Speaking of Slayerstillness - Congrats to the Winners of Round 36, and some unrelated pretties

[red_satin_doll]

But first, a word from our sponsor: I need to give proper congratulations to the winners of Challenge 36 rua1412, sweet_lyri, tempertemper and debris4spike, and a huge round of applause to comlodge for her amazing banners. They reflect an aesthetic that is at once Victorian and contemporary, painterly and cinematic all at once; and that reward repeat viewings with their attention to detail, ornamentation, warm colors and sophisticated font and texture effects. Wonderful.

Her use of "frames" and warm Old Master's color palette inspired me to try to do something on a larger scale. I was also inspired by tempertemper's Bangel icon for SS Challenge 24 in May. I had no idea how she got an image inside a frame atop a realistic looking wallpaper. I've been wanting to do a proper gold frame around the fanart of Buffy that Megan made as a gift for me back in September but didn't know how, nor could I find an image I liked or that fit the size of her poster.  This week I've been goofing off, experimenting with dodge and burn tools in ipiccy per rua1412's suggestions, and I made another Buffy poster with my usual color variations and tried again. After a day or two experimentation I think I got it right, albeit with a new poster I made rather than Megan's.

And because I was just telling velvetwhip how hard it is for me to sit still and read long multi-chapter fics on the internet (thanks, ADD!), it seems that the same might be true for other folks with my commentary so I'll have the images visible and the commentary hidden. To read or not is your choices Gentle Friend but enjoy the pictures either way:

Click to enlarge -  it's worth seeing the details but they're fairly large files, so be warned:

            01-03

      04-05

The photographs of the vintage-style wooden frames on all the images come from VIctorian Frame Company, which has some very high-quality images of their reproduction period frames. The outer borders on 2,4 & 5  are "Victorian wallpaper" images that I found on the internet. I don't know who the creators are as I've misplaced the links, so f any one knows I'd love to give proper credit.

For the first time since I got the news of her passing, (20 days ago, really not that long at all) I sat back and didn't ask myself "Would she approve?" because I know she would. She said to me months ago in reference to some of my icons for SS, "If this is what you can do with ipiccy, imagine what you could do with a really good program" like Photoshop or Gimp.  It turns out I've still got a lot to learn and master in ipiccy, and even Photobucket's crude suite was useful here.

The photographs of the vintage-style wooden frames on all the images come from VIctorian Frame Company, which has some very high-quality images of their reproduction period frames. The outer borders on 2,4 & 5  are "Victorian wallpaper" images that I found on the internet. I don't know who the creators are as I've misplaced the links, so f any one knows I'd love to give proper credit.

#1 made entirely in ipiccy ; for #2-3 I took the poster sans frame to Photobucket to apply the vintage San Carmen filter once or twice, then brought it back over to ipiccy to apply the wall and frame layers. This is the first time I experimented properly with dodge and burn tools in Paint mode, after a recent conversation I had with rua1412; I was able to achieve somewhat more precise control than using the generic exposure and saturation filters. The various bokeh and light leak effects are all pre-set options in ipiccy.

For #1 I was trying to avoid cropping the poster in Layer mode, which meant I had to stetch/pull the image inside to fill the gold leaf frame, and squish the frame a little because it's a bit more square than the rectangular poster.  The decorative scallop on inside edge of the frame made it possible to mask any slight gaps or imperfections in matching the images that would have been visible with perfectly straight edges.

Cropping in ipiccy Layer mode is incredibly tricky because when I'm working with layers, the program does not allow me to see anything except the layer I am currently working on, so I have to guess if the crop will match the space, then hit the "edit mask" button and try again if it doesn't. Also, there are no guidelines or grid for me to go by when I crop, so if I want to achieve a straight edge I have to eyeball it. All of this means that I end up cropping less often than I should and sometimes back away from ideas, try to find a workaround, smudge, blur or mask the imperfections with other layers and textures, or simply learn to live with them.

The final step was to crop out the white background around the frame with the basic crop tool.

#2 - I bit the bullet and cropped the poster art to fit within the dark wood. I decided I wanted to emulate tempertemper's aforementioned Bangel icon and cover the white background with a "Victorian" wallpaper image I found online (again, I would love to credit the maker if anyone has a link.)  Then I applied the wallpaper image over in texture rather than layer mode, set to darken or multiply. This works only if the images are compatible sizes, which these were, in order for the texture pattern not to appear distorted.

Texture mode allowed me to erase rather than crop the portions of the wallpaper that covered Buffy and the frame. Erasing and repainting around the edge of the picture frame was the most time-consuming element of this step, but the idea of cropping the wall "in reverse to" to make it fit around the frame was too headache-inducing to consider.

#3 then is just #2 with the wallpaper cropped off.


The poster images of Buffy is not "perfect" by any stretch of the imagination. I could never figure out how to eliminate the pixelated edges without making making features look too smudged out.  Hence the light leak textures, which don't solve the problem and only distract a little. I was less bothered by the edges on her face oddly enough than her hands and fingers. My original thought was to throw up one of these unframed fanarts and ask "What can I do within ipiccy or photobucket to fix this, if anything, folks?" and concrit is still warmly appreciated.

I also found a very pretty "cathedral" frame shape on the Victorian Frame Co. site, so I meant to try to cut her hands from the image altogether, but then it didn't look quite right and so:

06-07

The frame photo is the same in each. I put the two images together in layer mode; the frame itself set to multiply to keep it as dark and opaque as possible over  the other layer. This time I didn't crop either layer; the space within the frame was white so that posed no problem in terms of Buffy showing through the frame. but then her arm and shouder show through the frame slightly on the right side. I had no idea how to fix that without going back and cropping.



