Ulead Ice Cube

**Grafixman** · 24 March 2006, 12:04 PM

If Kiwi fires anything this way, you can be sure it will inspire me to draw my rusty PI for a return shot...

.
Nice ice cube, Kiwi. But I remember a tutorial about making one from clouds. Photoshop has a built in cloud generator. PI does not have one, but you can download this free filter: Cloud 2.2
http://www.geocities.com/Murakuma/mmplugins.html
And it's a lot more powerful than the PS variety.
I used the silk preset, distorted it some more, tweaked the levels, colors, etc, perhaps applied PI's texture filter for some added plastic wrap effect, some airbrushing , dodging and burning... nothing methodical, just going with the feeling, finally added some drop shadow and there you have it, instant ice cube (perhaps not so instant, but trust me, it took me less time to do it than to describe the process...)

**AndFarr** · 25 March 2006, 03:38 PM

Wow nice!
I just bought PhotoImpact 11 about a week ago, so I'll have to give this a try. It may take me a while to get up to speed on this software since it is new to me.
I just posted an Ice cube challenge over on the Xara Xtreme thread.
That example took a long time to create.
Perhaps the cloud plugin will work in Xara Xtreme as well...
Thank you for posting your artwork!
It seems like so many post only their complaints instead of their creations.
So thank you for generously sharing your work!
- Andrew

**sallybode** · 25 March 2006, 06:49 PM

The Iceman cometh.

And now when someone needs a "chill pill" Grafixman can supply it. Do they come in bottles or one of those nifty blister packs?

**Grafixman** · 26 March 2006, 05:14 AM

Great challenge you started in the Xara forum, Andrew. Ice is a tricky thing to draw. Nice entries there, already. I wouldn't even dream of drawing ice with vectors. Too hard for me. Easier with bitmaps since you can smear and smudge pixels.
Problems and things not working. I get them all the time. But I usually solve them by hair pulling

and forum lurking. If I have questions, it's usually already asked and answered in the past by someone somewhere. You just have to know where to look.

PI is pretty handy. Don't expect it to do everything PS does, though. But within it's range, it gets the job done.

Chill Pill... that has a good ring to it. Maybe I'll make one later, Sally?

**Grafixman** · 26 March 2006, 08:04 AM

The Chill Pill...
(A capsule, not a pill, really, but pills are so small...

)
Originally intended to do just one big pill, or capsule, converted to ice, but ended up tweaking PI's preset gallery hand picture's finger into the correct position for holding the capsule and finally turning that into ice as well.
Been a long time since I've done any of those worth1000.com style photo manipulations

. Hope this wasn't too shabby...

**sallybode** · 26 March 2006, 06:10 PM

Wow, totally excellent. Looks like you scanned your hand and glassified it. Another thing that says cold is low lying fog like you get with CO2. But I wouldn't change this, fine bit of artwork.

Is that a preset or is it one of your own inventions?

**Grafixman** · 27 March 2006, 01:05 AM

Yes, I was thinking it lacked something. The misty cold cloud that surrounds ice is probably it. Might or might not tweak this some more, depending on how much free time and energy I have today

.
Presets and filters can only get you so far. Usually, I duplicate objects and apply various blend modes on it. Or use the touch-up and paint brushes to tweak the pictures some more. The hand is the standard PI8 preset, the one in the OK position. Then I duplicated and cut out one of the fingers and tweaked it to the proper position, erased the excess part then blended the colors so it looked more natural. Had to enlarge it quite a bit, so it ended up quite pixellated. Maybe that's the main reason I decided to change it to ice as well...

. Used the cloud filter for the basic patterns on a duplicate hand, then applied the emboss filter on the original hand to highlight the lines and creases. Can't remember exactly what blend mode I used. Probably multiply.
One handy trick in combining objects with various blend modes into a single object is to select the objects, export as transparent png then reimport it back to PI. Merely combining objects into single ones often don't work if they have different blend modes. You end up with white fringes all around them if you do that.
For splotchy transparent areas, I selected the object (hand, or pill), entered the mask mode and sprayed random areas with black.

**sallybode** · 27 March 2006, 06:04 AM

Well, my mother used to say "Cold hands, warm heart."

---Could be heartburn?!?!?!? Too many ice cubes.

Very good technique, Iceman.

**Grafixman** · 27 March 2006, 04:19 PM

That technique of exporting and reimporting png I learned from Jen at the PIBB. It's a handy trick that extended the number of tweaks I could do on object layers. Sometimes you just need to combine different objects into one for additional tweaking and it was impossible to do that for different blend modes. I was flattening the entire pic and reselecting things and reconverting them into objects before I learned about that method.
Final tweak on the pic. More help from the cloud filter. Applied it to a gray background, converted to grayscale and imported it as a selection into the ice picture. Converted to object and applied some fades in the proper direction.
Time for a cold drink now...