UPSB v3
Pen Modifications / [Tutorial] Simple seamless insert creation
...and color changing tutorial by neXus
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Date: Thu, Jan 24 2008 10:55:38
How to create a simple but good looking and seamless insert:
First, start our by finding a quite abstract picture you like. Googling the word "abstract" is a good start. I googled "Abstract Digital" and found this picture. Now, open the picture you choose in photoshop. If you don't have it at home, perhaps your school has it. Using other advanced picture editing programs also works.
Crop tool:
Settings:
Now, it's good if your picture is pretty big so you can choose which section you want to use. Select the "Crop" tool in Photoshop. Enter "9 cm" as width, and "3,8 cm" as height in the top bar for the Crop tool, then select the part of the picture you want to use and press enter. NOTE: eventually you will only see the top fourth of the picture, so make sure you have some graphics there. Here's the part I used:
Now it's gonna get kind of hard to follow. Start with pressing Ctrl + R, which should bring out the ruler (if it's not out already). Draw out a "helpline" (helplines are not visible in the picture once saved or printed) from the horizontal part of the ruler down to 1,9 cm (<- the "helpline" should snap there automatically), then another one down to 0,95 cm.
Now select the upper part, from the top of the picture down to the first "helpline". Right click it, then press "Layer via copy", which creates another layer that has the same part on it. You should now be in that new layer, so select the upper part again, right click it, and press "Free Transform". Now right click it once more, and press "Flip Vertically". This results in the upper part ending up upside down, so what you want to do know is move it down below the original upper part of the picture. Here's the result:
If anything was unclear just read the last section again and follow it step by step.
The insert is basically done now, atleast the graphic part. To be on the safe side though and not get any faults, we're going to first merge all layers (press Shift + Ctrl + E), then copy everything above the lower helpline and copy it down to below the helplines. Simply select everything above the lower helpline, press Crtl + C to copy it, then Ctrl + V to paste it. After that you can use the "Move Tool" (press V to select it) to move this part below the lower helpline. What you should have is now is the same part of your original picture 4 times, only flipped in two of the places.
Lastly, we're going to add the COP line and some text. Draw out another helpline from the ruler, only a vertical one this time. Draw it to the part where the ruler says "5", which is 4 cm from the back of the insert, and the COP of an original MX. Select the "line tool" from the "shape tool" box. You migh have another shape than line there at the moment, but you can change that in a drop-down menu. Change the "weight" of the line to 10 px, and select a dark color present in your picture. You can select a color by using the "Eyedropped Tool" (press I to select it) and clicking a section of your picture.
Line tool:
Settings:
Draw a line on the vertical helpline, then press Ctrl + Shift + E to merge everything into one layer. Now change the "weight" of the line tool to 4 px, and select a lighter color present in your picture. Draw this line over the one you drew before, which creates an okay looking COP line.
Finally, we're going to add some text. Find a font you like, and use some matching colors again. After that it's complete, and will be seamless if you've followed my instructions correctly. Enjoy!
Color changing tutorial by neXus:
For the ones who have missed this, here's neXus tutorial on how you change the color of an insert in a simple but effective way.
Please leave comments, ask questions, or give tips on everything regarding this. -
Date: Thu, Jan 24 2008 11:48:47
nice! ^^ Very helpful!
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Date: Thu, Jan 24 2008 12:25:47
wow, realy smart idea!
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Date: Thu, Jan 24 2008 13:25:30
maybe a picture of it in an mx?
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Date: Thu, Jan 24 2008 14:27:23QUOTE (patrick @ Jan 24 2008, 01:25 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>wow, realy smart idea!Thanks!
I thought of this quite a while ago really. It's also possible to flip a smaller part of the insert ofc, which would make it look less symetrical. QUOTE (Teddy @ Jan 24 2008, 02:25 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>maybe a picture of it in an mx?Sorry, I neither have an all silver (?) mx or a printer right now ^^ I don't think it's needed either, since people are supposed to do this themselves, not use just this one example I made. I bet there are tons of graphics on the interwebs that work way better than what I used.
Oh, and here's another insert made this way that I made on UCPSB. -
Date: Thu, Jan 24 2008 14:53:28
neXus, i love you. You too sfsr.
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Date: Thu, Jan 24 2008 15:49:39
Love photoshop, but maybe expensive for some peoples here ...
So you can Download a Photoshop like, it's called : Paint.net
It's a free software and very good for all beginners and pro ^^
http://www.getpaint.net/ look for it in the right upper hand corner -
Date: Thu, Jan 24 2008 20:55:31
Sfsr: it would have been a lot easier to just use Dancing Banannas' tutorial. Would have saved you some work.
QUOTE (Dancing Bananna Mon Aug 29 @ 2005 11:56 am)*appears out of the inky shadows*
PS= Photoshop PP=Photoplus
Ok, my last tutorial was a bit confusing so this time I wanted to make a step-by step tutorial. However to follow this tutorial completely, you have to use PP (photoplus) or (photoshop) or possibly any other program which have the capabilities of these two programs.
Summarized idea on how I made the insert: I pretty much played with gradient on this one. The insert isn't too great but it should teach people how to fix their insert if it does not wrap around perfectly.
