well, its been nice, but I am now moving to a hand coded site on freehostia. The new address is http://additives.freehostia.com

For several reasons, mostly concerned with space as i have been loading pictures onto this site, I am moving my tutorials to a blogger page. They will all still be posted on the tutorial section but they are externially hosted and viewed.

Just an FYI

blog site is http://addtut.blogspot.com/

The Observent among you may have noticed several new things. All my progeressive blog posts from traveling are up, as well as the new photo and tutorial pages, which were to clean up some mess i had made with the news system. Have a look arround.

Comming soon will be an article (if i can be bothered) and another tutorial, which should be for the Tree.

Happy brousing

Right, less than 24 hours to go, and just doing some final writing. Letting you all know that the site will probably be more or less inactive until I'm settled in Egypt, until then, I'm sure you'll manage.

BLOG: 24 hours pre-flight (click text to read on)
As I type this, a milestone has passed. There are now less than 24 hours until my plane is schedualed to depart. Packing is complete, just the final things that will go in my carry on luggage to settle and im good to go.

New Images

Check the pictures page for more.

Upcomming Site Changes

I have been thinking abit about the accessability of the site and in the next few weeks will add some new pages and adjust others. the most noteable change will be the addition of a dedicated tutorial page.


That wraps it up for now, have fun!

Last night I found a new program called Chaos scope. This program renders 3D fractals called strange attractors using mathematical formulae, but thats just technical stuff. Its really rather pretty. With this download im thinking of splitting and thus orginisg the pictures page, as I will be posting some of the images I get streight from this program up on the site as some of them are extrodinary. In addition to this I will soon be posting new photoshop created images using the renders I have made.

Once the nimages are up I will be trying to get a tutorial up that deals with ways to use chaos scope images I photoshop, as well as a full photoshop tutorial using whatever image I liked best of all my renders.

Its probably worth noting that this program will run on just about any windows OS and computer. I'm not sure about WINE, but mac and linux users can give it a try.

You can find Chaos Scope here.

Hello everyone, and welcome to the world of the mini-notebook. I got it yesterday, and it has actually been fine witht he photoshop install, so more tutorials will follow soon, however i am yet to get a mouse so it might be a while.

Also the smaller screen size has brought to light that I have designed the layout of this site to mostly suit large resoloution widescreen monitors, so I will shortly be fixing this (minor) flaw.

In other news, the blog will be updated later tonight and there is a new picture up. The next tutorial will i think be a multi part for another poster, but I'm still tossing up

Caio

Hello to all. I finally managed to work arround google sites (silly) lack of intergrated RSS and create a feed for the site!


Big thanks to Feed43 for this service. Please note that this may take upto 6 hours to update, and its a little buggy

As promised, here is the Tutorial for the Galaxy in the recent Multi-part image production.

Step 1: Noise

Actually, step one is making a new doccument. I used 1000x1000 for this, but feel free to use whatever suits yuor purpose. Just be forwarned that the noise filter gets a little harder to controll at higher resoloutions.

After that, make two layers, both filled black. Select the top layer and add noise as shown (as a general note, all things in this tutorial can and should be tweeked to the resoloution you need)

Step 2: Eraiser

Adjust the brighness and contrast of your layer to make it seem less bussy, then get a big, soft eraiser tool and make streaks in your noise layer, preserving the center. It should look something like this:
Step 3: Twirl and refine

Ok, now its time to use the twirl filter to give that spiral shape. Use whatever strength setting works for your picture. After this, erase the edges of the layer to refine the shape.
Step 4: Perspective

This bit is important, naturally. Use the transform tool to put the perspective on your galaxy. Enitrely upto you as tohow far you go with this, as allways, depends on your image!

Step 5: Brushes!

Grab some star brushes for this next part, open up a new layer, set your color to white and get brushing! I used a set i found over at Qbrushes (www.qbrushes.com). but feel free to use any you like.
As you can see, i didnt stick to the twirl 100%, but later eraised the outsides to shape it some more. Make sure the snesest parts are closest to the centre of the galaxy, so you get the 'hub'

Here is the final one I used for my poster:
And her it is in action!
If you liked this let me know via my contact details on the contact me page, and link the tutorial from your own site. Share it round :)

Allright, getting to the finishing touches here. This part will add the moon and the rings.

The Moon:

This bit is easy. If you look at part two, and follow the tutorial at the mottom you should be able to come up with a smalle plaet, in grey looks best normally, to use as the moon. Shade it and add a white atmosphere. Position it where you want it and you have the moon!
Rings come next. For these, I made a new smart object, and re sized it to 1500x1500 and filled it black. Then i rendered clouds and used the twirl filter on 999% twice.

If you want, at this point you can add some noise to the image to make it a bit mroe gritty.

Ok after that i erased the edges and the center, thus making rings, and returned to my original doccument. I set the new layer to screen and transformed and rotated it to look like rings.

As a side note, any you will see below, rings and moons normally orbit arround the same plane, ie the equator. More or less. I try to keep this in mind a bit when I make planet photos, but feel free to ignore it.

Ok, after adjusting the color balance of the rings layer, and masking out the part behind the planet, here is what I got:
Alright, now for the finishing touches, and then you get to see the final image.

Sunrise is important. Apply the image to a new layer and use the dodge tool to lighten spots on the horision. Then (for convenience) mask out all the other bits that werent changed. This give you mroe flexability to post-edit. Then use a linse flare on a black layer set to screen to make the bright horison.

The final image I made is below. Look out for the galaxy as a tutorial sometime later this week.


Enjoy!