Artisitc Merits

It's because I know how talented you are, Petty, that I'm sooo excited about seeing my video....

Yeah me too....eventually..... cumon Petty I want to see Orwells museek!

I've heard one of Orwell's songs is soooooo romantic... a sadly longing love song with beautiful though tactfully understated imagery... Do you know it, Mrs Figg? I hope it's that one - and not one of those boring middle age angsty songs of his I've heard people moan about...

yeah I think it is THAT one but until Petty gets his finger out and makes the blasted video we will never know will we.

I think the problem is, until Petty puts me as his highest priority, my video will never get finished...

Um not that I'm distracted or doing other stuff when I should be working on Orwel''s video, not at all. But here's um something else Ive been working on. Another competition entry- same rules as the previous competion.

Still playing to much Skyrim!!

Ahh the ole artistic merits threads- so many aristic folks on here and only ever me here. That's Forumshire for you.

Anyway I thought I would give a sort of mini tutorial on the Ithilien pic. That way folks like Mrs Figg can muck about doing similar.

First up I prefer GIMP to Photoshop- firstly being a Scot its free and I like that. Secondly its very good.
However it may for a photoshop user seem a bit confusing at first as it opens as seperate windows- this is eventually one of the reasons you won't hurry back to photoshop.
I reccomend downloading it and using it with this tutorial.

http://www.gimp.org/

Anyway. the tutorial bit.

Stage 1.
Nick Mrs Figg picture off the other thread.


Stage 2.
Use Google images- google for stormy sky, red sky, whatever you like the look of- nick that too.

Stage 2b (only applies if you are me)
Become increasingly crabbit that google image does not have the sort of sky you want. Run terragen2- spend half and hour creating the sky I want - wait nearly 3 hours for it to render.



You may want to nick my sky just for the purposes of this tutorial.

Stage 3
Bring up each picture in Gimp. You could use a mask for this but as the horizon line of the mountains is nice and simple its quicker to just use the SELECT tool.


Trace around the edge of the mountains, then down the side of the image, along the bottom, back up the other side and connect it back to where you started- you will now have the entire foreground minus sky selected in a falshing dotted line.

Go to the EDIT drop-down tab and choose COPY VISIBLE.

Stage 4
Bring up your sky picture. Go to the EDIT tab on it and choose 'paste into selected'.
Your Ithilien foreground will now appear on top of the sky.

Unfortuntely if as there is here there is a size discrepancy you can change the size of the foreground layer. Just go the LAYER tab then choose SCALE LAYER and resize it until you get what you want.
Once you have done that use the MOVE LAYER tool to place it where you want.

To paste a layer down just move the cursor ontot he background, you will see a little anchor symbol appear next to the cursor, just click to put down the layer in position.
Note that the tool at the end of the line the MOVE LAYER tool is the rotate tool. So if you wanted to tip the landscape a little you would use that.
Now use the RECTANGLE SELECTOR tool to select the area you want.

Go to the IMAGE tab and CROP TO SELECTION.
You should have a composite picture now, but chances are the background and foreground lighting dont mix.


Stage 5
I'm using the colours in my own sky here but its the same technique with whatever yours is, just pick whatever colours seem to you the predominant ones lighting the scene.
Use the COLOUR PICKER tool and pick one of the purply colours in the sky.

Now select the AIRBRUSH tool and increase the size to 3. Reduce the OPACITY to 40.0.

Spray the entire foreground except the white flowers in the foreground with this colour.
You should have something like this.

Do the same as above but this time select one of the darker colours in the cloud using the COLOUR PICKER.
That should give you something like this.


Ok last bit.
Go to the FILTERS TAB, then LIGHT AND SHADOW/LIGHTING EFFECTS.
A new window will open. Click the LIGHT tab and change TYPE to DIRECTIONAL.
In the small picture of your main picture you will see there is a blue dot and a line. Click on the blue dot and move it till it is just off the edge of the image on the right hand side about the height of the top of the white flowers.
Change the Intenstiy to 2.00 and change the light colour to something leaing towards the red end, but not too dark.

Click OK and see if you like it.

Did no one have a go at it then?

You know Petty I don't know why I bother.

Me neither.

I mean Forumshires full of artisits. I can't go to the Muck and Duck anymore without Orwell singing in the corner.

Its more like screaming. Tell me about it.

I am. And there are more Forumshire publications than ever before. And every new person that moves in seems to be unfathomably talented.

Yeah. The bastards.

And yet on the art thread there's just me.

And you.

Oh yeah, theres me of course. And you.

Thankyou for noticing.

But well, a thread like this, just your own stuff, your own voice. Could send a person a bit loopy don't you think?

Nah. Nothing loopy about us. It all those others you have to watch.

Thats true. Although I cant help but notice you seem to be a bit more, well, crabbit than me.

Well naturally. I'm your crabbit half.

Ah. Of course. So shouldn't be taunting me or something?

Probably. Lets see, aha..how about this then- Its because of me- you only survived because of me.

Well of course I did, everythings your fault.

Oh yeah. That's true. Ok, hold on, how about..You're a liar and a thief.

No, that was you again.

