#convert color image to black and white

[poofroom]

Here are some painting tips, as promised. I hope they will help beginner artists!

Composition

Position of characters on the sheet

Choose the location of your character to be beneficial to the appearance of the art in general, you can accentuate the important places where the viewer should look first by using perspective and composition.

Tone sketch

Set the lights based on references, but adjust to your own, favourable lighting.

Contrasts come in many forms. Contrast in color (warm and cold), values (dark and light), shapes soft and hard, straight and curve, etc.

Less is better. Work on the details of the most important part of your work while cutting down everything else. If you do strong detail in one place, don't forget to add looser detail in another so the viewer's eye can rest. For example: If you are detailing a portrait, don't detail the background as much. Next to a place of high detail, there should be a place of low detail so that the picture does not look overloaded.

All in all, you can twist and break perspective, anatomy and shapes to convey your idea better. No rules are made of steel, they should support your imagination, not restrict it

Anatomy

Break down objects into simple shapes to arrange them in space.

Check references! plasticity comes first, then structure (muscles are important, but proportions and line of movement come first).

Take a photo of yourself, you will be able to understand how to perform your pose naturally. Color/light.

Light is part of the composition, put it in a way that highlights the important things. Air perspective

General rules of composition. From the general to the particular, first prepare the general scene, correctly place contrasts and accents, make everything important in contrast, and take the unimportant into an aerial perspective. (aerial perspective, or atmospheric perspective, refers to the technique of creating an illusion of depth by depicting distant objects as paler, less detailed, and usually bluer than near objects.)

When all the points are ready we can start working out the details.

When all the details are finished again it's back to the overall picture, looking at it from a distance. Check if the accents you wanted to draw attention to are working. They should have the highest contrast. Check if the contrast is not created by objects on the edges, where you don't want the viewer to pay attention. For example, if you are painting a portrait then the focus should be on the face and not on the details of the clothes or details in the background. (You can always convert the image to black and white and check the contrast)

Save the stages of your work to check against the initial idea and see what things have changed for better or worse!

[natureintheory]

How to make a multi-colored, multi-tip scatter brush in Clip Studio Paint — correctly

They made it annoyingly specific in CSP and I keep forgetting every time. So this is a note-to-self + whoever else needs it:

↓

What we don't want:

1. When a brush tip is created from black / white on a regular RBG layer, it will only paint in black / white.

It will only use the selected color if Color Mixing is checked — bad if you wanted an opaque brush, because this makes the brush tips transparent when they overlay one another, as in the orange leaf clumps ↓

Troubleshooting: If the brush paints in grey / B&W as shown in the top row of leaves, check the Blending Mode in brush settings. Here, it was set to Brightness instead of Normal.

↓

The correct way:

https://tips.clip-studio.com/en-us/articles/679 CTRL + F → [2] A: How to create brush tip images that allow for freely changeable colors

↓

1. MOST IMPORTANT! Draw your brush tip on (or convert to) a Gray or Monochrome layer.

(Usually doesn't matter, but if your brush has gradients etc. choose Gray. It also helps to NAME and TAG it so you can find it.)

2. Edit → Register Material (J) → Image... → Check "Use for brush tip shape" on.

3. Brush settings → Brush tip → Add brush tip shape

(Here, I'm adding it to a pre-made brush that already has some color & size settings. Note that the brush stroke is displaying in color — GOOD! If the layer wasn't properly made B&W, the brush tip will show in black & the stroke will display in black.)

4. Should look like this. Can add more tips, test the brush settings you like & Save all settings as default.

[userpeggycarter]

hi! someone requested me to do a tutorial based on this gifset!

this tutorial requires an intermediate knowledge of gifmaking. i won’t teach you how to do gifs from scratch, there are other tutorials for that out there.

[tutorial under the cut]

THE BASICS

AN INTRODUCTION

first off, the gifset in question is based on this gifset by @/eddiediaaz and i got permission from them to explain the process. i won’t be sharing the template because it’s a near replica of theirs (that isn’t shared to the public) and i don’t feel comfortable doing so, but you can recreate it by yourself just like i did!

also, ESL, so please pardon any mistakes.

THE FONT

Circular ST (Medium & Black). download it here & here.

CLIPPING MASKS

clipping masks are the way i put images and gifs inside of shapes. i used that method in the first and second gif of the Spotify gifset as you can see here. what does a clipping mask do? basically, it links two or more layers together in a way it follows the “shape” of your base layer. ie, everything that is shown follows the “shape” of your main layer and nothing more. your base layer can be anything: a shape, an image, a gif, a text, an adjustment layer, really everything. let’s see an example:

CLIPPING MASKS & SHAPES

the original image (Gun 'n' Roses logo) is intact, as in, it’s not cut like a circle, something that cannot be undone. instead, everything outside the limits of the blue circle is just hidden. if i delete the base layer (the circle layer), the original image will appear as it originally is, as an rectangle. talking about layers, let’s see my layers panel (some things are in Portuguese, but i think you can understand):

notice the little arrow pointing downwards to the “circle” layer. that is the clipping mask symbol. the base layer always needs to be below what is being clipped. if the base layer is deleted, the chain is broken and every layer clipped will now act independently and have its original shape. you can have as many clipped layers as you want. you can also have multiple chains going on in a .psd, each one with its own base layer. to clip a layer, you just need to press ctrl+alt+G or cmd+option+G while having the layer you want to clip selected (NOT your base layer). or, you can go to LAYER > CREATE CLIPPING MASK.

CLIPPING MASKS & TEXT

let’s see the same example, but with text instead:

A TIP

because adjustment layers are clippable, you can completely gif by using clipping masks. this is very useful when you have more than one gif inside a canvas and don’t want an adjustment layer to affect everything besides a certain layer/element.

let’s take my first gif of the Spotify gifset as an example.

the circle is the base layer. the “Carol smiling” layer is my gif converted to a smart filter. above that “Carol smiling” layer, there is a black and white gradient map and two color fills of white so i can achieve the coloring you see. all those layers are clipping onto the circle layer, making my now b&w gif have the shape of a small circle as well. those layers are in a folder in the .psd of my first gif, so i don’t have multiple files sitting on my PC to assemble just one gif. i could have giffed that small gif separately and pasted it onto my canvas as well, but i like to do this way so i can adjust everything i want in real time instead of redoing a gif over and over every time i want to change something.

