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Wendy, I can’t think of any off hand that I have seen but if you have a cork notice board you could take a picture of it, download it and then work with the real thing.
Use this texture as pattern (Edit / Define Pattern), then use the paint bucket and fill an entire empty document. Else, save the pattern in a seperate pattern set and send it over to Wendy.
Chuck, to save as a texture change it to greyscale and then up the contrast and save as a psd file. When you want to use it go to filter>texture>load texture. You can send it to Wendy as well 😉 Where did you find the action ? I don’t see it in the defaults.
Wendy you can make a very convincing cork bulletin board texture without any actions or plug-ins. I was working on a 72 ppi when I did this, so if your image has a higher resolution, play with the sliders in the filters to scale it better.
1. Fill background with a warm brown (I used dark yellow orange from the Swatch palette)
2. Filters-> Noise-> Add Noise. About 20%, check Gaussian and Monochromatic.
3. Filter-> Brush Strokes-> Spatter. Spray radius about 1 to 2. Play with the Smoothness slider until you get the effect you want.
Interesting! I used Photoshop 7 to save the Corkboard pattern group (with one pattern), and it wound up in the Photoshop Elements 2 pattern file folder. Oh, well.
Wendy, it’s available now if you want it; please e-mail me at if you’d like me to send it to you. Also, if you’d prefer to make your own, I can dissect the action and list the steps for you; they appear to be all Element-ary…
Wendy, I made a quick sample corkboard so you can see the results of the steps I used in my previous post. I actually found a push pin in Custom Shapes.
Thanks guys and you’re welcome. I did go ahead and send it in for this week’s challenge. The little kid’s drawing was made on another layer. I used that crumpled paper effect someone posted awhile back — that’s a very cool trick too! The crayon drawing was done with a set of brushes by Nagel I downloaded from Adobe Studio Exchange. It’s easy to draw and write kid-style with a mouse. 🙂
Edit: Had a little link trouble, 😉 should be fixed now. I also forgot to say that most of the One-Click Wow 7 stuff works in PSE2. Both books have CD’s that are loaded with Patterns, Layer Styles, etc.
Barb, re One-Click Wow….are they actually patterns or layer styles? I’m going back to my Wow discs now to see if I can find them. I have Organic Styles, but they don’t have names, only numbers…
There are a bunch of other things besides what came with this PSE2. Look through the books over at Amazon, it’ll show you pretty much what comes with them. Hope your library has the books too, I always look there first, running out of book money and space. 😉
Chuck, OK, that’s why it didn’t appear. There is something new in the PSE2 Wow book called Wow PSE2-Media Brushes which allows you to turn an existing photo into a painting. I haven’t tried it yet, it’s on my things to do list this week, I’ll let you know how it goes when I get to it. Other than that, the book looks similar to the ones you already have, you can check your library too if you want to have a look. 🙂 I just look up the author or book title online and request it be sent to the nearest branch, it’s great.
Thanks Barbara…I will try my local library but being that I live in a rural area…I have a sinking feeling that I’ll end up at a bookstore. This is bad on the checkbook since I always end up with a handfull of books.
I was just having fun… seemed like carrots was the odd entry on the list of chips and beer!
I’ve used my Graphire2 to capture handwriting, and have been disappointed. I just can’t seem to go slow enough for the cursor to keep up with the stylus, so end up with jagged, jerky writing.
Might be the settings on the Graphire – it could be worth playing with them to see if you can rejig the speed. It’s possible to write quite well with the graphire – well enough to do (rough) calligraphic alphabets…
Try checking the ‘more options’ on the brush you are using, and take the spacing down to minimum. The default is 25% and when changing brushes it seems to go back to that.
Terri, I also live in an area where the local library has fewer books than I do. Ask for inter-library loan. It’s amazing what they can get for you if you give them enough info. Go to amazon or someplace and get the ISBN and I bet your library can track down a copy for you.
Most of the time, I’m working from my laptop (P3/500). I accept that machine performance could be responsible for the issue.
Susan,
I took a (short) class in calligraphy eons ago, so barely qualify as a novice – but for me, the speed with which I draw characters varies greatly between cursive and calligraphy. It’s my faster, normal handwriting speed which is giving me fits. I’ll have to look more deeply into the tablet’s control panel to see if I can rev it up.
Paul,
I had never looked into the brush spacing, and found it at 25%, as you predicted. I set it to 1%, but didn’t notice a change. After playing with the control at upper settings, I see what it does — so I suspect this option is not the source of the trouble.
Thanks, everyone, for the ideas. Although my strongest suspicion is that my PC’s processor speed is responsible for the latency between the stylus and the cursor, I’ll make sure all of the software settings are as optimized as possible.
I CAN get decent results if I limit my writing speed, but because that is unnatural to my hand, I malform characters. If I write at my normal speed, round characters are faceted. For instance, if I draw a circle at my normal handwriting speed, it comes out as a polygon, with around 12 or 14 sides.
Thats weird Byron! I can write and draw at normal speed on my tablet – the only problem I have is that the slightly slick surface tends to make my control slightly worse – but sitting a sheet of paper over the tablet suface fixes that. Have you got the latest driver for the tablet? I know there was a new one out for the Mac recently. I’ve also had my tablet driver or preferences (don’t know which) get corrupted – resulting in the pen/brush drawing an inch away from the cursor on the screen – which was most peculiar! Redownloading and reinstalling the driver fixed that one. I take it you don’t have the same problem with fast mousing?
And thank you all for the help … I am amazed at just how much you have all contributed whilst I have been enjoying our Christmas Eve Dinner.
Chuck I have sent you an E Mail and Patti I have copied all the stages down and will give it a try …
In the meantime I used the gold sprinkles and it doesn’t look to bad … as the challenge is nearing its close I will send it as it is and play around later.
I checked the Wacom site and found that they have posted a new driver for the Graphire2/3 models…. 4.78-6, where I was running 4.77-11.
So I downloaded and installed it.
WOW – they have really SIMPLIFIED the interface. Gone are the in-depth controls for fine-tuning pressure levels, along with many of the other advanced controls.
I do not see any performance benefits to the new driver, so am contemplating rolling back to the earlier driver to gain back the pressure settings.
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