Bugger, yeah so it was. You must be responsible for something?

I'm just a libertanian with an overindulgence in buckie. You're the crabbit, violent one.

Yeah, that' s me all right.

Besides I don't think this is helping with the problem of no one else here but me and me.

Well I don't think this nonsense is going to help any.

No, you could be right there.

He's... he's... turning into... ORWELL!!?

I don't know which of the last two posts was funnier....

Anyway, Petty are you using gimp on a linux box or a macintosh? That was a great tutorial, too bad I don't have the time right now to work on it but you answered some of the questions I had. Except for the fact that Gimp is free and doesn't try to steal all resources to itself I think Gimp and photoshop are basically identical. other than the multiple windows (disconcerting at first) are there any other major differences?

photoshop rules I mean gimp, what sort of Mickey Mouse name is that?
You know its a bad sign talking to yourself, even in wizarding circles its frowned upon, I always make sure nobody is listening.

sigh! I suppose I will have a look at it though (((((it does look kind of interesting, but dont tell Petty)))))

I'll have you know I am perfectly sane. I even got a second opinion just to make sure, mine.

The highest praise I can give GIMP is that even when I had photoshop installed I still used GIMP. (It stands Mrs Figg for GNU Image Manipulation Program).
I have yet to want to do something and not been able to in GIMP. And there are plenty tutorials out there- from what I can tell some things are easier in one or the other and some things harder. But its as good as photoshop and its free which is always good. The downside is there is more third party stuff, plugins ect for photoshop.

If I do any more tutorials on the limited stuff I know how to do it will be using GIMP, from that point of view its easier if evryone is using the same program who is following the tutorial.

Unless there's been some serious cobbling gimp only works with a mac or linux machine, Figgy. somehow I have the impression you have a recently acquired mac, so you should be okay with it. GIMP doesn't start strange and unwelcome processes running in background the way anything vaguely associated with adobe tends to, so it's actually an improvement.

I'm guessing from his Scot tendencies Petty is on Linux, am I right?

Nope PC and windows 7 Halfwise.
I like linux but I'm lazy and can't be bothered learning another system- although windows 8 might yet push me that way. If I want a phone interface I'll buy a bloody phone- but leave it off my pc!

Gimp works fine for pc runnning windows.

Wow, I thought GNU was only linux or something that could run unix, like mac. Didn't know they had expanded outside that domain. I guess someone had to bring light to the windows masses.

Halfwise I wish I did have a mac, unfortunately I only have a teeny weeny notebook with windows, I dont even have proper photoshop as it it too mighty to download, so I have photoshop Elements 9 which gives the basics and came with the windows package thingy. I also have crap internet reception so I spend most of my time buffering. and I know nothing about computers, I dont even know what the difference is between download and upload? (((no really I dont)))))

I have no idea if it will run on a notebook or not Mrs Figg- it is less intense and demanding than photoshop however so its well worth trying. And it works with windows so shouldn't be a problem there.

And the difference between upoloads and downloads is a simple as it sounds- when I put something from my pc to the net- say a youtube video or my edits to my skydrive- I am uploading.
If someone retrieves files from my skydrive and puts them on their pc- they are downloading.
Now you know!

so when I am nicking photos from Google to mess with I am downloading or uploading? I am such a nitwit.

You are downloading- anything which goes from somehwere else to your pc is downloading- if its going the other way, from your pc to somewhere else you are uploading.

But if you are downloading torrents you are uploading and downloading at the same time

Don't go confusing things Ally just when I was trying to make it all simple and straightforward sounding! And no wonder you wear a pirates hat.
And you could switch off your uploading (bad ) when getting torrents then you'd only be downloading- or you could only be seeding and then you'd only be uploading.

AAaaaaarrrggggg ............................. .................... ..........................

Ok heres the two pics we will use- we are going to put Mrs Figg (+cats) onto this nice background.


So first we need to select Mrs Figg and her pussies. For this we need the 'Free select Tool'- right here (the highlighted one with the box round it)


Then its just a matter of connect the dots, draw a line around the bit you want and make sure the last dot connects to the first (when you do that the dotted line will sort of flicker)-


Go to the 'edit' tab at the top and select 'copy visible'- this tells it to copy whatever is inside the selcted area- in this case Mrs Figg and pussies.
Now we can go to our background pic. Go to the edit tab again and this time select 'paste into' and viola- Mrs Figg is in the pic.


But she is a bit small- so go to the Layer tab and scale layer- I increased the size by 4 in this instance- thats better-


Now select the move layer tool- here-


And lets put her in the corner there-

now thats good but we have an edge where the cats bodies just sort of stop which doesnt look good. So select the clone tool-


And then pick a bit of cat fur colour (hold down control to select the bit you want to clone) and we just paint in the extra bit we need- and there you go- finished pic. See easy really-

Then you call it:

"Mrs Figg and her Cats: Tuscan Morning."

Ta-dahh!!!!



{{{Mind, I'm not sure that looks like Tuscany... Hey! Petty! How about a Tuscan setting you clod! No wonder she gets annoyed with you! Can't you get ANYTHING right?!?! You Scottish clod! }}}