Helloooo photomanipulators!
After a bit of ado, we are happy to introduce some new challenges that we hope will inspire some more creativity in our community as well as encourage ALL of us (ourselves included) to learn some new skills and expand our repertoire!
For these challenges, we will require the use of one piece of stock that, while lovely and very useful, might typically be considered "overused," and one new skill or technique.
We know there are a lot of challenges out there already, but here are the goals for ours:
To address concerns of "copying" and "lack of creativity" by challenging people to think more creatively about their art,
To help members of our community learn more and expand their skills by challenging them to learn new techniques, and
To maintain the focus of our community on art, growth, and support.
Let's get started!
Here are the rules of our challenge:
You must use the stock piece we provide. For this challenge, here is the stock image:
For the above stock image, you may NOT use it as your main background. It can be anything else.
You also must use the PEN TOOL to cut out at least one piece of stock. You can read about the Pen Tool and learn how to use it here:
Creative Challenge 1: The Pen ToolWhat is this?
I may be an experienced photomanipulator, but I still have a lot to learn. So, I am issuing this Creativity Challenge. Learn with me. Each week (or however often I am able) we will talk about a different topic relevant to photomanipulation. We will start with basic fundamentals and move to more advanced techniques. I encourage you to join and participate; the result will be a stronger PM community.
Confessions of a Stubborn Photomanipulator
Hi, I'm Jade, and I like to do things my own way.
For at least 10 years I have cut out my stock photos the same way: by using the polygonal lasso tool. I have gotten pretty good at it, and to be honest, it DOES have its uses. It is great with straight lines, messily "chopping" something out, clean 90 degree angles, etc. (I know, some of you would even argue that point. It doesn't really matter.) The point is, the lasso tools do NOT do curvature very well.
People have been telling me this for YEARS, but I still did it my way. I figured
We realize we are asking you for something we can't prove you did or didn't do. This will have to be on your honor, but really you are cheating yourself if you do not try. You may use any other stock image, resource, or element
AS LONG AS IT IS FROM A LEGITIMATE SOURCE (e.g. a source from which you have permission to use the work)..
You must credit stock providers with DIRECT LINKS to the resources you used (including the stock image above).
If you're using PURCHASED resources, please at least say WHERE you got them, even if you don't want to give a direct link. Please mention in your artist's comments that the deviation is created for Creativity Challenge #1 hosted by ^
Aeirmid and ~
CatherineCruz.
To enter the challenge, leave a link to your deviation ON THIS JOURNAL. I will add it into a Favorites Collection for judging. DEADLINEWe will close this challenge at 11:59 PM Eastern Daylight Time (New York Time) on Saturday, September 22nd. Any entries after that time will be ignored.
Find out what time this is for you here!WINNERS AND PRIZESThere will be one winner. These challenges aren't about prizes; we hope you will join simply for the challenge. I will feature the winners in my journal and in our newsletter, and ~
CatherineCruz will also feature the winners. HOWEVER, I am willing to enter winners for a few challenges at a time (intermittently) into a random drawing for a couple hundred points or so if people would like to see that. Still, you should not enter with the expectation of winning something.
JUDGES
Any other questions? Please feel free to leave a comment below or note either of us.
Thanks, and happy creating!
Jade & Catherine
Sta.sh
~iAmoret asked, "How do you get that dark, dreary, foggy effect that makes it look like it's all from the same image, like ~Dash-th3me did in 'Dead Marshes'?
So, the “dark” photomanipulation category is confusing many people because it can feature anything from beautiful, sorrowful women in l
Thank you so much...learned a couple of tricks using the pen tool I didn't know existed.
In this case I used it to cut out the girl and the bird.
Here you go: [link]
a layer mask to it. Be sure you are on that mask when you do the
following. You choose the pen tool and select a part you want to get
rid of. You can see it forms a path. Inside that path you right click
and then choose "fill path". You then set it to black (I always set it
with anti-alias checked and feather radius 1 px) and tadaa... you see
that part is gone now. After that you right click there again and choose
"delete path". That way you make all the parts you don't need black on
that mask. If you accidently did a place you wanted to keep, you do
exactly the same but instead of choosing black, you will choose white.
Black = delete and white = keep (for the ones that didn't know that yet)
I'm not good at explaining, but try it out... you'll love this way!
you get the hang of it, you can't do without
them anymore. xx