HOW TO MAKE EACH GIF

all gifs are 540x540px.

THE FIRST GIF

the first gif has 6 elements. the elements are: a big gif serving as a background (a close-up of Carol), a smaller gif inside a circle (a b&w gif of Carol smiling) as a profile picture and four static images for the featured artists. i giffed as i normally do (loaded screencaps, resized the gif, sharpened the gif, etc) for my background gif. to achieve the coloring, i’ve added a gradient map (layer > new adjustment layer > gradient map) purple to pink. to the profile picture, i made a 160x160px circle in the top left corner. the color of it doesn’t matter. the next step is a matter of taste: i giffed the smaller gif in the same .psd thanks to clipping masks that i explained earlier, but you can do it in a separate canvas too. for the featured artists, i made four circles with 98x98px each. for the images, i had to check Spotify for their selected PFPs. after that, i googled “[band/artist] spotify” to find the images. the PFP of bands and artists in the Spotify app are displayed in black and white, so you might have to make them b&w if you happen to find them only in color. to make the artists PFPs pop a bit more, i transformed them into smart filters and added a bit of sharpening to them (intensity 10 x radius 10). you can adjust the colors and the brightness if you want, too. the sizes of the texts in the gif are: 58px (username), 20px (top artists of the month), 15px (name of the artists), 12px (only visible to you + show all + profile) and 11px (following and follower numbers).

SECOND GIF

for the chart, i created a black rectangle (490x308px) that i set its blending mode to lighten (thus making it transparent) and i added an internal white stroke. i added the text and the little squares next to the top 6 numbers. the font sizes are: 17px (top tracks this month), 11px (only visible to you), 14px (song title, show all, top 6 numbers), 13px (artist/band, album title, length of the song). i added the album covers — that i made b&w — by clipping images onto 32x32px squares. for the coloring, i added a gradient map (dark purple > light purple).

THIRD GIF

there are three types of playlists in this gif: a Spotify original playlist, a playlist made by a user and a Mix. you don’t have to follow this formula if you don’t want to, but in the case you do, here’s how i did it: browse Spotify for an original playlist of theirs. chances are, if you google the playlist’s name, you can find its cover on Google Images. at least, i found the “All Out 80s” cover that i used in my gifset. you can also create your own. for the user playlist, just pick four songs and find their (album) covers, also on Google. create a square canvas on Photoshop and make four squares, each in one quadrant of the canvas. paste your images onto your canvas and clip the images to each square. then, add a gradient map (black + whatever color you want) to all those images and title your playlist (font size: ). save that collage as a PNG and load to your gif canvas or merge all the layers+transform into a smart filter and drag the smart filter layer onto your gif canvas. now, the trickiest one. while you can invent your own Mix, i wanted to use a real one, but i had no idea on how to find them. thanks to reddit, i discovered that, if you search “made for you” on Spotify, you will find their Mixes! some of them are very whacky and specific! i just picked the Mix that made the most sense for Carol from that (gigantic) list. before doing the next step, i would advise you to google the name of the Mix you picked to see if you are able to find the cover of it with good quality. i wasn’t able to find mine (Karaoke  Mix), so i just screenshotted my Spotify app, pasted that screenshot into Photoshop and cut the Mix cover and pasted that onto my canvas. the quality wasn’t great, so i transformed the cover into a smart filter, added a bit of gaussian blur and then sharpened it (intensity 10 x radius 10). the color wasn’t what i wanted either, so i used Hue/Saturation to change the hue. because the original image for the Mix was smaller than i wanted and i stretched it to make it bigger, the quality of the text and the Spotify logo was botched. i painted over the Mix cover and created a text with the font i linked earlier to replace its now pixelated title. i also painted over the little Spotify logo, found a logo in the internet and pasted over the Mix cover about the same size of the original logo. to achieve the “3D effect” of the gif, i made my b&w gif, the base. then, i duplicated all layers and added a gradient map (black > pink) and merged all the layers of that duplicate. i made a second replica of my gif, now with a different gradient map (black > blue). i set both replicas to the ligthen blending mode. you will notice that the replicas will "disappear" and only the original b&w gif will remain. if you move the replicas a bit, that colored border will appear. this doesn't work much in very bright gifs without a lot of dark areas, btw.

FOURTH GIF

this gif used an altered (by me) version of this template. (i changed the fonts to match the rest of the gifset, too.) for the color text effect, you will have to gif with the timeline bar. take your gif’s length and do the math to find how many frames are ⅓ of it. take your lyrics’ layer and cut it into three equal parts or close to it by using the scissors icon in the timeline panel. in each third, change the color of just one line, line by line. when you play your gif, the colors of the lyrics will change like in Karaoke. you can do the same thing with frames iirc, though. i explained the timeline method because that’s the one i used in this gifset and use in general gif making. for the coloring, i added a gradient map. to make the colors pop a bit more, i add two gradient maps: the first one is in black and white, the other is in color. that adds depth to the blacks and darker colors of the gif.

FIFTH GIF

like in the Top Playlists gif, i wanted for my Daylist to be real as well. to achieve that, i listened to my Carol Danvers companion playlist (that you can listen here) for a long time until my Daylist refreshed itself. (Daylists refresh in certain times of the day — don't worry, Spotify will tell you when.) then, i just copied what it told me — the title and the genres i listened to generate such a Daylist, plus the genres i should check it out. you can invent your own Daylist if you want, but because it is generated by AI, i find very difficult to mimic its crazy titles, but you can try! you can also search in the web for other people’s Daylists if you want, but usually people don’t tell you what they listened to to get those playlists and nor what was recommended for them to listen to and i, at least, find that information important for the gifset. be aware that Daylists aren't available for every country yet (like in mine), but i found a way to work around that. the browser Opera GX offers a free "VPN" — not exactly a VPN, but it works close enough — so you can set your location to the US and listen to in-browser Spotify. i recommend not log into Tumblr while using Opera's VPN as there is a myth (that could easily be true!) that Tumblr terminates people's accounts that use a VPN. font sizes: 43px (daylist title), 13px (text), 12px ("daylist" & "made for"). for the flare effect, i searched for flare overlays on YouTube and downloaded one of those videos with 4K Video Downloader, a free software. i loaded the overlay into Photoshop and added a gradient map (purple > pink) over it, thus changing its color. i pasted the overlay onto my b&w gif and set its blending mode to screen. voila!

that's it! i hope you liked it and that i was able to express myself well. if you have any questions, feel free to contact me, i love helping people about their gifmaking questions! 💖

[utopicwork]

Trans girl invents new lossless image format

Over the course of a couple of days I put together something pretty significant: a new image format and compression technique. I'm calling it ShrinkRay (the extension being .sr) and it is made for a more efficient representation of pixel art. With this image: https://www.tumblr.com/potionslushie/759045761554055168/ as a test it compresses ~17% better then png and when converted back to png it still has some (albeit smaller) compression gains. Additionally since part of the compression is indexing colors I was able to trivially implement palette swapping with palette files (so far .hex only which means a lot of Lospec palettes).

