RAWr Creativity! Show your raw self(ies)!

[AyelaNewLife]

47 minutes ago, Seicher Rae said:

I love how you showed the various layers. I've heard people talking about this technique, and honestly... while I understand on one level--translucent layers, mmhmm, I totally do NOT get how it is done in RL. You wouldn't, by any chance, have a good reference link to step-by-step it, would you? I'm afraid I'm in need of more hand holding than the scope of this thread, so a youtube or blog article or something. I'm not actually being too lazy to look, but instead there are thousands of such references out there and most of them are only meh. Since you know how to do this, maybe you have a good source (ok, so yeah, I can be lazy and not drive myself crazy by piecing through the thousands)?

Okies, 30 second tutorial time with Ayela! 

(I lied; it's more than 30 seconds.)

This is one of those things that takes practice, as it's more of a "feel" for what would work in editing when selecting windlights. So the best thing to do is start simple. And by simple, I mean just using the one snap. This is a bit of a "for dummies" tutorial, so soz if I'm stating the obvious.

Load a photo into your editing suite of choice; I use GIMP, but The Forbidden Software has a near-identical feature for this. Here's one I prepared earlier:

Now duplicate this layer. By right clicking the layer in the layer window, and hitting duplicate layer. 

Select the top layer to make sure you're editing the top copy, then change the mode from Normal to Overlay. For me, this window looks like this:

(Please ignore the file name - I don't often take photos in Firestorm :P)

The overlay mode does, well, just that. It overlays the pixels of the two layers, combining them into something more vibrant - like this:

Okay that's more vibrant for sure. Too virbrant. Ew. We don't like this.

But we like vibrancy; just not this much. We therefore will change the Opacity slider.

Layers are applied top to bottom. Opacity refers to how 'translucent' each layer is; 100 opacity means the layer is fully opaque and you cannot see any of the layers below, while 0 opacity means the layer is fully transparent and does not impact the layers beneath. In this case, we are going to set the slider to 20, as we want just a touch of the vibrant top layer, but mostly want the tones of the base shot.

That's better! We've just added a little more kick to the colours of the base shot, without doing anything fancy.

(Two things to note: using filters etc will generally only affect the selected layer. I therefore get my layers in order, save a separate copy of the photo at that moment, then merge the layers into one and continue editing. Secondly; most layer modes aren't that useful for what we're doing. Normal is just... normal. Overlay is this. Lighten/Darken to just that; the two layers are compared, and the lighter pixel is used. Addition, uh, 'adds' the brightness/vibrancy of the two layers together, can be useful at low opacities. I don't personally use any other mode.)

But let's go deeper. Let's introduce a second windlight layer into the mix.

The camera position has not moved, nor has my avatar. The sun angle of this windlight was manually set to match the previous windlight; 8:25am, and 0.388. Because of that, the shadows match up perfectly with the original, and thus the two can easily be layered.

Please note that viewers do not like changing existing windlight times to anything other than the nearest 5 minutes - so always make sure your initial windlight is a multiple of 5 minutes.

This new layer is warm and vibrant, but doesn't look too natural in it's raw form. We want to include a portion of this vibrancy and warmth, thus will be layering. Let's turn off the duplicated original layer, by toggling visibility of the layer. Then, let's add this new layer at the top, and keeping the mode at Normal, set the opacity to 30.

Okay, so we've got the warmth and a little vibrancy now. It's not quite as vibrant as the shot two photos above, however. So let's duplicate this new layer, set the mode to overlay, and set the opacity to 10 this time. We don't want to go overboard and drown out the base shot.

And there we have it - our finished shot! ...or at least, we've finished layering, and can now tweak further with editing if needed.

The white background was actually a poor choice for this; a conventional background would demonstrate this better, I feel. But that's an Ayela Layering 101. That's the basic building blocks of technique, and with practice you can get more and more convoluted layering setups done, to taste.

I hope this helps! Probably not.

