Open Thread: Photoshop

Hosted by a flame texture

The coolest thing about being slightly weird is that you get to teach yourself new stuff all the time.  For instance: boffer larp is teaching me photomanipulation.

For context: the rules for my friend's boffer larp desperately needed a rewrite, for clarity and presentation.  As said friend is running himself ragged right now and I'm unemployed, I volunteered to do it, and to put the results up on the game's website.  So for the last few weeks I've been writing, editing, keeping track of incongruities and confusing bits, and coding some funky HTML (which I taught myself a few years ago for a different larp.)

And then I realized, as long as I'm putting in all this work, why not make it pretty?  I need pictures!  And as it turns out, several lovely people over on Deviant Art have created stock images that they make available for free.  Yay!  But.  99% of them make it very clear that the images are NOT to be used as-is; they are to be used to create new art.

So in order to abide by the creators' rules and still have cool pictures for our rulebook... I've been teaching myself photomanipulation.

Despite the title above, I'm actually using GIMP, not Photoshop, because I like things that are free.  I'm actually getting... not-terrible at it :)  (If anyone's interested, I'm going to be putting the final pictures on DA myself later today, because one of the creators requested that as a condition for using her stock on a different website.  I'll post the link in the comments, but you have to promise to ignore my terrible poetry from 8 years ago!)

...but then I see a cool flame effect like the one above and sigh, because I have so much more to learn!

Open thread!  Do you like to play around in Photoshop or similar programs?  Do you have any cool images you've created that you'd like to show us?  Have you ever taught yourself a new skill for an unrelated geeky/weird hobby?  What's the coolest thing you've randomly taught yourself to do?
 ~ Kristycat

Monday Reminder!  While I have fun coming up with pretty pictures and/or interesting “prompt” questions for open threads, you aren’t limited to those!  These threads are open - go wild, talk about whatever moves you!  (Just remember that this is still a safe space, please!)  

And, like on all threads: please remember to use the "post new comment" feature rather than the "reply" feature, even when directly replying to someone else!