So what does this have to do with p2chat? Well the compression gains will make sending and receiving chat images significantly faster but also the recommended limitations of ShrinkRay: maximum 256x256 px (with a scaling factor), maximum 10 colors including black and white as presets, will form the basis for p2chat's prototype limitations.

Whats next: cleaning up the code, documenting it, running further tests and putting up a repository. Later on though I have further compression ideas regarding simple shape implementation and a layer/frames system that's highly optimized. Though I'll be doing more important PierMesh work before that.

All that said I'll leave you with one last detail: all the code for this comes in at just under 128 lines.

Addition: it now supports animation/layers

[riverlarking]

what i use: potplayer for capturing frames photoshop cs6 (can find it for free here or in other links on the tag) qbittorrent torrenting sites (this, this, eventually this) sharpening action arial rounded mt bold for subtitles

assuming you know how to torrent, if possible download what you want to gif in 1080p or the highest possible resolution etc etc

frames

open video in potplayer, go to the moment you want to gif and go back a couple frames (10-20) from when you want your gif to start (i usually just spam press D a bunch) (to see which key you have to press to go back on frames, right click > jump (to) > previous frame

now press CTRL+G or open frame capturing through right click > video > video capture > capture consecutive images...

my settings for capturing frames

(important to turn off subtitles before doing this or they'll be captured on the image too)

the folders i save it to -> i created a bunch of frame folders that i fill up since the way frames load in my photoshop require me to load an entire folder into it. so i capture an entire gifset's frames into one folder and then load up the entire thing

press 'start' on the consecutive image capturer, then start playing the video (best to mute it since the video might start playing slower), wait until the part you want to gif is over and stop the video, press CTRL+G again to stop the capturing

2. photoshop

depending on your photoshop you can either 'load files into stack...', which opens up a folder and you can manually choose which frames you want to load, or 'load multiple dicom files..." (what i have to do), where you select an entire folder to load its contents into photoshop

once you do either of those things, you got this

now click 'create frame animation' on the bottom

now we click on the three bars and 'make frames from layers'

!! if you loaded up frames with 'load frames into stack...' at this point you also have to click 'reverse frames' since they load in reverse order with this method for some reason

now we got our frames on a timeline and delete anything you dont want in your gif. if you have frames for multiple gifs on the timeline, go to image > duplicate and duplicate for however many gifs you got and delete the unnecessary frames from each one

crop tool, type in dimensions up top (in accordance with tumblr's dimension graph, so if you want a wide gif like the one on the top of this post keep it 540px). i usually crop my gifs to between 540x400 and 540x500. once centered on how you want to crop, press enter or double click on the image to crop

press ALT+CTRL+I or go to image > image size... to resize

open the actions tab if you don't have it already open, go to 'load actions...' and find where you saved the sharpening action you downloaded from the top of this post

i only use "all in one (sharper)" and "convert to animation (frames)", but unchecked the "canvas size" option on the latter one since we resized the gif ourselves

select 'select all layers current layer' on the action (the other steps we already did) and press play

our gif frames will turn into a group so now go to "convert to animation (frames)" and press play again

this will pop up at the end, leave it at 0.05 (maybe 0.06 if the gif is going too fast)

if we were to export the gif now it would look like this

now comes the coloring, which is personal preference. the reason i chose hannibal for this gifset is to show the white balance tool that works great in tinted scenes

open a 'levels' layer and selected the bottom eyedropper. then click it on a place on the gif that should be white but isn't (i clicked on hannibal's shirt collar). the gif coloring will change accordingly

then pick the top eyedropper and click on anything that should be black but isn't (you can click on multiple places and see how the color changes, keep trying until you find one that looks good)

the coloring difference with just those two clicks

and then the coloring is up to you, i usually just add more levels layers and color balance

here's all of the layers i applied to color this

VERY IMPORTANT to get into the habit of selecting those two thingies on each layer you apply (on the subtitle text layer select all three) so that the coloring stays the same on all frames

difference

+ subtitles settings using the text tool

shadow and stroke to make your subtitles readable

saving the gif. click ALT+SHIFT+CTRL+S or go to file > save for web... here are my settings

that's it

[mspaesthetic]

Tidbit: The "Threshold" Effect of Desaturated Objects Due to Increased Contrast

If you've ever asked how to replicate an effect like this...

...it's likely someone told you to apply the threshold filter, which converts any light colors to pure white, and any dark colors to pure black. And it's perfectly fine to do so. It's simple, straightforward, efficient. But I take issue with the assertion that it's definitively the only conceivable way Hussie did it when the evidence points to the contrary. Scrutinize the following examples under a microscope:

Did you see it? The singular detail that distinguishes these images from ones that have been thresholded? Congratulations if you noticed that these contain not only black and white pixels, but GRAY pixels as well! A threshold filter's conversion is binary; a pixel is either black, or it is white. No in-between. The presence of these gray values rules out its use, then.

One thing is clear, at least: these images are black and white in the traditional sense of the term, i.e. "grayscale", even if it's in drastic form. They've been stripped of any color, hue, chroma. Completely desaturated, in other words.

So from this observation, we can reason that they were converted to be grayscale at some point in the process of editing.

Of course, this is still lacking in the pure black and pure white departments. If only there was a way to adjust the intensity levels and push them both to their extremes... oh wait, THERE IS! Using the Levels adjustment tool!