[Seicher Rae]

On 5/11/2020 at 12:02 PM, Zeta Vandyke said:

Usually only post screenshots on the other topic, as that's more about the look than the photo to me. Sometimes I really like a pic well enough to also post it on Flickr, and at that point I like to edit it a bit to add some effects or sometimes just a few fixes.

I'm not really good at photoshop as program, but use a tool with tons of preset filter combinations that you can play around with endlessly called ON1. Sometimes some stuff from PS itself, like grain and blurring edges and stuff. And using clone stamp and mixer pencil to clean up clipping and weird edges and shadow stuff.

 

Really subtle editing! Love it. And yes, the edited version, on the face in particular where you've evened out the tones under the eyes, really works! So glad you've decided to join in the fun here.

 

[Seicher Rae]

On 5/11/2020 at 12:18 PM, kiramanell said:

Okay, please excuse the crudity of this quickly slapped-together photo. And let's call it 'Morning Coffee', so it actually looks like I put some effort into it.

stuff and phots

 

But things have jagged edges, no matter what I do; like:

 

 

My hair looks horrifically jagged, as do my arms.  Like no AA is happening at all.

Oy. None of this "please excuse..."  The photos are great. I'm honestly not sure which I prefer, and one doesn't HAVE TO prefer one over another, because sometimes both are good, just different. (Geez, I sound like I'm running for office.)

I don't really see the jaggies you are talking about.

[Dano Seale]

17 minutes ago, Seicher Rae said:

I don't really see the jaggies you are talking about.

I think she means the outside line of her right arm. I don't even count the hair as with my crappy PC I wouldn't be able to tell the difference anyway!

[Seicher Rae]

@kiramanell I don't know if this will work until I try it, but this is enlarged about 300% on my monitor, from the snip you gave above. It is a screenshot clip. I don't see the jaggies!

ETA: Hurrah it worked. And it allows you to click on the image and enlarge it from the Forum size a few times.

ETA 2: Ok, if it is really, really, really blown up, I can see some. But honestly, without going around trying to find "errors" (and yeah, I'm sure there are some people out there who do just that), I would never, ever have seen them. Ever. I would have seen two, nicely done photos that I would have ♥d.

Edited May 12, 2020 by Seicher Rae

[Seicher Rae]

1 hour ago, AyelaNewLife said:

Okies, 30 second tutorial time with Ayela! 

 

 

 

Will you marry me?

I followed along just fine. Jury is still out (and doubtful) that I can duplicate the effort.

First I need to go inworld... and that has been so hard to do lately. :::whine:::

[kiramanell]

58 minutes ago, Seicher Rae said:

@kiramanell I don't know if this will work until I try it, but this is enlarged about 300% on my monitor, from the snip you gave above. It is a screenshot clip. I don't see the jaggies!

ETA: Hurrah it worked. And it allows you to click on the image and enlarge it from the Forum size a few times.

ETA 2: Ok, if it is really, really, really blown up, I can see some. But honestly, without going around trying to find "errors" (and yeah, I'm sure there are some people out there who do just that), I would never, ever have seen them. Ever. I would have seen two, nicely done photos that I would have ♥d.

 

Awww, thank you for all this work. ❤️ed it (sooooooo stole that from you). You are a credit to your own thread!

Thing is, I had already uploaded it as .jpg (making it smudgier already; my bad). So, it's actually a bit hard to get it to show exactly like the viewer took the shot. In its literal raw form (screengrab from a zoomed original), it looks like below.** The jaggies are now clearly visible (on her arm, chin, etc). I can asssure you, it does not look like that in the viewer in-world.  So, the AA is simply not being applied, somehow.

** Even PS appears to have applied some halo-ing (a common side-effect of enlargement); weird.

N.B. Usually, upscaling to like 10,000 px, and back, tends to reduce jaggies a bit. And some programs that upscale will automagically use some A.I. (like fractal correction) to make things smoother. All of these things I could have done, of course, but I simply want me to look as sharp and crisp as Annie and her amazing Doux hair.  And I'm too OCD that I can't get my viewer/me to get it right.

 

[Seicher Rae]

2 minutes ago, kiramanell said:

 

Awww, thank you for all this work. ❤️ed it (sooooooo stole that from you). You are a credit to your own thread!

