Question from a Photoshop beginner

On 5 Oct 2006 07:46:07 -0700, "Sathyaish" found these unused words floating about:

Hello,

I am a programmer and have only a nodding acquantaince with Adobe Photoshop. I currently have a v6.0 installation on my computer. I want to learn to use this tool dexterously. From now on, you may expect me to pester this forum with a question or two at regular intervals. I am groping around the Web to lay my hands on every brief tutorial I can find about Photoshop.

I have a basic question for now. When you guys have an image in mind that you want to draw using Photoshop, where do you get the basic elements of the image from? For instance, if you had in mind that you wished to draw a shabbily dressed, lonesome geek carrying a grim look on his face scarred with the ink from his leaking fountain pen (suppose it was inferred and there was not to be a fountain pen in the picture), his face partly obscured and his unkept torso in clear disproportion with his gigantic spectacles, what would your starting point be?
I hope I have made my question clear.

I would start by acquiring a -=drawing=- program, not a photo manipulation program …

"Sathyaish" wrote in message

Hello,

I am a programmer and have only a nodding acquantaince with Adobe Photoshop. I currently have a v6.0 installation on my computer. I want to learn to use this tool dexterously. From now on, you may expect me to pester this forum with a question or two at regular intervals. I am groping around the Web to lay my hands on every brief tutorial I can find about Photoshop.

I have a basic question for now. When you guys have an image in mind that you want to draw using Photoshop, where do you get the basic elements of the image from? For instance, if you had in mind that you wished to draw a shabbily dressed, lonesome geek carrying a grim look on his face scarred with the ink from his leaking fountain pen (suppose it was inferred and there was not to be a fountain pen in the picture), his face partly obscured and his unkept torso in clear disproportion with his gigantic spectacles, what would your starting point be?
I hope I have made my question clear.

S,

Not being flippant, but my starting point would be Illustrator or CorelDraw, drawing in PS is not one of its strong points, but if you insist see http://www.smartphotoshop.com/drawing/drawing-a-construction -worker.htm found at http://www.pixel2life.com/search/4/drawing/1/

HTH
MH

Your question is as clear as mud, but it sounds as though you need a drawing program, and this group is for Photoshop Elements, which is mostly used to edit and embellish photos.

"Sathyaish" wrote in message

Hello,

I am a programmer and have only a nodding acquantaince with Adobe Photoshop. I currently have a v6.0 installation on my computer. I want to learn to use this tool dexterously.

I hope I have made my question clear.

"Rina" wrote in message

Your question is as clear as mud, but it sounds as though you need a drawing program, and this group is for Photoshop Elements, which is mostly used to edit and embellish photos.

Another string to your bow.
http://www.dummies.com/WileyCDA/DummiesArticle/id-3994,subca t-HARDWARE.html

MH

"Sathyaish" wrote in message

Hello,

I am a programmer and have only a nodding acquantaince with Adobe Photoshop. I currently have a v6.0 installation on my computer. I want to learn to use this tool dexterously.

I hope I have made my question clear.

In article ,
"Sathyaish" wrote:

I have a basic question for now. When you guys have an image in mind that you want to draw using Photoshop, where do you get the basic elements of the image from? For instance, if you had in mind that you wished to draw a shabbily dressed, lonesome geek carrying a grim look on his face scarred with the ink from his leaking fountain pen (suppose it was inferred and there was not to be a fountain pen in the picture), his face partly obscured and his unkept torso in clear disproportion with his gigantic spectacles, what would your starting point be?

My starting point would be a photograph.

You can create images like what you describe entirely in Photoshop, but it’s not easy, and it requires a nontrivial level of painting skill. Some Photoshop artists use a pressure-sensitive tablet and stylus to "paint" in Photoshop in a way similar to what you might do with a bursh; painting with a mouse is very difficult indeed.

—
Art, photography, shareware, polyamory, literature, kink: all at http://www.xeromag.com/franklin.html
Nanohazard, Geek shirts, and more: http://www.villaintees.com

Sathyaish wrote:

Hello,

I am a programmer and have only a nodding acquantaince with Adobe Photoshop. I currently have a v6.0 installation on my computer. I want to learn to use this tool dexterously. From now on, you may expect me to pester this forum with a question or two at regular intervals. I am groping around the Web to lay my hands on every brief tutorial I can find about Photoshop.