Pushing the black input levels slider to the right makes all dark colors turn darker, and conversely, pushing the white input levels slider to the left makes any light colors turn lighter. This is a great way of increasing the contrast and adjusting the brightness. Speaking of which, the Brightness/Contrast adjustment tool in Photoshop with "Use Legacy" enabled also accomplishes a nearly identical effect.

This timelapse demonstrates how the Brightness/Contrast adjustment is basically equivalent to using the Levels one when used this way

I say nearly identical because raising the contrast all the way to 100% with Brightness/Contrast makes it actually identical with the Threshold adjustment tool. The black and white input levels sliders can't fully join in the middle because of the gray input level slider occupying the space, hence why there are some stray gray pixels even when pushing them to their limits.

Well, there could be several reasons explaining why there could be gray pixels other than the contrast not being high enough to clip them, but I'll spare you another needlessly complicated and overly technical rambling on how I can tell it's most definitely the Levels adjustment tool always.

This post is getting a little long, so I'll stop here and elaborate a little more on pertinent things under the read more link, like semi-opaque pixels, scaling down, sharpening, and the gamma slider. Also here's the potted plant PSD if you wanna check it out I guess.

ADDENDUM

Semi-opaque pixels

When separating objects from a background, it's usually easiest to do so with a magic wand selection tool, which selects regions of similar colors. There's an option to make the selection anti-aliased, smoothing the edges of whatever you've cropped. Unchecking it will make the pixels hard and jagged. The wine bottle and picnic basket are a good example of each, respectively.

If you've already cropped out something with anti-aliasing enabled, there's still a way to sharpen the edges after the fact. Duplicating the layer multiple times will increase the semi-transparent pixels' opacity. Do it enough times and they'll eventually become completely opaque. An analogy would be stacking multiple panes of tinted glass on top of each other. Stack enough of them and you wouldn't be able to see through anymore.

These semi-opaque black pixels would appear gray on a white background, and so would semi-opaque white pixels on a black one. That's the reason for the gray pixels around the edges on some of these examples.

Scaling down/Sharpening

Suppose you've already gone ahead and went through the whole rigamarole of editing the object to be black and white before deciding firmly on the size of it in your composition, and now you think it could be a little smaller. You could always resize it and scale it down, but with the interpolation method set to none/nearest-neighbor, it's going to look kind of shit, and with it set to something else like bilinear or bicubic, the anti-aliasing is going to make it a bit blurry (introducing these gray values). You could increase the contrast again, or you could use the Sharpen filter to do it.

Not to suggest that this particular example was scaled down after editing, it's just the one that looks closest to it since I'm too lazy to make one.

Sharpening repeatedly will bump up the contrast, plus Photoshop's Sharpen filter has the added benefit of hardening any semi-opaque pixels as well, making the edges sharper.

GIMP's Sharpen filter doesn't do that latter part, unfortunately, but if the layer has an opaque white background, it'll do the same.

Gamma slider

This effect might not be so obvious, but really take a good look at these board games:

Actually, maybe this Problem Sleuth bonus panel shows what I mean better:

The dark values are cranked up very high, and so are the light values a bit, but there's an inordinate amount of midrange values that are on the lighter side than what would be normal. That's because of the midtones input levels slider, the gray slider, the gamma slider, whatever.

I'm toot tired to explain any more than that, so make of that what you will. The end.

[elvgreen]

tips for 4t3 converters/CAS clothing creators

3 main things:

non-recolorable presets

DDS. settings

Adult to Teen conversions

disclaimer: i'm not a CC expert, but these are things i've noticed and learned these last couple months converting cc. special thanks to thornowl and the other converters in the TS3 Creators Cave discord.

Non-recolorable presets:

we obviously know that ts4 lacks a CASt tool, so ts4 creators rely on recolors. In my conversions, I do include a couple of the item's recolors. these usually are patterns that CASt does not have.

one thing I've noticed more and more converters doing is putting such item recolors in the 'Overlay' tab in TSRW.

let me show you what that looks like for a non-recolorable preset:

it looks over-saturated, and almost crunchy. but there's another place you can import the recolor into: stencils.

stencils will be found at the bottom, under patterns. hit the plus sign next to stencils to open it.

opening it will show you this:

by default, it will be enabled as false. import your recolor into the texture tab as you would do for any other texture tab. make sure you tick the 'false' to 'true.' stencils override overlays, so if you want to use an overlay, enable stencils back to 'false.'

here's what the recolor imported into stencils looks like:

here's the two side by side:

see how different they are? let's see how they are in game:

click on the pictures to really see the difference in quality. since TS3 uses DDS. format, it compresses the texture, which results in the crunchy texture. importing the recolor into the overlay tab makes the DDS. compression more noticeable. it ultimately is up to you and whichever one you prefer, but do keep it in mind.

the overlay tab is good for small details that you want to maintain on all recolorable presets, like zippers, buttons, tags, etc. just look at EA clothes for reference, especially their shoes and male clothes.

another thing you can see from the images are the bumps on the mesh. doing normal maps can help you keep those same details on the recolorable presets without importing the recolors.

-----------------

DDS. settings:

something I also see and used to do myself is bloat package files with large file sizes, specifically normal and specular maps, as well as masks. the Sims 3 Tutorial Hub provides a link to plain maps, but the file sizes are unnecessarily big.

let's look at some of EA's maps in TSRW:

here's the specular from one of the basegame sweaters. notice the image size, DXT format, and compression size.

a lot of converters don't want the shine on regular clothes, so we use a plain, black specular map. but ask yourself, why do you need a 1024 x 1024 purely black specular map with no details?

let's try sizing it down:

notice the difference between the image and compression size. instead of bloating the package file, we can keep it down by using a 32x32 plain black specular map instead, since there aren't details we want from the specular map.

same goes for normal maps:

and masks (meant for 1 channel only):

now, notice how I underlined the info about DXT MipMaps. see how the normal map has a different number there compared to the specular map and mask.

the reason these textures use different DXT is because of the colors and alpha channel.

here's how my DDS. settings appear when saving:

DXT1 (no alpha): this keeps only the 3 color channels and has the strongest compression. it results in half the file size as DXT3/5. 3 channel masks should be saved with this, as they don't need an alpha channel.