Thing is, I had already uploaded it as .jpg (making it smudgier already; my bad). So, it's actually a bit hard to get it to show exactly like the viewer took the shot. In its literal raw form (screengrab from a zoomed original), it looks like below.** The jaggies are now clearly visible (on her arm, chin, etc). I can asssure you, it does not look like that in the viewer in-world.  So, the AA is simply not being applied, somehow.

** Even PS appears to have applied some halo-ing (a common side-effect of enlargement); weird.

N.B. Usually, upscaling to like 10,000 px, and back, tends to reduce jaggies a bit. And some programs that upscale will automagically use some A.I. (like fractal correction) to make things smoother. All of these things I could have done, of course, but I simply want me to look as sharp and crisp as Annie and her amazing Doux hair.  And I'm too OCD that I can't get my viewer/me to get it right.

 

Yeah, now I see it. 

I don't even want to (and won't look) know how jaggy my stuff is now. I will live in blissful ignorance and only worry about this stuff if it is being reprinted in RL to be sold for millions of $.

[kiramanell]

Just now, Seicher Rae said:

Yeah, now I see it. 

I don't even want to (and won't look) know how jaggy my stuff is now. I will live in blissful ignorance and only worry about this stuff if it is being reprinted in RL to be sold for millions of $.

 

With your talent, your stuff getting reprinted in RL is actually a real possibilty. 🥰 And I doubt your stuff is jaggy (I saw some black- and white photos from you on Flickr, juat the other day); almost all ppl posting here (and in the other threads) seem to have gotten it right, 'cept lil old old. 😛 (Not really that old, lol, but it sounded funnier).

N.B. Not going to spam your thread endlessly with my cr*p, don't worry. Looks like we got some good tutorials out of it, though. And RAW seems to appeal to ppl (and that title, RAWr, that was a cute touch too). 

❤️

[CaerolleClaudel]

3 hours ago, AyelaNewLife said:

Load a photo into your editing suite of choice; I use GIMP, but The Forbidden Software has a near-identical feature for this.

Some of us have mentioned this in other threads in the past, but there is what a lot of us consider the perfect middle ground between GIMP and PhotoShop, Affinity Photo. Very inexpensive, almost as powerful and full-featured as Ps (except for raw conversion, but you don't need that with SL photos anyhow), and for a lot of us, far, far easier to learn and use than Ps. The company that makes it has a lot of free videos, and the forum is very helpful. One big downside is that you cannot do depth maps for depth-of-field like in Ps, but mostly it is excellent.

[CaerolleClaudel]

2 hours ago, Seicher Rae said:

Really subtle editing! Love it. And yes, the edited version, on the face in particular where you've evened out the tones under the eyes, really works! So glad you've decided to join in the fun here.

 

Seicher (and I am saying Seeker in my head not Sicker lol 😉 ), getting started with layers is simple but something you can play with learning forever, with all the masking and blend modes and such stuff. The best thing to do is to get hold of an app, read or watch a few tutorials based on that app, then just experiment! 🙂

[CaerolleClaudel]

2 hours ago, Seicher Rae said:

@kiramanell I don't know if this will work until I try it, but this is enlarged about 300% on my monitor, from the snip you gave above. It is a screenshot clip. I don't see the jaggies!

ETA: Hurrah it worked. And it allows you to click on the image and enlarge it from the Forum size a few times.

ETA 2: Ok, if it is really, really, really blown up, I can see some. But honestly, without going around trying to find "errors" (and yeah, I'm sure there are some people out there who do just that), I would never, ever have seen them. Ever. I would have seen two, nicely done photos that I would have ♥d.

I am soooo glad to see kira posting pics! I would like her post 10 times if I could (maybe I need to dust off some alts, lol 😉 ).

[taisiyakarpenko]

For once, 100% on topic...

Raw - check, selfie - check, croppe... darn, 66% on topic then

 

 

[Seicher Rae]

3 minutes ago, taisiyakarpenko said:

For once, 100% on topic...

