venta

That second attempt reminds me of a set of interlocking Spongs.

And I'm now getting quite worried, because I don't seem to be able to find any useful online references to Spongs (either I'm finding misspellings of Sponge, or I'm finding it used as an exclamation.)

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fluffymark

Obviously it knows something you don't.

Rapper Knitting.

It's the next big thing, you know. ;)

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The various sharpens etc are probably keyed for photographic images - I suspect that with the small size of your source, the 'smart' procedures don't have enough information.

I don't use GIMP - more of a tattyshop monkey, but I can offer a few words of advice.

First up, I suspect your resolution is off. You should be looking at a relatively enormous file - printers usually run upwards of 300 dpi - that's 300 pixels to the inch, so you should be creating an image several thousand pixels up & down.

Secondly, again about resolution, make your image as big as you possibly can, muck about with it (e.g. tidy up edges etc) and then at the last possible step, reduce it to the correct size. There's very few artifacts introduced by shrinking (specifically, moire patterns, but you don't seem to have any close grids in that image) whereas a ton of problems arise from making things larger.

Personally, if that is the image you've got as a source, I'd be aiming to turn it into a very large black & white image with clean lines. I'd try vectorising it, cleaning the bezier curves up by hand and rendering it out at a very high resolution - but that's quite technical and may be limited to Photoshop.

Finally, if bitmappery is your only option, then I'd spend your efforts creating one nice high resolution version of a single sword, spending time on the ends. Once that's done, blow up your graphic to a big size and then arrange copies of your high-res sword in the correct places, using cut-n-paste to do the overlappy bits.

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I agree - sadly, I think all those things are beyond me.

Even the last one - last time I tried to combine more than one image in Photoshop, there was much swearing, getting cross, and eventual giving up. Yes, everyone else tells me it's trivial - but I couldn't manage it.

Thanks for the advice - guess this might be a longer term project than we were hoping for ;)

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Yes, Photoshop is somewhat arcane. Out of curiosity, you are familiar with the dictum of Layers aren't you? Because none may question the Layers - and there's no getting around them.

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you are familiar with the dictum of Layers

Imagine, if you will, that I am a little monkey clutching a crayon.

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It's the absolute most important thing to remember in Photoshop.

As far as Photoshop's concerned, every new thing you put 'on the picture' is stored on a new layer of transparent plastic laid on top of your picture. Every pasted thing goes on a new layer. Every bit of text - new layer. At the end of a normal few hours work, I'll be dealing with twenty or thirty layers, unless I've been managing them carefully.

All layers can be moved around and transformed independently of each other, and the layer order, visibility and activity can be quite important to how your image looks. It is entirely possible to be wondering 'why isn't this doing anything' while you're painting blue spots on a layer you can't see.

I get confused by layers sometimes, and I've been using Photoshop for nearly a decade now.

I suppose you could try and fight it (use "->Layers->Flatten Image" a lot) but to be honest, it's not a bad paradigm to get used to.

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If you absolutely hate layers then I have an old magazine cover disc with Paintshop Pro version 4 on it you could borrow. For most (but not all) things I find it is far easier - and faster - than later versions, or Photoshop.

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Ah. I'm vaguely aware of that, but have never seen it in action.

My experience goes thusly:

Start with picture.
Copy second picture to add to it.
Any means you can find of pasting it will open the damn thing in a new window, instead of adding it to the existing one.

So I suspect I never got as far as layers :)

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ar-gemlad.livejournal.com

He he he.

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waistcoatmark.livejournal.com

It's the curse of the Blair Witch infecting your computer. Hope it hasn't spread to mine.

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failmaster.livejournal.com

Post me a copy of the image and I'll turn my leet GIMP-fu skillz on it if you like.

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failmaster.livejournal.com

Doh. I#'ve just realised how stupid that was when the image is on this page. I'll have a play and get back to you.

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Cheers.

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> I found the Suede album cheap in a bargain bucket somewhere and have since been recommended against it, since it belongs to Suede's crap (ie post Butler-departure) era

I would agree that Head Music is Suede's weakest album, but not that Suede became crap the moment Butler left: Coming Up (also post-Butler) was a superb album IMO.

No record collection should be without Coming Up and Dog Man Star. The others are a bonus!

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satyrica.livejournal.com

I felt obliged to post since the subject of Suede has come up, but that pretty much sums up my thoughts as well. . . (except that maybe their last album was worse than Head Music)

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diffrentcolours

Whereas I think that Suede only got good after Bernard bloody Butler left. Head Music was still cack though.

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timsmith.livejournal.com

i may be wrong but often in times of peace swords were cerimonialy wraped in all sorts of materials varying from base metals to gold. the moor elobrate and expensive looking your wrap was the higher your status. the wrapping would start at the hilt of the sword and prevent it from being drawn. also this custom was observed by visiting nobles to show that they ment no harm. basicly it ment as a man you could have your big sword to swagger around with and not get yourself into any realy serious trouble.

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You reckon the GIMP knows this, and assessed my social standing and status as meriting wool ?

Bah. Damn graphics software with a silly name.

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timsmith.livejournal.com

telling someone to wrap thier sword in woll is fighting talk on anyones language.
i wouldent stand for that if i was you. take a stand, write to your mp.

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mejoff.livejournal.com

Called 'Peace binding' or a 'Peacebond', i beleive

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timsmith.livejournal.com

I lean something new every day. woo hoo.

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The correct way to do this would be to use Illustrator.