DXT1 (1 bit alpha): this includes an alpha, but only black or white. it also results in half the file size as DXT3/5.

DXT3: this one is rarely used for TS3 textures. it really is only used for overlays. it compresses the same as DXT5, but may not be the best for images with smooth-blended alpha regions (Neely).

DXT5: multipliers and normal (bump) maps should only EVER be saved with this. it's best for colors but has a larger file size. this is why it's important to reduce the multiplier and normal map image size, especially if you don't make a normal map.

if you DO decide to do a specular and normal map, they should be regular image size, 1024x1024, and saved in the right format.

here is more information on which textures should use which compression.

-----------------

Adult to Teen Conversions:

the default for converters is obviously AF and AM. a lot of people want the items for teens too. I've seen several converters just enable it in TSRW:

please don't do this. it's honestly the lazy route. you can hardly ever get away this, specifically because of the body differences between adult and teen.

some major issues with this include gaps, seams, and unnatural body characteristics:

so please, either skip the teen mesh entirely or spend the time reshaping the mesh. @/sweetdevil-sims has a great tutorial on converting meshes from AF to TF here. the inevitable seams on TF meshes are also now fixed, thanks to @/thornowl with their new version of mesh toolkit.

@pis3update

---------------

here are reduced file sizes and corrected settings of the plain mask, specular, and normal:

download

Sources:

Neely, G. ‘Buckaroo’. Working with DDS/DXT Files. Available at: https://www.buckarooshangar.com/flightgear/tut_dds.html (Accessed: 28 May 2024).

[purrpletiger]

FRESH DRAWING GUIDE:

Hello everybody, I've come to give you all this absurd reference guide for drawing Fresh. yep. I decided to spend hours slapping this together.

If I got anything wrong or should add anything PLEEEASE lemme know! All ideas welcome!

If you want to see my "research" on this character, let me know in the replies, because there's so much to talk about with him and I'd love to do a character analysis or two, I couldn't put much about his personality or source posts in this because it's just a drawing guide!

Link to all the full images

Transcript and close-ups of the text on the image: (May be in a strange order)

Fresh was created by @loverofpiggies (CQ)

Main Outfit:

YOLO sunglasses

Backwards propeller cap

Pink Polo shirt

Crayola Jacket

Gold Tooth

SWAG fannypack

Convertible Zip-off pants

White Heelie shoes

Pink socks

He has thick eyebrows to emote! (The eyebrows are usually depicted with black hair but one human design has eyebrows that match the pink hair color!)

The bag says SWAG on it

His glasses say YOLO by default, but the letters can magically change mid-scene...

this design for Fresh is Tall, we dunno how tall but taller than CQ's Sans characters (or just Geno since he's literally sans undertale with some added steps). But his height is just his host's height sooo it can vary.

those (cyan and yellow) shoe details are on the innerside but not outerside

HE HAS HEELIES!

Pink glove cuffs!

his skateboard is inconsistent dont worry about it

Glasses Off:

The host's soul shows up in their left eyesocket

- The soul tends to look unstable (cracks & a sortve stroboscopic effect.. i couldn't think of a better word.) but not in some cases...

It doesn't have to be a white upside-down heart, that's just a reference to an undertale monster soul.

He has a purple substance full of little RADs that emanate from his eyesockets (when his sunglasses are off)

"The soul in Fresh's eyes CAN be cracked. That soul isn't his. it belongs to his host. And.... after a while.... things go bad for the host, and he needs a new one." -CQ

(example of soul with unstable effect with no cracks) (example of soul with cracks but lacking the effect)

The purple aura(?) can glow and emanate from the eyes when his glasses are on too

i miss this one design specifically. the colors and the SK8 OR B SK8 shirt were peak

I miss the SWAG necklace...

Fresh leaves a rainbow cloud of smoke when he "poofs". Either teleporting him and his host body somewhere or leaving his host behind.

Human Designs:

Fresh can possess humans too.

They all look physically different because they're different people that he's possessing.

Fresh can possess pretty much any body, but I thought I'd show the varied examples of humans anyway

Don't forget the orange jacket flaps! or his hat propeller!

I dunno what's up with the multicolor tongue thing. I think it was extra parasites in the host's mouth? I feel like it was scrapped at some point... but I could be wrong

FURBIES!:

Oh yeah, he also does this: (no image for the bat tho)

"I mean when he fights he pulls Furbies out of his magical fanny pack. takes out a wiffle bat. and hits the furby at his enemies.

And then the furby explodes in a blaze of glory." -CQ

Despite using some furbies as explosives, he seems to 'care' about and treat these two like precious babies:

This one is potentially named McFreshby The Fresh Furbrah (Fresh is mentioned to have one named that, and this is the only other furby he's been depicted with)

It can also do THIS: (roll its eyes back into a spookier look)

This is DJ FurBs. that's all i know about him

The REAL Parasite:

Fresh is actually this little parasite controlling a host body. (if you didn't know that why are you reading this post rn!?! but nah I love new Fresh fans, welcome!)

The main parasite is this purple one with the eyemouth and four(?) tendrils, the other colored tentacles are prrrobably Fresh's offspring (freshmageddon moment?) (I'm not actually sure, I'm just pretty sure they're not part of the main parasite but are parasite tentacles)

You can also see Fresh's five or more purple tendrils here stretching out all over his host's body

All art from CrayonQueen/@loverofpiggies

Reference guide made by PurrpleParrasite/@purrpletiger

pls suggest changes or additions if u have ideas!

That's all!

[sunkissedlouis]

Hi! I don't know if you already have a tutorial but would you mind sharing your gif making process? Thank you!

hiiii anon!

thank you for sending this in :) it's my first time getting a tutorial request hehe i tried to explain each step i do as best as i can.

i'll put the gif making process and tutorial under the cut bc it's image + text heavy

before starting, i'd just like to share what i use in creating gifs:

i'm on mac (i used to do them on windows... the ps steps are the same if you're using one)

i'm currently using photoshop 2022

i use 9xbuddy or video downloadhelper extension on firefox mainly for downloading videos

best quality to download for hq gifs is ideally 1080p and above. (although you can get away with 720p for smaller gif sizes)

i use mplayer-osx extended to get the screencaps/frames for my gifs (if i'm not doing the import option in photoshop)

for this tutorial, i'm using the latam highlights video from louis' ig reels to make today's gif. on to the tutorial / process!

please click the screenshots i've included below and zoom in on the texts on them to see them clearly (apologies for the quality!)