I have a basic question for now. When you guys have an image in mind that you want to draw using Photoshop, where do you get the basic elements of the image from? For instance, if you had in mind that you wished to draw a shabbily dressed, lonesome geek carrying a grim look on his face scarred with the ink from his leaking fountain pen (suppose it was inferred and there was not to be a fountain pen in the picture), his face partly obscured and his unkept torso in clear disproportion with his gigantic spectacles, what would your starting point be?
I hope I have made my question clear.

Really, your question is too vague to answer properly. Do you want a line drawing? A painting" A cartoon? A photo looking illustration?

I would draw it on paper first. Can you draw?

OR

You can composite this from photographs, changing proportions and applying various effects to the elements.

Might be a good idea to look at different illustrations, find one you like and try to do what that artist did. I have to tell you, as a professional illustrator with many years experience, it ain’t no walk in the park.

—
Comic book sketches and artwork:
http://www.sover.net/~hannigan/edjh.html
Comics art for sale:
http://www.sover.net/~hannigan/batsale.html

Rina wrote:

Your question is as clear as mud, but it sounds as though you need a drawing program, and this group is for Photoshop Elements, which is mostly used to edit and embellish photos.

Actually, no. This group is for Photoshop, not Elements.

"Sathyaish" wrote in message

Hello,

I am a programmer and have only a nodding acquantaince with Adobe Photoshop. I currently have a v6.0 installation on my computer. I want to learn to use this tool dexterously.

I hope I have made my question clear.

—
Comic book sketches and artwork:
http://www.sover.net/~hannigan/edjh.html
Comics art for sale:
http://www.sover.net/~hannigan/batsale.html

On Thu, 05 Oct 2006 21:53:18 -0400, edjh found these
unused words floating about:

Rina wrote:

Your question is as clear as mud, but it sounds as though you need a drawing program, and this group is for Photoshop Elements, which is mostly used to edit and embellish photos.

Actually, no. This group is for Photoshop, not Elements.

Actually yes … the OP crossposted – see the headers !

I hope I have made my question clear.

Check this. More for a sense of what’s possible than for how to accomplish it.

http://www.bertmonroy.com/fineart/text/fineart_damen.htm

BD wrote:

I hope I have made my question clear.

Check this. More for a sense of what’s possible than for how to accomplish it.

http://www.bertmonroy.com/fineart/text/fineart_damen.htm

If I could draw that good, I would make porn!

Larry Bud wrote:

BD wrote:

I hope I have made my question clear.

Check this. More for a sense of what’s possible than for how to accomplish it.

http://www.bertmonroy.com/fineart/text/fineart_damen.htm

If I could draw that good, I would make porn!

If you could draw that *well*, you wouldn’t need to. Bert is a bloody genius.

—
lsmft

"John McWilliams" wrote in message

Larry Bud wrote:

BD wrote:

I hope I have made my question clear.

Check this. More for a sense of what’s possible than for how to accomplish it.

http://www.bertmonroy.com/fineart/text/fineart_damen.htm

If I could draw that good, I would make porn!

If you could draw that *well*, you wouldn’t need to. Bert is a bloody genius.

a triumph of technique over beauty
enjoyed the technical discussion more than the actual picture I thought it was boring

"KatWoman" wrote in
news:0dXWg.57587$:

"John McWilliams" wrote in message

Larry Bud wrote:

BD wrote:

I hope I have made my question clear.

Check this. More for a sense of what’s possible than for how to accomplish it.

http://www.bertmonroy.com/fineart/text/fineart_damen.htm

If I could draw that good, I would make porn!

If you could draw that *well*, you wouldn’t need to. Bert is a bloody genius.

a triumph of technique over beauty
enjoyed the technical discussion more than the actual picture I thought it was boring

I think you would realy have to see it full size to appreciate it’s constructional beauty but what about playing with the psd file and examining how Bert put it all togeather, his attention to detail, he always goes that extra last 10%

—
———————————————————— ———— Learning is not attained by chance, it must be sought for with ardor and attended to with diligence.
———————————————————— ————

I would suggest if you want to use Photoshop very well, then you either take some classes or find some good books. Oh yeah… natural talent totally helps.

In article ,
says…

Hello,

I am a programmer and have only a nodding acquantaince with Adobe Photoshop. I currently have a v6.0 installation on my computer. I want to learn to use this tool dexterously. From now on, you may expect me to pester this forum with a question or two at regular intervals. I am groping around the Web to lay my hands on every brief tutorial I can find about Photoshop.

