Playing about with Photoshop

[PuzzledMoose]

Perhaps those of you who use Photoshop know this already but I just discovered something while I was playing about this afternoon ..

The first pic below is a photo from the net converted to greyscale and with the contrast increased a little..

The second one is the same pic with the Photocopy filter applied ..

The third one is the picture then converted to a bitmap (Using 50% threshold)

Notice what a lot of "cleaning up" that does especially the sky area ... as well as reducing the picture to pure black and white....

[Gill]

Are you telling us that you got from the original photo to the cleaned up representation in just 3 steps, Ian ? If that's the case, I'm going to have to get myself a copy of Photoshop!

Gill

[PuzzledMoose]

Are you telling us that you got from the original photo to the cleaned up representation in just 3 steps, Ian ? If that's the case, I'm going to have to get myself a copy of Photoshop!

Gill

Yes 3 steps - well 4 if you count increasing the contrast a little. There was no attempt to make a pattern or to get rid of floaters - though that doesn't actually look as if it would be too difficult. It isn't my pic so there would be copyright issues. Like I said I was just playing ..

[Greenfield_Bob]

Ian, which Photoshop are you using?
I Photoshop Elements 5.0 is that about the same thing?

Bob

[PuzzledMoose]

This is Photoshop CS but I think elements has the same feature, Bob. Not sure since it's a couple of years since I used the Elements version.

[Jim8Mad]

I already do the first two steps you mentioned with the few patterns I have done. The next step for me is to spend the next hour or so cleaning up all the little stuff that I don't want in the pattern. Now that you showed us a better way you are going to save me a lot of time and effort. Thanks for the great tip Ian!

[MikeDingas]

Here's my entry done with Inkscape. I haven't figured out how to save in a format like JPEG. I only just started toying with the program but it looks promising for a freebee.

[Gill]

Hi Mike

I usually take the File - Export Bitmap route. Once it's in bitmap format, you can open it up in the Gimp and convert it into a variety of formats. Mind, I'm a novice with Inkscape so there may be a better way.

The most intriguing feature on Inkscape I've found so far is the Path - Trace Bitmap feature. Have a play and see what you think. Perhaps we could start a new thread on Playing with the Gimp rather than continuing to take Ian's thread about Photoshop further off topic .

Gill

[PuzzledMoose]

Perhaps we could start a new thread on Playing with the Gimp rather than continuing to take Ian's thread about Photoshop further off topic .

Gill

Haven't started a new thread, but if you you want to split it feel free, Gill ...

I downloaded the GIMP (v2.2)this morning and was just seeing if I could replicate the same effect that I got with Photoshop. Results are pretty similar. GIMP looks even more impressive than the last time I looked at it a couple of years ago. The toolbox is very similar to Photoshop (the crop tool being one that is different in appearance) and the functions/filters I most often use in PS are all there.

Step 1 Convert to Greyscale - Image>Mode>Greyscale
Step2 Increase contrast a little - Tools>Colour Tools>Brightness/Contrast(First Pic)
Step3 use Photocopy Filter - Filters>Artistic>Photocopy(Second pic)
NB at this point I played about with the slider bars a little without really knowing what I was doing ...
Step4 Convert to bitmap - Image>Mode>Indexed (on the options choose "Use Black and white 1 bit palette" and make dithering "None") I then converted it back to greyscale to be able to save it as a jpeg.(3rd pic)

Results attached ...

[DukeNukem]

wow that really looks good, I just down loaded photo shop pro not to sure how the heck it work though but I'm working on it lol.

Jerry

[miamw]

Wow, it looks great! I'll have to downloan GIMP and give it a try. I use Photoshop now and have put off GIMP because of my fear of having to learn yet another program. It looks like it may be worth it.

[JimSawyer]

Duke,
I got photoshop awhile ago and could never figure much of it out. Then I found a book in Barnes and Noble on sale for $2. It was a $10 book. Since then I've started to understand the program a lot more. It's a very powerful program. Once you learn how to use layers it gets pretty cool from there. I got some great advice from Pop on how to get a pattern out of it. I've got a good one going of a picture of my niece when she was stationed in the middle east. I'll post when I finally do the piece.

[MikeDingas]

Inkscape alternative to Photoshop...

Finally figured out what I was doing wrong while saving file as bitmap. So I can now post a quick view pattern rather than PDF.

This pattern was made using the Trace function with little effort other than tweaking the input parameters. Note that I've made no effort to resolve floaters.

[Steviegwood]

Pigeon Forge, Tennessee

Hi Ian, I found the original and opened it in GIMP. On the toolbar at the top went to filters and clicked scrolled down to photocopy clicked that. In the preview window that came up I ajusted the following mask radius to 50.sharpness to 1.000, pencentage black to 1.000, percentage white .892 . Clicked ok and saved as jpeg. This is the result from Gimp. Steve