Desktop pics (NO flesh pics though)

Looks a bit more crisp. Not a bad look. I see your desktop is about as messy as mine LOL!

 

Ya'll don't know messy. ROFL.

link to MESS

 

Oman7,
Let me put it this way. My desktop is my workspace. I work off of it and put the finished project in a folder and save it on my HDD! The rest get scrapped! Here's everything all cleaned up!
http://img512.imageshack.us/img512/934/test2iev.jpg

I like it!

Russ

 

Nice work guys, I'm not a superman fan but the work excellent I think, I like dark images cause I can see my icons better, I v'e been reading up with some books I got on these photoshop, paintshops and it so damn difficult, what I wouldn't do to get to you guys level.

Damn Russ I didn't know you were that good with these things, didn't you just start playing around with these photo softwares and you got this far already, man I'm jealous, I know the greenman and omegaman are like pro's with these things but you just started, good for you guy.

I bought two books on the subject, thick as bibles they are, got past several chapters not the easiest read, hell I can't even whiten teeth properly, the whole damn face turns white lol, both both photo and paint have a one click solution so they say that works like crap.

I have an idea of a pic I want to make or take of a certain symbol I have in mind, I would kiss some butt if one of you guys can make it look like this superman thing, I'll keep in touch, I'd love to have it for my desk top.

Hey Russ, whats that nursing home icon about, you planning on going somewhere LOL.

 

Fred,
I've been using Photoshop since the first version for windows, version 2.5. I used to be know as "The Wizard of Photoshop" back in the mid to late 90s. I have later versions, but I like 7.0.1 the best! It has just about all the features of CS, CS2 and CS3, and is far more intuitive to use, and it lets you work from the raw image from a digital camera, direct! I just haven't done anything serious with it in about 5 years! BTW that Nursing Home file is the PDF of that Cruise line retirement thing that my friend Fran sent me. I don't have Office XP installed yet! LOL!!

Russ

 

Thanks fred. And actually, I don't think the book would do much for me. It MIGHT teach me something, but...Im more of a hands on kinda guy. Im better off just figuring it out. I think you would be too. Unless im mistaken, the book is simply intimidating you. When I first gazed upon Photoshop, I was pretty intimidated. I started with a few tools, and went from there. That really is all there is to it. I knew once I got the basics of the program down, my imagination would take over. Lord knows i've got a vivid imagination LOL! I also like to write. I've imagined some pretty wicked imagery. But am STILL uncertain how to render such imagery. Time...time is all I/we need.

 

Oman7,
I started playing with Graphics in the mid 80, with a program called Degas on my Atari ST 1024! I did an Animated GIF of a Magical Pumpkin for my Son for Halloween 85! Pretty cool stuff for it's day! Fractals were also a lot of fun to play with! I think the first program I ever had that would let you enhance pictures was IrFanView, basically just a viewer with enhancements, pretty much like adjusting the color, brightness, contrast and sharpness much like you would for your TV back then! Long time ago! LOL!!

Russ

 

Mmm hmm. I remember your mentioning that before. I would imagine at the time, it was impressive. And now, Photoshop/Gimp are kings of imagery. I wonder what it will be in another 30+ years. Ive seen some other cutting edge programs. Such as Daz studio, Poser figure artist. Just to name a few of the other programs that intimidate me LOL! I'm currently trying to tackle "Sony Vegas" as well(Video editing).

 

Yeah well, you had 256 colors and 16 sprites to work with back then. The old ST was the best of the day! 5 years after they stopped making them it was still the best computer for MIDI! Better than the MAC of the day!

I gave Adobe Premier Elements a try a while back. It worked pretty good too! I just don't have the time it takes to do it anymore!

Russ

 

Does Windows 7 ever cease to look great?

 

Omeg and or Russ, guys I'm messing around with a bunch of pic's I'm tryiny to fix with paintshoppro, I have both PSPro plus Photoshop, just right now I'm using PSPro.

Omeg I know your pretty good with stuff like this, my first problem I ran into both PSPro and Photoshop would not open a bunch of my pic's, I would get the box saying (This is not a valid JPEG-JFIF File) I tried for hours trying to figure out what the hell was wrong and still can't find the reason, but anyway after googling and checking some forums the only solution I found was this one guy said to e-mail yourself the pics, open as save as, click on jpeg or bitmap, than send to whatever file or folder, and that worked, except what a pain in the ass, so much time, I'm getting googlied eyed here.