I have a basic question for now. When you guys have an image in mind that you want to draw using Photoshop, where do you get the basic elements of the image from? For instance, if you had in mind that you wished to draw a shabbily dressed, lonesome geek carrying a grim look on his face scarred with the ink from his leaking fountain pen (suppose it was inferred and there was not to be a fountain pen in the picture), his face partly obscured and his unkept torso in clear disproportion with his gigantic spectacles, what would your starting point be?
I hope I have made my question clear.

Aside from the suggestions that the "drawing" be done in AI, or similar, I’d take a different course and start with a photograph of the person. Much can be then done in PS to accentuate the ink-stain, maybe resize the glasses, etc. From the sound of the image, I’d shoot with a WA lens from above and fairly close to the subject’s face. Of course, this comes from being a photographer first, and a computer graphics person second.

Hunt

The first thing that you should know is that Photoshop is a photo editing program and NOT a graphics program. If you want to do graphics you should be using the correct program. Adobe Illustrator is meant for doing graphics. Now, if you have a photograph of a lonesome geek with a leaking fountain pen you could remove the fountain pen and the ink stain from the picture with photoshop. I should point out that you are also in the Photoshop Elements newsgroup and not the Photoshop newsgroup.

—
Charley

"Sathyaish" wrote in message

Hello,

I am a programmer and have only a nodding acquantaince with Adobe Photoshop. I currently have a v6.0 installation on my computer. I want to learn to use this tool dexterously. From now on, you may expect me to pester this forum with a question or two at regular intervals. I am groping around the Web to lay my hands on every brief tutorial I can find about Photoshop.

I have a basic question for now. When you guys have an image in mind that you want to draw using Photoshop, where do you get the basic elements of the image from? For instance, if you had in mind that you wished to draw a shabbily dressed, lonesome geek carrying a grim look on his face scarred with the ink from his leaking fountain pen (suppose it was inferred and there was not to be a fountain pen in the picture), his face partly obscured and his unkept torso in clear disproportion with his gigantic spectacles, what would your starting point be?
I hope I have made my question clear.

On Wed, 31 Jan 2007 11:57:31 -0500, "Charley" wrote:

The first thing that you should know is that Photoshop is a photo editing program and NOT a graphics program. If you want to do graphics you should be using the correct program. Adobe Illustrator is meant for doing graphics. Now, if you have a photograph of a lonesome geek with a leaking fountain pen you could remove the fountain pen and the ink stain from the picture with photoshop. I should point out that you are also in the Photoshop Elements newsgroup and not the Photoshop newsgroup.

The post is cross-posted to:

adobe.photoshop.windows

comp.graphics.apps.photoshop

alt.graphics.photoshop

adobe.photoshop.elements

If you think that Photoshop is limited to photo editing, you are mistaken. Adobe Illustrator is a vector-based program, but Photoshop is also a "graphics" program.

—

Tony Cooper
Orlando, FL

Charley wrote:

The first thing that you should know is that Photoshop is a photo editing program and NOT a graphics program. If you want to do graphics you should be using the correct program. Adobe Illustrator is meant for doing graphics. Now, if you have a photograph of a lonesome geek with a leaking fountain pen you could remove the fountain pen and the ink stain from the picture with photoshop. I should point out that you are also in the Photoshop Elements newsgroup and not the Photoshop newsgroup.

Does a digital photograph not qualify as *computer graphics* these days?

I think you ned to read up on what the words "computer graphics" actually means, and learn a bit about the various formats available.

Whatever way you look at it, Photoshop is still a graphics package. It’s predominantly a raster graphics application whereas Illustrator is a vector graphics application.
This definition simply refers to how the computer draws and records the images on-screen.

A raster image, is one which is made up of a grid of pixels. Each pixel has its own information attached containing the following.
X coordinate
Y coordinate
colour
brightness
This makes for quite a large file size which doesn’t scale up beyond 100% very well, but the trade-off is that you end up with a photorealistic image. Common raster formats include BMP, JPG, and GIF.

A vecotor image is one which is made up of geometric shapes, lines, fills and coordinates.
Instead of mapping the entire image into a pixel by pixel grid and storing data on every single pixel, the image is instead broken up into a grid system, like graph paper and lines are drawn on it with X/Y coordinates describing the start and end points only.
This results in a much smaller file size which scales up and down very well, but the trade-off is that you tend not to get a very photorealistic image. Common vector formats include CDR, WMF, and AI.

