy mind with photoshop, freeing thyself from frontpage"

Well, I can't comment on mbridge's method, hopefully he can expand if I'm way off base, but when I try to get that watery, misty bright look, it's all a question of blur and color dodge. I did up a QUICK (two minutes, tops) example progression to try and explain it easier.

Start a new document, select the colour that you want your "beams" to fade into. and set it as the background (in this case, a light blue fading into black using the Clouds filter)


Make a new layer, select white, and a mixture of lines, and paintbrush freehanding.


With that layer selected, do a gaussian blur.


Now set the blending mode to Color Dodge, and play with the opacity settings. (A bit of a cheat here, I duplicated the "beam" layer and set both to color dodge, to get more white shine, with the fade....like I said, play with the opacities)



And hopefully that helps <img border=0 align=absmiddle src="http://www.ozones.com/forum/smile.gif">

If that got you lost, just leave a message, and I'll try not to make it such a drive-by of an explanation <img border=0 align=absmiddle src="http://www.ozones.com/forum/wink.gif">

Peter



ICQ:# 10237808

[This message has been edited by DarkGarden (edited 06-09-2000).]

hmm..yep, that 'bout covers it. I have nothing to add.

grr... i knew it had to be simple.

thats it, im not gonna sleep any more, just work in Photoshop and Nosh when needed. Thanks a lot. Now that i know how to do the basic blue i will have to push it to the unknown.....

You got it right DG, except for one little thing. I usually just make straight, THICK lines then run a polar coords filter on it. Your method works just as well though. <img border=0 align=absmiddle src="http://www.ozones.com/forum/smile.gif">

I like a mix of burn and dodge, it gives it a bit more definition.





[This message has been edited by WarMage (edited 07-09-2000).]

Mbridge, would you mind going into more detail on your method, not quite picking up on it.

mbridge: wanna give him the secret gurus URL, even tho you're protesting it's not done yet? I think it's a very helpful piece personally.

I think it explains my method in the tutorial. http://www.gurusnetwork.com/tutorials/photoshop/polar_coords.html

Thanks, it helped a lot! <img border=0 align=absmiddle src="http://www.ozones.com/forum/smile.gif">

Talking about the difference clouds filter at the start of this, I have question about it...does it have properties to edit?, I understand how to alter the colours and stuff, but does it have any other properties, like being able to alter the marbled 'veinyness' in it?

BTW: Steve, how did you achieve that effect on your sig where the text seems to bend to the paper, and I don't mean in light and shadow, I mean it bends, flexes and deforms to it...that great! How do you do it?


Don't make me come down there! - God

[This message has been edited by Skaarjj (edited 07-09-2000).]

Ha.

Well, the part I can confess to is this: using the selection from the ball, I copied the part of the paper and the "S" underneat the ball to a new layer and scaled it up a bit to suggest the magnifying properties of the glass ball.

~Shhh - The part you must never ever tell Dark Garden:

then I ran KPT5 ShapeShifter. Adjusted the internal reflection, colors, outer glow, and added an environment map

and if you tell DG, I'll lie and say you made it up~

Oh yeah - then I made a straight vertical white line in the center of a square black document; ran the spin filter, colored it, blurred it, brought it into the sig doc set to screen and rotated it to make the little focussed splash below the marble.

WarMage's looks like some of the lights i have in my room when i us my fog machine... i like it. Actually i like all of them. The polar coords make for some pretty interesting curves. I got a fiery thing goin on in photoshop now. I would call it Alien Fire.

steve, that is a pretty nice sphere, it has some good coloring to it.


trying to think out of the box


[This message has been edited by eyezaer (edited 07-09-2000).]

Steve, I like the glass ball much, especially the colors. But if I may, if that's a solid ball, like a crystal ball, the image underneath would be far more distorted. In fact, I believe the image through the ball would be inverted entirely (upside down and left to right). As it is, to me, it looks like a glass sphere, hollow like a Christmas ornament. If it's not supposed to be a solid ball, then ignore me, and I still like it.

Sorry, worked around crystal and acrylic balls a little too much...don't ask.

It looks like 1/2 of a sphere to me. Very neat.

Wes, you being one who as worked around crystal and acrylic balls a little too much, what have you to say about my new sig?


"expanding thy mind with photoshop, freeing thyself from frontpage"

Excellent points Wes. I thought too much realism would get too fussy for a signature sized piece. But I expected some eagle eye to point out the lapse. You being the first, I award you 5 points.

