Alien Temple

[dk_art]

Well here's my first digital image in a while ... I've been busy doing watercolour and ink paintings I guess. This one used no texture files or anything of that sort. Just starting with drawn vectors, merging objects together as I went and using bitmap tools to the end. I used PhotoImpact7 from start to finish.

http://www.dkingdesign.com/stuff/pho...ien_temple.jpg

I guess it's kindof large and would make a good free desktop for 800 x 600 people [img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_biggrin.gif[/img]

David K ... www.dkingdesign.com http://www.dkingdesign.com/stuff/signature.jpg

[dk_art]

Well here's my first digital image in a while ... I've been busy doing watercolour and ink paintings I guess. This one used no texture files or anything of that sort. Just starting with drawn vectors, merging objects together as I went and using bitmap tools to the end. I used PhotoImpact7 from start to finish.

http://www.dkingdesign.com/stuff/pho...ien_temple.jpg

I guess it's kindof large and would make a good free desktop for 800 x 600 people [img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_biggrin.gif[/img]

David K ... www.dkingdesign.com http://www.dkingdesign.com/stuff/signature.jpg

[Kelly]

Nice work, as usual, Dave. I love your "untextures", too.

Enter the ZONE

[CBarrett]

Great job Dave! The water is outstanding!

Carolyn [img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_smile.gif[/img]

[RAMWolff44]

That image is breath taking, I LOVE IT!!! WOW [img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_eek.gif[/img]

If I remember correctly you are not using XaraX any more or not much because of problems with it crashing all the time or something. I see more and more people are clamoring for an update so you never know!!!

PhotoImpact huh??? The product from what I hear is really nice but it's interface is just a bit overwhelming to me. I have it on board and maybe I'll play around with it some more soon. I think the thing that turned me off was the smudge and smear tools (I like the way they work in photopaint) they both seem to do strange things, not what I expected at all so it turned me off. I like really gentle blendings and the smudge tool seemed to do either a lighting or a darkening thing to my picture and when I managed to get that some what figured out I couldn't seem to manage to get the tool to do really small areas, only seemed to pull in colors from like an inch all the way around the area I was working in. The smear tool didn't do what I expected it to do either.

OK, I just invoked it and was playing with it. It seems that the blur tool works similarly to the smudge tool in PP and the smudge tool is like the burn tool in PP and the smear tool doesn't seem to do much of any thing. It is a very FULL program, the stamp tool is kinda cool and there is supposedly a pretty decent web building interface there too.

Maybe it's worth checking out again, just with some more patients.

Hey David, could you give me a tip or two on the 3 tools mentioned above. You are mastering this program well, the image is so beautiful, truly [img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_biggrin.gif[/img]

Thanks and have a great weekend [img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_smile.gif[/img]

RAMWolff [img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_wink.gif[/img]

[Crow Haven]

I love the colors, textures--all of it!!!!
Great image, David!!! [img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_biggrin.gif[/img]
---As The Crow Flies!---
Maya

[dk_art]

Thanks all [img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_smile.gif[/img] ...

Ramwolff - Although XaraX has had it's share of problems with me, I have gotten a new system with an AMD XP 1600+ chip on an MSI K7T Turboo motherboard so I'm hoping those problems will not occur now. From what I read this should be a stable system. I'm also running windows XP which is also stable.

I did however have one error in XaraX the other day on my new system which caused the program to end. I can't remember the description but it occured when I was picking colours using the dropper from the colour editor. It seems to me most of my errors in XaraX have occured while moving interface parts or sliders rather than drawing. I'm beggining to wonder if my problems in XaraX are related to using my wacom graphire pen as that is the only element which has been present on 3 systems (including an older 300mhz amd with win98) I have used the program on. I will have to use my PS2 mouse in XaraX from now on to see. I use my pen but I think most XaraX users use a mouse so maybe they don't have as many problems.

You mentioned that the interface was a bit overwhelming. To me it's quite similar to the XaraX one. There's a settings bar ( attribute bar in PI )that changes according to the tool you have selected. This is like XaraX's and Corel Draw's way of doing things. I find PI's interface one of the fastest to use (once you learn what everything does).

As far as doing this image, I don't think I'd do it in XaraX. I know some people get great results with all vector shapes (and I've tried a couple images with lotsof details) but in some cases I just want to use raster tools. I could use Painter6 but for some reason the program doesn't feel as good to use as PI7 to me. Plus I like using PI's object eraser tool on some areas like when some of the landscape elements were still separate image objects, I nibbled away at their borders a bit to give an uneven edge ... it's a quicker tool than getting into the masks.

Here's a link to a screenshot with some arrows pointing to things. I hope it explains a bit. I have the brush panel open in this. But I usally have it closed unless I need to change a more detailed setting. It's just in the way and not needed most times anyway ... the attribute bar has most settings up there.

http://www.dkingdesign.com/stuff/pho...screenshot.jpg

The burn tool can be tricky to get the settings you like. Ulead changed it from last version and it has more settings but can be tricky to get a proper level of effect for the 3 tonal ranges. that's why the easy palette is great ... save a tool setting (or anything really) and use it again later.

You mentioned web features, PI has a bunch which allow you to make working sites. But I just use it to slice and export and do that other stuff in my web programe ( Web Editor ... www.namo.com ). Click the slicer tool and you can draw slice lines (select option as usual from the attribute bar).

Well I babbled long enough [img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_biggrin.gif[/img]

David K ... www.dkingdesign.com http://www.dkingdesign.com/stuff/signature.jpg

[Klaus Nordby]

David, a fine and moody image!

K
www.xaraxone.com/FeaturedArt/kn/
www.klausnordby.com/xara

[gidgit]

very nice as usual there Dave [img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_smile.gif[/img]

Hey Dave, have you ever tried Deep Paint by Right Hemisphere... I would be interested to know what a painter/artist such as yourself thought of it...

[This message was edited by gidgit on May 18, 2002 at 22:02.]