#5 is another wallpaper pattern set around #6, again in texture rather than layer mode so I could erase the pattern from within the edges of the frame, choosing a file size compatible with my poster to avoid image distortion. A lot of painstaking work around the edge of the frame, although a little bit of light and softness doesn't bother me and it gives it depth. #5 was the first of the "wallpaper" versions I completed but I wasn't happy with the pattern and I didn't care for the color/tonality of it or the frame itself. And I still had the issue of the underlayer being visible through the frame. For #7 I experimented in texture mode with the wallpaper image in #2 & 4 above; when I set it to Overlay, it looked as though the pattern on the frame was actually incised into the wood which was a thrilling happy accident; and it lent a warmer, redder tone that suited the image better. It also slightly conceals the transparency on the right side of the frame that bothered me.


I added the same wallpaper image a second time to get #4, this time erasing the pattern from within the edges of the frame, and doing the whole erasing/repainting process along the edges.

Happy holidays or whatever you do or do not celebrate this year, a nice cuppa raised to pickamix's  memory, I'll be back after the holiday with some more art and don't forget to vote in slayerstillness Challenge #37 in between all and everything you do.

I hope everyone reading this is exactly where they want to be, with whom they want to be with, or will be very soon.      

Comments

[dragonyphoenix.livejournal.com]

No but computers don't like me. Honestly. I've had IT guys say "I've never seen anything like that before."

[red-satin-doll.livejournal.com]

I've heard doctors say that too.

It's called "we're supposed to be an authority figure/expert but we don't know as much as we're supposed to."

Are you using a PC (not a Mac) at home? My sweetie switched over to Apple years ago and I can't imagine going back now. I've forgotten how often the PC used to freeze up and crash (all the time), how the Geek Squad left things in worse shape than when we brought it in, the viruses and expensive anti-virus programs, yadda yadda. Maybe new PC's are better, I wouldn't know.

[dragonyphoenix.livejournal.com]

"I've never seen anything like that before." Ouch, that would be so much worse coming from a doctor. Another example, though, of how medicine is more art than science.

I've never used a Mac. My laptops (PCs) have each died in about a year from my buying them (new). Macs are more expensive and I didn't want to pay more money if they were going to die as well. I think the new PCs are worse than they used to me. My first computer, a desktop, lasted me about ten years.

[red-satin-doll.livejournal.com]

So I'm in my late teens (not quite 20) at the emergency room and the doctor says "You're too young to have a clot, how did you get this?"

Me: (cranky and in pain) "I don't know, you're supposed to be the medical expert, you tell me." (Yes I actually said that to the asshole.)

Don't get me started on how the doctors kept dismissing my mother's concerns and said "there's nothing wrong with her" when it turns out I was having petit mal epileptic seizures starting at age 11.

My laptops (PCs) have each died in about a year from my buying them (new). Macs are more expensive and I didn't want to pay more money if they were going to die as well.</i. If it hadn't been for the apartment fire last year, I'd be typing this right now on the 2008 Mac desktop that got burnt up because it was working just fine. My sweetie did pull her 2010 mac laptop out of the room as we were fleeing the fire; she still uses it every day, no worries just an occasional tune-up. Macs pay for themselves in the long run, when I begin to add up the money spent on anti-virus software, on fixing crashes, replacing the innards and out right replacing the entire computer when we had a PC, it's not contest. Plus, paying for the additional year or more of Apple care is well worth it. At the risk of sounding a cultist (which I'm not) or an apple employee (not), the macs have saved us money, time and headaches over the long run. (We got the first one in 2008, and we've never thought of turning back.) My sweetie went from being a computer-phobe to having the desktop then the laptop AND using both her personal and her work Ipad from morning to night (alarm clock, meditation apps, etc.) It does take a little getting used to, and the new Operation system is Wyoming and they are still fixing a lot of bugs. beware of all the operating system updates apple releases withouth having given them proper time and testing.

[dragonyphoenix.livejournal.com]

Hmmm, maybe I will try a Mac next time.

[red-satin-doll.livejournal.com]

I recommend it - obviously. There is definitely a learning curve, or there was for me. Some of my favorite functions in PC's can be replicated in Macs - right click function menus, for instance. And it took me a while to get used to exporting document files to different formats and figuring out what would work with my email and what the person at the other end could open. Pages (the world processing program) is not compatible with my gmail for instance, but I can export a pages document as a word doc or a pdf, etc.

I actually do miss some things about Word and excel vs Pages and Numbers (the Mac versions) but I just need to take more time mastering the Mac versions (I haven't had an office job in a while so the need to use them and really learn them hasn't been there).

If you get a Mac, you can also take group classes or one on one sessions at the Apple stores, and go to as many as you like. If you live near an Apple store I highly recommend taking advantage of this.

[dragonyphoenix.livejournal.com]

Cool. Thanks for the info. I'll keep it in mind.

[dragonyphoenix.livejournal.com]

"I don't know, you're supposed to be the medical expert, you tell me." Completely true.

"there's nothing wrong with her" when it turns out I was having petit mal epileptic seizures starting at age 11. That's frustrating. What are you supposed to do when the supposed experts don't believe it's a problem?

[red-satin-doll.livejournal.com]

What are you supposed to do when the supposed experts don't believe it's a problem?

You go from one doctor to another until you find someone who listens. This was also true of my lupus (SLE) - I suffered for five years before I found an internist who actually identified my problem.

Back then however there was no internet. There's a lot of contradictory and just plain incorrect information on it, but it can be an incredibly useful tool as well and if I'd had it back in the day I could have looked up my symptoms and possibly found answers a lot quicker.