Both of these are perfectly valid graphics formats, and therefore any application which can handle either format can justifiably be called a graphics application.
Photoshop however, is doubly justified in being called a graphics application, as it can handle both raster and vector formats within the same image.

Of course, there is a hybrid type of graphics application which utilises both vector and raster images, side my side in a much more powerfull way than Photoshop could ever hope to.
These are 3D rendering applications like Lightwave or 3D Studio Max. These use special 3 dimensional versions of vector graphics called "wireframes" to construct a model of an object, then a rasterised image is draped over it like the fabric on a tent frame. This can at times create a very realistic 3D version of an image. A technique used in the special effects industry, and regularly seen in Sci-Fi and SFX movies and advertisements.
Scenes which utilise this technology are regularly referred to by industry professionals as Computer Graphics Sequences.

So if those sort of applications get referred to as graphics applications, I think it’s safe to say that Photoshop is also a graphics application.

Fat Sam wrote:

Charley wrote:

The first thing that you should know is that Photoshop is a photo editing program and NOT a graphics program. If you want to do graphics you should be using the correct program. Adobe Illustrator is meant for doing graphics.

<< Snipped bits out >>

So if those sort of applications get referred to as graphics applications, I think it’s safe to say that Photoshop is also a graphics application.

An awful lot of words to make a somewhat pedantic point. Charley is right.

—
John McWilliams

John McWilliams wrote:

Fat Sam wrote:

Charley wrote:

The first thing that you should know is that Photoshop is a photo editing program and NOT a graphics program. If you want to do graphics you should be using the correct program. Adobe Illustrator is meant for doing graphics.

<< Snipped bits out >>

So if those sort of applications get referred to as graphics applications, I think it’s safe to say that Photoshop is also a graphics application.

An awful lot of words to make a somewhat pedantic point. Charley is right.

No he’s not. You have spectacularly missed the point.

Charley said "Adobe Illustrator is meant for doing graphics." Not correct.
Adobe illustrator is meant for doing VECTOR graphics

Charley also said "Photoshop is a photo editing program and NOT a graphics program"
Not correct.
Photoshop is a RASTER graphics application.

They are both valid forms of computer graphics.
To label Photoshop simply as a photo-editing tool is to do it an injustice. It is so much more than just a photo-editing tool. It’s applications and uses are wide ranging across a selection of industries. Not just the world of photography.

Charley wrote:

The first thing that you should know is that Photoshop is a photo editing program and NOT a graphics program. If you want to do graphics you should be using the correct program. Adobe Illustrator is meant for doing graphics. Now, if you have a photograph of a lonesome geek with a leaking fountain pen you could remove the fountain pen and the ink stain from the picture with photoshop. I should point out that you are also in the Photoshop Elements newsgroup and not the Photoshop newsgroup.

I’m coming to this very late but can’t resist throwing my 2 cents worth in anyway.

If one can’t draw "a shabbily dressed, lonesome geek carrying a grim look on his face scarred with the ink from his leaking fountain pen, his face partly obscured and his unkept torso in clear disproportion with his gigantic spectacles" with a pencil then one should learn to do that before trying to do it with Photoshop.

Further, if one’s interest is artistic drawing of that kind rather than photo editing, then Corel Painter (which as far as I know has no equivalent from any other source–how Adobe managed to let that one slip past them is a mystery to me) is the right tool to learn, and one should obtain a good graphics tablet such as the Wacom Intuos (or if one has bucks a Cintiq) ASAP. Of course for the price of all that one could buy a lot of pencils and paper.

"Sathyaish" wrote in message

Hello,

I am a programmer and have only a nodding acquantaince with Adobe Photoshop. I currently have a v6.0 installation on my computer. I want to learn to use this tool dexterously. From now on, you may expect me to pester this forum with a question or two at regular intervals. I am groping around the Web to lay my hands on every brief tutorial I can find about Photoshop.

I have a basic question for now. When you guys have an image in mind that you want to draw using Photoshop, where do you get the basic elements of the image from? For instance, if you had in mind that you wished to draw a shabbily dressed, lonesome geek carrying a grim look on his face scarred with the ink from his leaking fountain pen (suppose it was inferred and there was not to be a fountain pen in the picture), his face partly obscured and his unkept torso in clear disproportion with his gigantic spectacles, what would your starting point be?

I hope I have made my question clear.

—
—
–John
to email, dial "usenet" and validate
(was jclarke at eye bee em dot net)