5-minute version here: rapper.ai

Adding curved text is trivial in Illustrator and the image can be produced at any size. The stick crossings need editing manually, but it shouldn't take more than 15 minutes at most.

(Your browser won't show it, but Photoshop will.)

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lanfykins.livejournal.com

I was considering saying that.

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I believe you, but I don't have Illustrator :)

(And I can't even look at the result just now, on account of only having the GIMP.)

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[pops up] Um - even this image is probably too small for good printwork, plus it's aliased - ew ew ew! ;-)

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RTFT - It's an Illustrator file - it doesn't have a size.

That was just

broadmeadow acting as a .ai viewer plugin for LJ !

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I wasn't referring to your little vector file, I was referring to that bitmap image in particular, cos

venta said "I'm very clueless about graphics - thanks very much for the image posted"

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"Thanks very much for the image (for which you) posted (a link)"

I had grasped that somehow Bateleur's image (which I couldn't look at) was different from the .gif that Broadmeadow included in a comment, though it's only in the later stage of this thread that it's become apparent why it's different :)

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Bateleur also said "The stick crossings need editing manually, but it shouldn't take more than 15 minutes at most", ie it's not a finished work. I had no expectation this rendered image would be considered as anything other than a convenient way of viewing the image.

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Mind you, I fear the 15 minutes may be optimistic - I'll report back tomorrow how long it took me to achieve something passable.

I suspect Bateleur has never tried to draw in Photoshop with only a laptop strokey-mouse, and no artistic ability whatsoever :)

(In my case, it's compounded because I draw better with my right hand than my left, but use a mouse better with my left than my right...)

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Looking at the image again, I've got one more suggestion for you -

I think you should make the length of the end-caps of the batons (or swords) approximately equal to the diameter of the central pentangle, otherwise your logo is going to look quite spikey.

Personally, I'd expand the central pentangle as much as you can get away with, maybe including another logo inside it?

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onebyone.livejournal.com

But doesn't that either cost $499 or require dumping the bulk of the project off onto some other muggins? As such, calling "the correct" way is IMO a little strong.

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lanfykins.livejournal.com

Or having copied the thing illegally from your previous employers.

And then lost the CD. Bah.

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It's the correct way to solve the problem assuming the problem is "Produce a print-ready t-shirt design".

If you re-cast the problem as "You have a bic biro, a whiteboard marker and a paper towel, produce a print-ready t-shirt design" then yes, you'll get a different answer.

(And if

venta gives me the text and some idea of font it wouldn't be too hard to take it to the point where the real work could be done in the GIMP anyway.)

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The text is simply "Mabel Gubbins", though the jury's currently out on whether the text should be curved round the bottom, round the top, or one word each. My favourite was "in a straight line underneath" :)

Font is (bah!) comic sans. I liked the one M$ calls Impact, but I've not yet managed to convince others it'd look better.

I'm afraid I'm a bit lost in the program here, and I'm not sure what you mean by "the real work" - other than sorting out the intersections, what d'you think I'd need to do ?

I'm very clueless about graphics - thanks very much for the image posted.

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Well, I guess we're just following orders, so Comic Sans (<spit> !) it is for now. Changed version uploaded.

And no, I didn't mean anything besides sorting out intersections. It's "real work" only in the sense that it requires slightly more care and patience.

Incidentally, whilst I'm a fan of Impact (it's the one I use for my work homepage) it's not ideal for curved text because it's very narrow. Would work nicely for the straight text you advocate... but you can easily add that yourself and prove your detractors wrong !

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Thanks a lot. I'll have a look when I get home tonight.

(I load a .ai file into Photoshop, and it becomes apparent what to do with it ? Does it ask me how big I want it ?)

I owe you a Big Cake ;)

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Yes, it asks you how big you want it. Also, you can set the resolution. (I use 300dpi for t-shirts.) With the resolution set correctly, it should be possible to specify image size in real world units (eg. centimetres).

Editing with a laptop 'mouse' can be accomplished, but you may find you need to resort to the cursor keys for positioning things exactly.

Incidentally, the vast majority of printshops can work directly from Photoshop files, so there may be no need to actually print it out.

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I agree Illustrator is a good vector program, but it's far from the only one, and she did mention she had Photoshop which does Paths quite well...

Therefore I'd describe your solution as a correct one - but far from the only one. Also, it may be expensive ;-)

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Just for a note: you've added each rapper on top of the preceeding ones. So the first one, at the bottom of the pile, is the horizontal, and the last one is the one sloping steeply from the top left (handle) to bottom right.

They should be intertwined in three dimensions, so the whole thing locks together. Which is probably what

venta means by "sorting out the intersections".

Not knowing anything about Illustrator, I don't know how soluble that is, or whether it's a task better suited to a "pencil and eraser" approach (ie. a bitmap editor).

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Apologies: I've misattributed.

broadmeadow created the image, not

bateleur

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Nah,

broadmeadow merely rendered and posted

bateleur's vector plot from Illustrator.

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Indeed. I posted in response to Venta's saying "(And I can't even look at the result just now, on account of only having the GIMP.)" as I had just loaded it up to have a look!

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lanfykins.livejournal.com

That's what

bateleur meant by 'the stick crossings need editing manually'.

Illustrator, like Photoshop, uses the layer approach. Each stick is on a different layer, so a stick can only be on top of others or underneath them, not woven through them.

You can fix that either by a number of horrific kludges in Illustrator, or by using a bitmap editor.

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Nah, let's do this properly.

Lay 'em out in a three-d package, and then ray trace 'em.

zandev?

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