Reminder once again, you cannot really do this on paint unless you have some kind of *power* to use paint Laughing , however, I will be switching between paint and PP alot since I find some things easier to do in paint than in PP (such as selecting Mad , trust me selecting in PP is weird cause it takes like 1/3 of a pixel for some reason Confused )
Reminder 2: This is for RSVP V2 insert, since that is the pen I spin with mostly, change the COP at will if you plan on making an MX insert.
Step 1: Just start off a new sheet at 9x3.86cm. I used 72 Pixels/Inch on mine.
Step 2: Just go ahead and draw the COP line down the middle, if you want to be creative with it go ahead but I just used the classical COP line from Kam's insert remember to save this.
Step 3: Take 1/4 of the portion of your insert. Here is the math to it, since there are 107 pixels at the bottom (as shown in the bottom of the screen) you divide that by 2. Basically 1/4 of the insert (not including COP since that can be added back later)=117x53 pixels. (For quicker start in the future, start a new picture at 117x53 pixels.) Now save it in a place you can remember.
Step 4: If you were to make any other insert start working from here. I would suggest you to get a piece of paper or something and draw out you design on paper first. If you were on PP good, otherwise switch now and open your 1/4 insert file. From here on you might want to display the tool properties tab by going to View->and check every tab. Anyways, now you select the gradient option by clicking on the tab next to the bucket.
Step 5: Remember the tool properties thing I told you earlier, well open it now and set gradient options to this:
Step 6: Go crazy with the gradient. Draw line everywhere I don't care how long/short whatever. Just keep doing it a few times. (It will be different from everyone)
Step 7: Go to paint now and open you COP line file. Copy and paste your 1/4 insert and it should take exactly 1/2 of the first side of your insert. Here's what I have so far:
If you pasted over your COP line then its probably too long and I suggest you to just use the classic COP dimentions 19x108 pixels.
Step 8: Now select that corner and copy it. Go to Image->Flip/Rotate and flip it for both sides until you get something like this:
Step 9: Before you print it, work it out in your head. Will this work? Of course not!!! Exclamation So what do you do? Revise it by takeing a portion of it. Half of a full side is 53 so therefore you have to take 1/4 of your insert which is 118x26 pixels. You can take either the first 1/4 or second one, it doesn't matter (that sentence was messed up, if you did not understand it just get 1/4 of the insert selected and copied).
Here should what 1/4 of an insert look like:
Step 10: Now repeat what you did earlier, except you have some more flipping to do Laughing . For me I made things more interesting and made a mirror image to change the overall effect of the insert. And you should have this:
Step 11: Now we are missing some color for our black and white insert. Go back to PP and go to Image->Adjust->Replace color. A menu should pop up, so you can go ahead and play with the colors. (Always fun Razz )
Explaination: Unlike the first insert which does not wrap perfectly, it can be fixed by taking 1/4 of the insert, flip and re-paste it can fix about any insert that does not wrap up properly. That means if you previously made a bad insert, it can be fixed quite easily.
So that pretty much finishes this slipshod tutorial (http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=slipshod).
Hope this inspired you now go make an insert for MEEEEEE!!!! Razz
Sure, it's a bit more involved, but it makes a wackier insert.
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Date: Thu, Jan 24 2008 21:18:36
Meh, I had a dead hour in school to kill :P
I didn't know about his tutorial. It seems a lot more involved than my way, yet he creates the same effect. The only reason his insert ends up looking "wackier" according to you is cause he used different graphics. Graphics that happened to be selfmade. Graphics that happen to not look so good imo :P As I also wrote, I just took some totally random abstract piece of digital art and chose a part of it. You can get much more awesome inserts if you just put some work behind it, carefully choose what graphics you use, and throw in a little creativity in form of different flips and cuts in the insert. -
Date: Thu, Jan 24 2008 21:31:27
The "wackier" part had nothing to do with the content of the image, it was due to his flipping and repeating a smaller portion of the image over the entire area, rather than just half an image. You get a more obviously repeated pattern, a more "facetted" look and thus a more abstract image for the final piece.
To get a much better insert design, you should design the entire insert from scratch to repeat, rather than using a simple repeating texture process.
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Date: Thu, Jan 24 2008 22:31:51
You lost me. His insert uses just as many flips and repeatings horizontally as my presented way does. He just also flips the textures vertically (which wouldn't work as well on a MX insert seeing how the space on both sides of COP isn't as big). You are right in that you'd get a better insert if you design a repeating pattern from scratch (I assume you mean repeated patterns as in how Kam likes to make his inserts), but that would not only take much more time, but also be above the skill level in photoshop of most people around.
The only thing I present here is a way to create inserts. You can just as well use it to make a v2 insert, using different graphics, and also do vertical flips. No need to look at my feeble examples. I could only guess that many already knew how to do this in photoshop, but I doubted that many had thought of creating inserts this way and that the larger mass would be able to do something like this ownhandedly. Thus I found a tutorial would be in place. You say that what you feel is wackier with his image has nothing to do with the content, yet the content is the only thing that differs between our results.