IMPORT YOUR FRAMES. once you've downloaded your video, open photoshop and click FILE > IMPORT > VIDEO FRAMES TO LAYERS

SELECT THE PART YOU WANT TO GIF. the shorter, the better because you want to keep it crisp and keep the file under 10mb when you save it after all the layers. here are the settings i use:

toggle the smaller arrows under the bar to select the parts you want to gif. once you have your frames loaded, it should show you a timeline table at the bottom and their corresponding layers on the right side. (if you can't see the timeline, go to WINDOW > click TIMELINE)

3. DELETE EXTRA LAYERS, CROP PARTS YOU WANT TO FOCUS ON, AND RESIZE.

after cropping the parts of the gifs, resize them according to the tumblr sizing to prevent your gifs from looking blurry once you upload them. you can use this size guide for your reference :) the gif's height can be any size as far as i know. go to IMAGE > IMAGE SIZE > INPUT THE SIZE. for this gif, we'll do 540 x 540

4. CHANGE GIF SPEED and CONVERT TO SMART OBJECT

once you've selected all frames

set the delay to 0.07. this is usually the natural, normal speed for gifs on here. it depends on the number of frames you have but i usually do .07 or .05 (sometimes .08 haha)

with all your timeline frames still selected, then select all the layers on the right side. go to SELECT > ALL LAYERS

then convert them to smart object so we can edit all the layers all at once. go to LAYER > SMART OBJECTS > CONVERT TO SMART OBJECT

5. SHARPEN (one of my fave parts!)

this is the basic one that most users use:

STEP 1: go to FILTER > SHARPEN > SMART SHARPEN

radius usually goes from 0.3-0.4

STEP 2: Repeat STEP 1, but this time change the settings to:

you can stop here but i like my gifs crispier and to have more texture! i use the sharpening settings from this tutorial or these sharpening action packs from user brainwasheds. i highly recommend these! i mix and match the settings when i'm not happy with how they look on my gifs. but for this gif we'll use the sharpening settings from this tutorial.

in addition to the settings from that tutorial, i also added FILTER > OTHER > HIGH PASS at 3.4 radius, then set the opacity to 60-80

then lastly add FILTER > ADD NOISE > NOISE at gaussian setting with 1.5 amount, then set opacity to 20-30

6. BRIGHTENING, COLORING, BALANCING, ADDING TEXTURE

now for the fun part!

STEP 1: BRIGHTEN UP THE GIF this is my go-to way to increase the brightness. go to LAYER > NEW ADJUSTMENT LAYER > BRIGHTNESS / CONTRAST then change its blending mode from NORMAL to SCREEN

you now have a very bright, highly saturated gif but we'll fix that lol

STEP 2: ADD CONTRAST BY FIXING THE BLACKS AND WHITES add a new adjustment layer > LEVELS

i usually play around with these. middle and black arrows add shadows and contrast while the white arrows add highlights/brightness to the gifs.

these are my settings! these are not definite bc it varies depending on what you're working on, so adjust them accordingly. next, add another adjustment layer > CURVES

i usually zoom in to locate the darkest / black area using the black dropper. then once that's done, do the same and locate the brightest/white area. this adds further contrast to your gif that wasn't done in the previous step.

STEP 3: COLORING (my fave part!!!) add a new adjustment layer > SELECTIVE COLOR this is the part where i like to neutralize the skin color when it gets too yellow or red, make the colors pop, and sometimes change them too. louis' skin was looking too red heavy, so i wanted to reduce that! i start with balancing out the skin color with REDS & YELLOWS.

these are my settings for this gif! adjust them and observe the changes it makes on the person's skin. if you know color theory, it's helpful to see how it affects the colors on your gifs. putting the arrows more on the left side, adds more 'cool' tones, whilst putting the arrows to the right side, adds more 'warm' tones.

i like to deepen the blacks on my gifs further so, go to selective color's BLACKS and on the black scale, add more to the right! for this one, i added +10

add a new SELECTIVE COLOR adjustment layer. for this one, we'll make the surrounding colors pop more!

for these settings, i made the leaves more vivid while the teal(?) wall, i adjusted them made it more blue.

next, add a new adjustment layer > COLOR BALANCE this is where you can make further adjustments on the overall colors of your gif. you can also change the color tone of your gifs here if you want to make it more 'cool' tone or 'warm' tone looking.

earlier's color theory applies here as well!

6.5. OPTIONAL STEP: ADD TEXTURE/OVERLAYS after the last step, you can save your gif as is but again, i like adding textures to my gifs so we'll add one. i use the textures/overlays that i got from here :)

i like to use film, grainy textures! add the texture you want on top of all the layers.

then change the blending mode to LIGHTEN or SCREEN. adjust the opacity to 20-40%. for this gif i used screen with 40%.

7. EXPORT AND SAVE YOUR GIF time to save your gif! click FILE > EXPORT > SAVE FOR WEB

this is my default setting for my gifs. i also tick the interlaced option sometimes.

here's the finished gif:

there you go anon! :) if you have any more questions, just lmk or you can directly dm me off-anon if you want.

i also get inspo, guides, and other tutorials over at @usergif

[heybaetae]

hi kelli i love the gif set you made for jimin's birthday especially the "choose your album" one. is it possible you could give a tutorial or show how you made the effect? or the imessage one too its so cute!! only if you want!!

thanks anon 💛🥺 that's the first gif i started with when i started making the set because i wanted to make sure i could execute it well lol. i can break it down and show you how i made those, but i won't call it a tutorial since it might be messy lol. i also didn't come up with the concepts, so please note that i took inspo from gifs in sets like this, this, this, and this. since i didn't have any templates for these overlays, i referenced those as a guide for making my own.

i'll put this under a read more because it might be long.

we'll start with this one!!

there are three main things going on in this gif that i'll focus on: a playlist overlay, a cross-fade transition between mutliple elements (background gif, album logos, and years), and the "selected album" switching in conjunction with the transition.

i like to organize all my layers into groups and label them so i can find everything easily if i need to make adjustments, so here is what my layers palette looks like for the finished gif.

