>First: No is not your eyes or your monitor, these pictures are blurry as heck.
Some time back we talked about ways and means of doing a critical analysis of your own work - while you were working on it on the late.
Someone said that they have a video camera that points at the wood that they are working on, and the monitor is turned 90 deg so they can see what is will look like.
Most others talked about taking the bowl off the lathe, setting it upright with a solid background, and analysing it.
WELL, I am working on my largest hollow segmented piece (two of them in fact), 15" in diameter. I am turning them in two halves that will be joined after the insides are finished.
But doing it this way, you can not always tell how it is going to work. Is it going as planned, etc.
SO, last night I took the top, newly finished feature ring and the top, and stacked them up. Then I take a picture of them together. I open that picture in Adobe Photoshop, and using the brush tool, I blacken in the background.
At this point the walls on the bowl are 1"-1.25" thickness, so there is plenty of room for modifications if necessary. So again using the brush tool, I "Cut" away at the wood to get a shape I like.
In the case of the bowl below, the shape I have designed will not need any modification, and is going as designed.
>Right now my plans for this particular one are to ebonize the Walnut - resulting in a study in Black and White. This one is intended to be my donation for the AAW Educational Auction.
Thanks guys - Mike, I am always encouraged when Wally says the form is good. Kind of like Michelangelo saying you got your sculpture/painting down.
>using the brush tool, I blacken in the background.
If you haven't tried it, rather than using the brush tool to paint out the background you can make a layer mask. The mask is non-destructive in that you can edit it to erase or unerase. The basic steps I use (with the full version of Photoshop):
- Double-click the "Background" in the Layers palette to turn the background into a layer.
- In the Layers palette, make a duplicate layer for backup: drag the layer to the little "create new layer" button (or right-click and choose Duplicate); turn the backup layer off in the Layers Palette
- Make a selection around the bowl, either by click-click-click with the Lasso, by dragging with the Magnetic Lasso selection tool, with the Extract command, or by painting in the bowl with black in the Quick Mask mode.
- Once you have your selection, from the menu choose Layer/Add Layer Mask/Reveal selection. This will erase the bowl background.
- Create a new layer below the image layers and add a background image or fill it in with grey or black or something.
It is usually quickest to use the magnetic lasso tool to drag a selection around the object. This tool looks for contrast and snaps a line to the boundary. If it's not perfect you can edit it as described below.
The beauty of this method is it gives you more control and you can easily edit the selection. Set the Feather parameter to a pixel or two before drawing the initial selection to make a smooth antialiased boundry between the foreground and background. To refine the edges after adding the layer mask (erase more or unerase some), just click on the mask in the Layers Palette and paint with black to erase more and white to unerase.
Instead of creating a layer mask, you can alternatively turn on Quick Mask Mode (little buttons below foreground/background swatches in the tools palette and paint out either the background OR the bowl with black. The black will show up as red but that painted will be selected when you return to Standard Mode. Invert if necessary and use Backspace to erase the selection. However, the Layer Mask method is usually a far better way to go.
I also use this method if I want to keep the original background but edit it somewhat (change the brightness, saturation, color, sharpness) without affecting the foreground. You can do some very complicated non-destructive editing this way. I have some files that have 20 or more layers, most of them with layer masks.
If you already know all this, sorry for the insult! (Maybe someone else will be interested)
Yes, I am using the full version of Photoshop 7.0.
Thanks for your tips. Since I tend to use this more of a quick and dirty method, I usually keep a copy of the orignal, and work on a copy. If I make a move I do not like, I can always go back a step or more with the history dialog box.
Maybe of interest: I use a software package produced by Lloyd Johnson called Woodturner Pro and 3dPro. WTP is the program the builds my cut list for the segmented bowls. With 3DP I can model the shape I want to use, and then import it into WTP and build a bowl around it. One of the nice newer features of 3DP is the ability to import a picture of a bowl that I like the shape of as a background, and then use the 3DP to copy the shape - modify as necessary, and then import it into WTP.
If you'd rather spend $$$ on wood than software...
Craig Daymon
>...there is a very powerful FREE alternative to Photoshop called, the Gimp, that is the leading graphics program on Linux. It is available for Windows (and the Mac) as well and there is a version, Cinepaint(?), that is widely used by the film industry. (Think Stuart Little, the Hulk, Lord of the Rings.) The interface throws many people off a bit, but recently there was a group that modified the interface to be very much like Photoshop.
The modified interface version is called, gimpShop, and may be something the more frugal (cheap) among us might find worth checking into. Here are some links to check out both versions.
Now you're talking my language! I do 3D modeling/animation for a living. I do mostly technical and scientific visualization, but with a lot of architecture lately.
Alhough I just use Photoshop as a supporting tool, I use it a lot so if anyone has Photoshop questions, I might be able to help.
Someday I'd like to find out more about using modeling and software for segmented work. Before I got into graphics I spent over 17 years doing hard-core software development so I've thought about developing my own software, but it sure would be easier to just buy some!
Just for fun, some buildings where I work, and an overlay of the same buildings with an aerial photo. The overlay required an unbelieveable amount of Photoshop work! We used these and other images for planning and public relations long before any ground was broken.
