The Energon Pub

I wanted to make a photoshop signature of my FanBot, Imperious. Problem is, I couldn't find a good PSD of Hot Rod/Rodimus, and well, it's my first day ising this program.

So instead, I settled for movie Prime, seeing as he has the flames, I then distorted it and put a date on it (1/1/08), because I figure by the first of the new year, I'd be ok with this program.

I wanted it to be black and silver, but this is the best I could do.


Any and all help would do.

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2139/1784168288_29a65b962e.jpg?v=0

i'm trying to learn GIMP, so that is better than what i can do!! (for now )

To be honest, it's difficult to tell what kind of a job you did on PS the figure, because you've textured the 'canvas' so heavily it's made the actual picture very difficult to make out. I can pretty much see a mass of black, with a few lighter patches; I don't see much detail at all. If you smooth out the texture somewhat, that'll help a lot.

I think a mistake a lot of people make when they're new to photoediting is to throw on every filter and texture they can to make their picture look cool - what it actually does is make it look cluttered.

You haven't gone to that extreme, but if I were you I'd concentrate on getting the hang of repainting the figure before you start throwing on the effects.

Biggest problem people tend to get into is the filter tool. Try to keep that function only for backgrounds or if you must use it in the foreground, turn down the percentage or the depth.

Thanks for the suggestion, I tried to make it look like a shadow, but I wanted the flames, is there any tool to recolor, instead of me just changing contrasts for a hour.

Also, I figure I would post this here, this is the original try of me re-coloring it ... but I'm color blind, so I have to rely on my roommate. I am trying to get a silver as the color of the flames, with a darker metallic as the primary color.


http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2204/1785041753_9bcfebe420.jpg?v=0

Imperious Prime wrote:Also, I figure I would post this here, this is the original try of me re-coloring it ... but I'm color blind, so I have to rely on my roommate. I am trying to get a silver as the color of the flames, with a darker metallic as the primary color.


http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2204/1785041753_9bcfebe420.jpg?v=0

wow, nice! you did this? i think this is the first time i ever saw a Nightwatch Prime Color scheme digibash. good work man.

but reading from your post, you were trying for a silver color for the flames, but i guess you ended up with blue-green, more closer to the Nightwatch color.

Well, thank you man. Another question I have, is there any way to type in colors, instead of eye balling them ... seeing as again, I was relying on my semi-drunk roommate last night every couple of minutes going, "is this closer?"

Granted, we were watching Critters last night, so drinking is the only way to get through that "film."

If you only want to change a certain section, use the lasso tool or polygonal selection tool to select that area. Then you can adjust the contrast and hues only for that section. Works quite well. As for colors and eyeballing, that tends to be the best way unless you can find a color wheel that gives your the numbers for thousands of possibilities.

First off, layers are your friends; combined layers even moreso.
By adding a layer over the top of the picture, you can modify the colours of the picture underneath. Each layer has a variety of properties you can apply to it that affects the underlying image in different ways.

A Normal layer just overlays with flat colour.
A Colour layer changes the hue to whatever you paint on it, while maintain the tone from the layers beneath.
Lighten layers change any colour darker than the colour you're painting to that colour, while leaving any lighter colour untouched; a Darken layer does the opposite. And of course, by altering the opacity of a layer, you can increase and lessen the effect it has.

Try taking an original image, applying a couple of areas of flat colour on a layer over the top, and cycling through the different layer types, to see how each type affects the colours. Then try overlaying two layers with different properties and see what that does. You'll soon get a good feel for what they're capable of.

<edit> As for colours, how's your knowledge of additive colour theory (that's how colours work in light, rather than subtractive, which is how they work in pigment)? Bearing in mind you're working with RGB on screen, you can simply play with those values to get the colour you're after. Say I'm after a light orange, I'll put the red up high, the green about half-way to get the hue (red and green make yellow, less green takes it toward the orange), then add blue to lighten it.
And yeah, I'm colourblind too.