Topic awaiting preservation: Two ways to skin a cat

I wonder... it looks good to me, but I am on a low contrast monitor. Does it work for you?
And yeah, I got tired of the chromeys.

Dark color :

..And the same on a clear background

difficult for me to see the second one, but the first looks good

The trick is that the two are one single image. It's difficult to get it right without "crossing the limit"
of too much contrast (so thanks for the feedback).

Clever, and a neat idea, but I find it a bit hard to see both. I might miss it if I weren't paying attention.

Thank you - actually, I am pretty happy it is discreet for the time being, until I have time to rework my sigs gallery (the shineys were getting on my nerves somehow).
But I am not 100% convinced myself - from here, I can still see "argo" when I read "navis", not the other way round though.

The idea reminds me of those cards where two images are intricated and depending on how you look at it, you'll see one or the other image.

A recipe, still (maybe others can use it to come up with something better in the same vein):
0) Dark background comes first, so taint the image you want to appear first using the clearer color.

1) On a distinct layer, taint one of the images using the bg color of the clear cells (something like 320808 I think).

2) Taint the other image using the bg color of dark cells (240000 for me).

3) Use a "1px checker pattern" to fill a third layer

4) Use the "checker pattern transparency" as a selection

5) Cut the checker pattern from your two images

6) Place the two images so that empty pixels in image 1 match colored pixels from image 2

By now, the result should look like this more or less :


7) Play with the luminosity of the two images a bit, this is difficult to get right but what you want is the darker one to be "slightly darker than the default",
and the clearer one to be "slightly clearer". Too much messes up the effect.

8) Save for web, matte to the good ol' 2B0404, upload, and enjoy.

That's neat, bro.

Glad you like it, me matie I just toned down the brightness by two units on both layers at the same time.
Turns out that this way, I can keep the contrast between the two, but the darker one to stand out a bit more against the clear background, and it works better
for me - *both* sigs are now readable.

It works best when both images occupy approximately the same surface (because it really works using the contrast against the background AND between the
two "images").

Play, fiddle, and get a new sig, to paraphrase someone. (...and am off for yet another steamy Saturday night, but expect some really juicy stuff in the server side
forum sometime soon - I AM rising up to my best one small step at a time)
(oh, and consider adding one pixel to the outline of the darker one : darker against clear gives the illusion of "shrinking things", clearer against dark gives the opposite impression).



(Edited by argo navis on 02-09-2008 18:50)

It seems to be much better now, I can't work out if its changes you've made or the monitor I'm now looking at it on.

Great idea, nicely executed.

That's just freak'n rad! Awesome idea.