i'll break down everything starting from the bottom since that's how you build things in photoshop.

the background gif is two gifs with the same amount of frames and similar camera movement because i thought the transition would look cool if the shot was circling around jimin in both gifs. i applied my sharpen and noise settings to each gif's smart layer, then put them both on the same timeline track. next, i dragged the cross fade transition with the fastest speed (0.25 s) onto the timeline between my gifs.

then i added a few adjustment layers to make it black and white with some contrast and grouped those into a folder labeled as "b&w psd" to keep it organized.

now time for the overlay group!

starting with the "player" folder first, here's what's inside.

two smart objects and a text layer.

the "square outline" layer is essentially just a square that i selected with the marquee tool, then applied a new color fill with the fill at 0% opacity. then i added a 2px white stroke to it, which left me with just an outline of a square. i converted that to a smart object.

the "arrows" layer, i just used the eclipse shape tool (no fill, 2px white stroke) and some custom shape arrows inside. i duplicated those shapes, flipped them, then positioned each skip button where i wanted them before coverting them both to a single smart object as well.

then i added my "choose your album" text at the top of the square, selected around it with the marquee tool on the "square outline" layer, and applied a layer mask to erase where the outline cut through it. i made this all as centered as possible and made these three layers the same length as my background gif on the timeline.

onto the "abums" folder, here's what's inside.

i made two 100px by 100px square shapes and positioned them along the bottom line of the big square outline with equal distance between the center and the corners. all i had to do was resize images of jimin's album covers atop each shape. i also clipped levels adjustments to both covers to make them pop.

the "album outline" layers are just duplicates of the square layers with a 2px stroke in alternate colors per that album's color scheme. i referenced album images and used the eyedropper tool for accurate colors.

to make the strokes visible at different times, those two layers are trimmed on the timeline at the very center of the cross fade transition on the background gif to emulate switching between albums. TECHNICALLY, no, i didn't need to keep the shape layers and i could have deleted them after i positioned the covers + added the stroke to a duplicated cover image instead, but i liked having them as a guide.

anyway it looks like this:

next, came the album title logos and extra text! here are the "logos", "outlines", and "years" folders open.

these are all in seperate folders because i stacked each title logo and it's outline back to back on the timeline in order to add the cross fade transition to them into each other along with the background gif. i thought it would look too abrupt if the logos changed without the same transition.

so i found large png files of each of jimin's album title fonts, made them white, and positioned them in the center. i set the blending modes on each of them to "exclusion", then applied a color overlay set to "color" in those same colors i used for the album cover outlines. i then duplicated the logos and changed the fill to 0%, added a 1px white stroke around them and then nudged them a few pixels away from the real ones for that depth look.

i also added the years each album came out too. i trimmed and stacked them accordingly on the timeline and added the same transition between them all as the one on the background gif.

here is what it looks like on the timeline:

then i converted to frames and saved at 0.05 speed and i was done!

as for the imessage gif...

here's what my layers palette looked like:

i made my background gif blurry so it wouldn't distract too much from the smaller gif and the messages, but i still needed it to look clear. i really lucked out with that shot of jimin against a yellow couch with teal detailing on his sleeve because look how well it matches the color theme!!! AND he's making a hand heart??? score.

anyway, it was mostly about spacing all the imessage bubbles so everything was nice and equal. i didn't think i could make the bubbles look good if i made them manually with the shape tool, so i just searched for imessage bubble pngs online at differing lengths and made the ones i used white before converting them to smart objects. i resized them all to 48px in height and positioned them with 15px gaps between each other (10px from the top and bottom edges of the gif, 15px from the sides). i set them each to "exclusion" and added a color overlay to them set to "color" and chose which teal or gray color to use.

then i added my text on top of them.

the "small gif" folder is just a 280px high rounded square shape with my gif and adjustment layers clipped to it. there's a smaller 3px gap between the small gif and text below it just like an iphone displays images sent with text. i completely scored with this gif too since he's already against a yellow background and he's wearing green, so all i needed to adjust were the tones of those colors to get it as close as i could to the muse colors.

that's pretty much it!!! i hope you found this interesting or fun to read. thank you for liking the set and being curious how i made some of it <3

again, i can't take credit for these concepts. i only tried to recreate them to the best of my own abilities.

[luletools]

In today's digital age, the need for efficient image conversion tools is more crucial than ever. Whether you're a designer, marketer, or simply someone looking to enhance their online presence, having the right image converter at your fingertips can make all the difference. Enter Luletools, your ultimate solution for seamless and hassle-free image conversion.

[bearclubbooks]

the king of elfland's daughter by lord dunsany

this is one of my dad's favorite books so i put this together for his birthday! i've been on a real public domain kick lately haha

the cover is italian marbled paper (i think i bought it on etsy) and talas bonded leather in "arista navy". i was a little worried about using leather (or leather-like material) for the first time but it was fine! you don't even need fancy tools with the bonded leather.

text is set in 12/15 centaur! title text is called "argos george", and i got the title page image from a free old art website (had to convert it to true black and white) - it's the 'flammarion engraving' which is a mysterious illustration by an unknown artist... but perfectly suited to the vibe and plot of this story!

i also did a fun little experiment with the endpapers... my closest color match to the covers was a fragile mulberry paper, which i had (pretty unsuccessfully) used before on a different bind. i didn't want a repeat of that mistake, so i glued a piece of textblock paper half on to the mulberry, so i would end up with a little sandwich of endpaper: half fully reinforced to glue to the case, and half flying beautifully loose and free with an extra flyleaf, so the mulberry paper could show its true beauty haha

anyway it worked perfectly so this bad boy is beautiful AND strong!

i was also a little worried since i did the endpaper gluing with Yes! paste and the rest of the bind with PVA; something about the chemical makeup of those glues makes them completely cancel each other out and turn into glue cottage cheese if they touch. but i was able to keep them separate enough to avoid any incidents, so it was a great success!

[fantasy-anatomy-analyst]

I've got a small pile of unanswered asks, sorry for the wait! got myself busy again with other projects, like a christmas themed kids book I need to get done by thanksgiving.