And I won't ask about acrylic balls. (But given the choice between them and oranges, I thik you made the smart choice!)

Eyezaer - the ball is very clear, which makes it look like it's in a dark surrounding, which is perfect because it looks like it actually exists in the dark forum environment. And the spot of glare does a lot because it still gives the center some substance; without it, I think it would look hollow. You know what, there's a little bit of texture around the glare, too, I think that's what does it.

The weird thing about crystal balls is they can look so completely different in different environments.

Now I've been looking at the sigs lately... and I think they should be a little smaller. Off course we know you just wanna show off, but PLEASE make it in size (dimensions as well as bits) to improve loading time as well as legibility.

Just a thought...

: : M a h j q a : :

-Warning: I have an attitude and I know how to use it.

i understand where mahjqa is comming from but is that any fun? mine is only 14kb.

It was very interesing to make a sphere all in white. well... white hilights on black set to screen, you really can't add any other texture w/o losing the spherical shape...
wes is right about the texture, that destroyes the plastic look. ok. have i gone on long enough about my own sig? should i get off of the computer now? no more coffee?

Oh no, I meant I liked the bit of texture. Makes it look to me like there's something there. Especially if you're going for acrylic, because there's almost always a little distortion in it, unlike a good crystal.

oooooo, eyezaer..

I think wes just called your crystal cheap and second rate. Smack him, eyezaer, tell him you only shop at Pier 1...



tskull@techie.com">

Sig size seems to be making an issue if itself again, so I dug thsi out of the Archive from one of Doc's posts:

quote:

---

Howzabout we make a deal? I'm going to set myself a limit of 400 pixels wide, and only 28 pixels tall, matched against this background. That'll be my new sig file, and let's see if you can do the same. I warn you, mine is going to use the background color, I'm shooting for low-key here, and I bet it'll earn more positive responses.

Here's another beef! Why hasn't anyone but me, Slime, and now TF X17 used the graphical sig function? Don't you guys ever do any graphics? <g> I'll expect some action from you guys!

---

Ask for opinions At Your Own Risk!

ouch, an insult...

from a guy with almost 300 posts. ooh....
i cant go on. with spheres.... Dl-44 is So Right.... man....


this was never gonna be a sig but it is now seeing that i cant use my sphere...


should we really tone down the sigs? they are pretty neato....

wes, i just be messin w/ ya, and im not really that insecure about my sigs... (ahem)

[This message has been edited by eyezaer (edited 10-09-2000).]

[This message has been edited by eyezaer (edited 10-09-2000).]

damn, I wish I would have spent more time at this forum <img border=0 align=absmiddle src="http://www.ozones.com/forum/smile.gif">

got alot of new ideas while reading thru the lines, great... .. .

thx!

[marc]

What I do? What I do?

Yeesh, try to compliment a guy...

OK, so everybody's balls are astounding, everyone happy?

http://www.netmosis.com/main/gallery/images/downwardspiral.jpg

experiment in light rays...


www.netmosis.com - "we're on the leading edge of a false reality."

thats pretty rockin!

who? me?


www.netmosis.com - "we're on the leading edge of a false reality."

wow, netmosis and eyezaer both got cool new .sig files, bravo!

cheers.mikey.milker

why thank you...


www.netmosis.com - "we're on the leading edge of a false reality."

And Mikey, too! Have I mentioned how much I like this one, BTW? Coolshades guy, he's cool. I'm back and forth amongst my own sigs, the old one was elegant and subtle, but I'm bored with it. I think I may have posted all of 'em somewhere in Site Reviews.

Your pal, -doc-

wow doc, that's great.. thanks! as for your .sigs, the old one was a classic... but i think the new one you had with multiple colors in the body was very nice too.

i like the huge influx we've had of people messing with their .sigs lately, but i must admit my design work has somewhat suffered as a result. hehe doh!

cheers.mikey.milker

Hey eyezair how did you do that light zapish effect in your latest post? I know how to do it like over the clouds effect but I saw that you haven't used it or...

-Time is always against me-

well nt, i didnt use any clouds... are you talking about for the back ground? i used the polar coords filter for the stuff that circles around my name.. and the other stuff is airbrushed. there are 2 layers for my name, the top is set to overlay or something... it is all done in white over an orange background and faded into the dark red on these pages... it is a transparent gif. the orange background is the important part here... i hope that was your question... just read all the posts on this string. they are really good.


[This message has been edited by eyezaer (edited 12-09-2000).]

Thanks eyezaer that really worked!



-Time is always against me-