Would there be a quicker solution? Last question, I did read some that bitmap doesnt deteriorate as much as JPEG does especially if your transferring pic's often, and if bitmap sounds better why doesn't everybody use that, and what are the disadvantages bitmap if any.

I'm asking this since I'm transferring these pic's anyway and going thru all this time and trouble, should I be doing them in bitmap? I'd appreciate some help here from anybody that knows about these things and thank you.

 

Fred,
BMP files are usually much larger than jpg. Back in the day when hard drives were very expensive and size was not near what it is today, it was pretty easy to fill up a drive with BMPs. These days we store full DVDs on them! LOL!!

Best Regards,
Russ

 

Saving as BMP is a lossless solution. VERY large in size usually. PNG can be large too. Depending on how many colors there are. PNG can also be a better solution, when there are few colors.
Your pictures could be in Jpeg2000 compression. I ran into that problem a little while back. I used a program called FastStone Image viewer to convert it to Regular Jpeg with no compression. VERY awesome program by the way. It can batch convert! I believe Photoshop can too, but FastStone is more user friendly in doing so. I have not discovered how it is done in photoshop, because there has been no need to. Rather unusual that Photoshop couldn't read the file, but there are programs that can

 

Omeg_Hot Damn, thanks so much, I downloaded your Fastone, and it worked, I copied three of my pic's from the folder that has many to another and started experimenting, so you know, it's not easy for me to figure out a lot of this stuff, just ask Russ, I'll call him on the horn what would take him 30 seconds to understand would take him 30 minutes to explain to me, I know I drive him nuts but he puts up with me LOL.

I had a little trouble understanding how to send all three at once and it asked to create a folder were to go but figured it out (yup all by myself) first I converted to bitmap, tried to open with PSPro and it did same as Photoshop did, than I gave it a shot and tried to re-convert in JPEG again, and that worked, now both PSPro & Photoshop opens either one bitmap or the new jpeg.

I spent countless hours yesterday searching forums etc. most said it's pretty much a lost cause because of this or that except for the one guys solution to e-mail them to myself, what a hassle that was, now I'll try to convert the whole folder, there's bu-ku pic's in there, I'll make a copy first to play with not to screw up the original cause I'm still playing, if all goes well I'll start fixing some of my wife older pic's and my army pic's which many are faded, I have used so far PSPro one step fix a couple of times and it did a pretty decent job, I know doing it manually can get better results but still learning.

I want to thank you big time, you saved me a lot of time plus the fact I learned something new which I love to do on these things, I think I'm gonna save everything in bitmap, I have plenty of space so that doesn't worry me, besides between me and my kids we move around our pic's many times from one PC to another to disc's etc. so keeping them lossless as you pointed out is better for us I think. I have originally scanned all these pic's years back which took me forever and have noticed the deterioration of them, not realizing moving them around creates a loss in jpeg, I did some reading about that last night after your latest posts. Thank You.

Russ if your around today I'm gonna try to give you a buzz, my kids are going back to school soon, won't see them again till Xmas, thank you bearded guy upstairs, this past three months I have gotten grayer, wrinklier you name it jeez.

And last, a week ago I posted a long reply asking about certain things on this thread especially about getting help in making a wallpaper for me, I'm of Ukrainian decent and they have a symbol like us Americans have an Eagle, I wanted it to resemble one of your superman wallpapers, I have family in the UK that have recently made lives there and there still big in the Ukie thing I wanted to surprise them, it took me an hour to write and explain things, I clicked on post reply as always do thinking everything was fine, it never took, man I was pissed, I'll try again another time, before I post I'm saving this just in case.

 

Omeg, I did forget to mention, none of those pic's were jpeg2000, not as I highlight them anyway, all it says is jpeg and the size even when I go to properties, whats weird is all those pic's that PSPro & Photoshop would not open my older freeware like Paint.net and others do, go figure.

 

Good job fred I like that program quite a bit. Its even got certain skills, that photoshop does not. The compression of a Jpeg, allows for darn near exact file size. So if your uploading to a site, that has a 5Mb size limit, you can hit it right on the money, without sacrificing too much quality. Although I must admit, photoshops compression algorithms or extremely good. Its quite likely that photoshop can take it further, without sacrificing quality.

Im working on yet another image. A digital, rubix cube! I'm not pleased with the background, but I believe the overall cube is complete. Stay tuned

I've also discovered a freeware program, that renders some very interesting imagery. Unfortunately, its not multi core capable. So the imagery takes time to render Good thing im extremely patient

 

Ok. Heres my first attempt. Not too bad. I may run this one for a few days, to hopefully inspire new ideas.