I've been noticing that when my uncle has the books printed, they come out very dark and muddy, which is not great! I tried to research rgb to cmyk conversion and ran into all sorts of different advice on which profiles to use, found that most of the instructions rely on very specific art software, only to ultimately learn that many places used for printing art will just apply their own cmyk profile anyways. which can actually make the colors worse if you already converted the file yourself.

and furthermore, the problem is extra bad with these books because my uncle has been going through Amazon and they use a variety of third party printers! based on the results with the books, I'd say they're cutting costs with low quality cheap printers >:/ which means there's nothing I can actually do on my end to ensure that the illustrations accurately print with the colors I'm using.

However. I don't give up so easy. I've seen artists make all sorts of color choices just so the end results looks a specific way under specific circumstances. Like using negative colors so the image only looks "normal" when it's been inverted. or using blue and red so the image looks different based on whether it's under a red lens or a blue lens. making color illusions like that blue/black vs white/gold dress or the illusion of grey strawberries looking red when they're surrounded by cyan. I did a final project in college on the topic of color illusion, making my own example paintings.

(image description: three photos of small paintings. the first two images are solid yellow and green respectively, with neutral grey abstract shapes painted over them. because of the solid color backgrounds, however, the neutral greys appear to be slightly tinged with the compliment color of their backgrounds; blue tinged on the yellow and pink tinged on the green. the third painting shows a side by side comparison of the same pair of yellow scissor handles. on one side, they are painted bright yellow on a plain white background. on the other side, a dark purple background and more dramatic lighting still give it the appearance of being yellow scissors, but in actuality the handles are painted in shades of green and orange, blended together in some places and darkened or lightened with other colors. they simply look more yellow because of the purple background and the warm shading. end description.)

So I know a thing or two about color strategy. and I am not losing a war against low quality cheap printers, not today. I spent a while looking for cmyk color charts and palettes, testing images through an online cmyk converter, and I have finally achieved my goal. the final test will come when the book is done and sent to print. essentially, I just ran a cmyk color chart through a converter to see how it might look after being printed, then set the original and the converted version next to each other on my file. I can now use the brighter original colors but base the colors I pick on how they'll look in the printed result rather than how they look on my screen. this means the version on my screen is far more pastel than I would normally go for! but the test results so far prove the method, and I think this book will print just fine.

(image description: screenshot of the rgb and cmyk versions of the same painting, which look very small and compressed because they're thumbnail images. the rgb version looks very light and uses a lot of pastel colors and soft shading, while the cmyk version looks much darker and has more distinct shading. it depicts a family out caroling around Christmas, standing at the porch of another family who look very happy to hear the song. end description.)

by golly I am not going to let Amazon keep turning my hard work into muddied disasters. I get paid for these illustrations and I'll make them look good in print by any means available to me.

here's the colors btw if anyone else needs to use this trick:

(image description: two color charts. one is very bright and rainbow, the other is much lower contrast and dark. the colors that are the most affected are the blues and greens, while the reds and yellows are somewhat more intact. the greys have also become more brown in the second version. end description.)

just figure out what the end result needs to look like and pick the brighter color accordingly. should make the low quality print jobs look at least passingly decent! sometimes you really have to plan ahead to make things look the way you want.

[where-did-the-groove-go]

Okay, so I've been lucky enough to encounter a Volkswagen Thing irl on more than one occasion since constantly keeping an eye out for them in the past couple years, after first becoming aware of their existence as what Ron still stubbornly drives to this day. Actually, the first one I saw was a VERY lucky sighting, but I didn't even realize it was a Thing until afterwards. Because I'd been looking for something that looked like Ron's car. Not THIS:

That's the Acapulco Thing, which was briefly sold in 1974--only about 400 of them--after being designed to shuttle guests around at a couple of high-end beach resorts in Mexico. In retrospect I probably should've realized a lot sooner, because my reaction upon seeing it had been "What the heck is that THING?!" It dawned on me a couple days later, just because you'd be hard-pressed to find any other car that boxy, though a quick Google image search hadn't pulled up any with the surrey top.

(My second Thing sighting was much more as expected and obvious; it even had a decal plastered on its side which read "The Thing".)

Several months later, thanks to the Boss Accountant showdown being posted here, I found out that the Thing is a relatively rare car. Which prompted me to spend a few days fixated on reading about them. Then I was finally able to put a name to the Acapulco variant.

Something else I learned... Turns out that if you're anywhere near LA and you see a Thing that looks like Ron's, it almost definitely is.

(I say "near LA" only because I doubt Ron is doing any serious roadtripping in it these days.)

A bit of backstory: the Thing was advertised as a fun car. A beach cruiser, a safari car. Aimed at surfers and hippies and other adventurous types. It's a convertible. The windshield folds down. The doors can be taken off.

That's not the impression I initially had of the Thing, and perhaps with good reason: Ron's is a bit unique even among Things. For one, it has the less common factory hardtop on it, instead of the convertible one. Additionally, in 1974, black was not a stock color for Things. They only came in colors suitable for 1974: orange, yellow, white, and avocado green. Which means that more than likely, Ron specifically wanted his black (because of course he did), and would've had to go out of his way to get it repainted or find one that had already been repainted. A full repainting job is no small feat for a Thing because a lot of the metal is exposed inside the car, meaning that everything has to come out of it to have the interior repainted--and we can see that Ron's has.

Anyway, I just think that makes it all the more poetic. Not only does Ron's car reflect his personality in being "a little bit out of the ordinary", but his black utilitarian ride is a brightly colored beach-mobile in disguise. Nothing more fitting for a guy whose crisp shirts and ties and slicked-back hair and quiet demeanor would never belie it now but one of his formative experiences was spending the 1960s surfing.

So if you're ever feeling sad, just remember that Ron is driving the same car as the Acapulco Thing.

[tmnttracks]

Reflection

I used two free to use backgrounds for the grass and sky, then repurposed them to their basic black and white properties. I adjusted the colors to give the scenery a more bleak contrast against the black and white image of Mikey. All of the images were also converted to have transparent backgrounds so when placed together, it looks like one cohesive image. The image of Mikey was taken from IDW comic issue #30 then also repurposed to it's black and white form with some color adjustments and then using a stylus, hand colored his bandana. Lastly, I added one of my favorite textures.

This digital image does fall under the Free To Use Copyright exception since it has been 100% altered from it's original design.