You are definitely coming a long! These are lovely! :)
I especially love 2&3 of "Artist's Choice" and 4 of "One Image".
Can I make a suggestion though? I think on some of you're icons, you don't set the opacity of you're textures light enough. On "Why We Fight" (which is a lovely icon only that's it's a little too hard to see) and "Artist's Choice" 1 & 5, this is the most evident. When I use textures myself, I tend to put them on a low opacity (like 35%) so they shouldn't detract at all from the picture you're using, but instead emphasize some aspect of the pic. I don't know what "blending mode" you are setting your texture layers to, but try playing around with different ones and then taking the opacity down, it should help a lot. :)
Another technique I use if I want to see more of the texture but without compromising the picture is to bring up the contrast on just the texture layer, so that when you set that layer to "screen", "overlay", "multiply", "color dodge" or "soft light" or whatever blending mode you use, you can see the texture better and also see more of the picture underneath.
Hope that helped in some way. I know you're using GIMP and not photoshop (which is what I use), but two of my brothers use GIMP as well, so if you need a deeper explanation on how "blending modes" work on GIMP I'll get them to show me. :)
Lovely efforts though! Always nice to see your stuff!
2&3 are a couple of my favorites, too. And my reason for not being big on #5 is actually yours, as well - it was my last one and a rush job, wholly uninspired, and overall, I know I could have done it better. If I could go back and do it again, I'd probably change / merge the texture layers, up the contrast of the cap to make the underlying image stronger, and overlay the texture image with the same image - but I like your suggestion, better, actually - I really, really, really underuse blending, because as much as I love playing with opacities and layers, and even if I understand the idea behind blending, on GIMP, it never seems to work like I'd like - which really just means I need to practice it, not avoid it, but in fact that's what I do - same with color balance). GIMP is frustrating in that regard... it sometime feels a bit like you do 2x as much to get a similar effect to PS. :D
#1 actually is the cap itself - no textures are on it, whatsoever. So I suppose it might be the contrast and/or layer settings that needs adjusting?
Thanks for comments & the suggestions, too! They're actually really great ones, as always they are incredibly helpful- and it's nice to know what to work on. *Hugs*
I especially love 2&3 of "Artist's Choice" and 4 of "One Image".
Can I make a suggestion though? I think on some of you're icons, you don't set the opacity of you're textures light enough. On "Why We Fight" (which is a lovely icon only that's it's a little too hard to see) and "Artist's Choice" 1 & 5, this is the most evident. When I use textures myself, I tend to put them on a low opacity (like 35%) so they shouldn't detract at all from the picture you're using, but instead emphasize some aspect of the pic. I don't know what "blending mode" you are setting your texture layers to, but try playing around with different ones and then taking the opacity down, it should help a lot. :)
Another technique I use if I want to see more of the texture but without compromising the picture is to bring up the contrast on just the texture layer, so that when you set that layer to "screen", "overlay", "multiply", "color dodge" or "soft light" or whatever blending mode you use, you can see the texture better and also see more of the picture underneath.
Hope that helped in some way. I know you're using GIMP and not photoshop (which is what I use), but two of my brothers use GIMP as well, so if you need a deeper explanation on how "blending modes" work on GIMP I'll get them to show me. :)
Lovely efforts though! Always nice to see your stuff!
Reply
#1 actually is the cap itself - no textures are on it, whatsoever. So I suppose it might be the contrast and/or layer settings that needs adjusting?
Thanks for comments & the suggestions, too! They're actually really great ones, as always they are incredibly helpful- and it's nice to know what to work on. *Hugs*
Reply
Leave a comment