Raw - check, selfie - check, croppe... darn, 66% on topic then

 

Nice try, but :::buzzer noise::: you are 100% on topic. In the OP is: That means they are not to be edited with post-production techniques, like from Photoshop. Cropping and signatures are ok. 

AND... nice photo!

[Saturn Venus]

On 5/10/2020 at 9:33 PM, IvyLarae said:

Just some low grade snaps of me rocking Doux's Shamiya

God I would marry this hair

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

That hair is beautiful 🤩...is it on MP?

Edited May 13, 2020 by Aiiyaz

[Dano Seale]

2 hours ago, kiramanell said:

almost all ppl posting here (and in the other threads) seem to have gotten it right,

If this is how yours look on a 1080Ti I dread to think how bad mine will look that close taken on my GTX 545!  😲

Took this shot for a new profile pic' and was really happy with it.....until I now notice the jags around her boob, shoulder and hip. So thanks for that! 😔

 

[taisiyakarpenko]

1 hour ago, Dano Seale said:

...until I now notice the jags around her boob, shoulder and hip. So thanks for that! 😔

That image is 1024x768 and when I look at it at 100%  - I cannot see any jags...

If you zoom in to more than 100%,  you will start to get "jags" or rather see the "antialiasing" if that is turned on - no matter what card you have...

This is a 500x500 screengrab of a 6000x3128 render on a RTX2060 card:

500x500 screengrab of same image zoomed in to 400% in PS:

500x500 screengrab of a 12000x6259 render (yay, Black Dragon), 100% scaling

As you see, the only way to avoid jagging for a specific crop is to render at larger resolution...

 

 

Edited May 13, 2020 by taisiyakarpenko

[Seicher Rae]

On 5/11/2020 at 5:56 PM, Nalates Urriah said:

This is interesting... From Seicher's OP is was thinking this would be the images from the viewer without any post-production. I looks to me like I under weighted the word "CREATIVITY" in the title. And I love that people are writing about how they made their images.

But, I think the idea was not to process the images... SO I HAVE TO FALME THe BUMCH OF YOU! [sic]

In the upper right I am on my roof with with the default Windlight.

I created a 'facelgiht'  to put on the end of the Thrower. Tweaked... well... twisted the c r a p out of the Windlight day. Notice no shadow. I would have had to go with a Projector to get an SL shadow. 

It was easier to do the flames and shadow in PS. The Thrower's flames pretty much suck. And I couldn't get a shot of the flames coming out of the Thrower. But, it does throw them. And they burn in a ball for 20 or 30 seconds. So, this would be great fun for roasting newbies in a safe hub... which is next region north. Alas, I must be growing up, I resisted. 

Suggestion

People will do what they do with this thread. I am ok with that. When I read the OP, thank you @Seicher Rae, before reading all you guys' nonconformist deviating posts, that I would post a raw image here and the processed image 'over there' and link from there to here. I assumed that might be less intimidating to the new then linking from here to there. (Are our processed images intimidating? ) Instead I combined the raw and processed as it seems to be the custom being built.

But, whatever... I may have totally missed the point. I do like what has happened.

...sorry you didn't make it to the fouth page without a flame... 😂

When I first saw this post, I was flying through the thread just trying to see what was what. The thing that caught my eye was the "...sorry you didn't make it to the fourth page without a flame". I cringed. I didn't even pay attention to the rest of your post OR the photo. I just worriedly scrolled like a maniac to see "NOW what???" I couldn't find anything. Then I came back to the post and LAUGHED. 😄 Cheeky devil!

Then I got confused by your possible confusion and now it is past midnight several days later and I'm just giggling because I should have some sort of response by now but I don't! :::whine:::

So... um ... yes. The point of the thread IS primarily photos, namely raw, unedited screenshots of your avatar. The exception is if you want to do a before and after editing shot, in that case you have to (or else...?) include the raw shot with the edited, or a link to say the Flickr edited or whatever the eff. 

And yes, sometimes showing raw photos, or the snapshots of daily fun SL, can make people feel a bit intimidated if they are thrown in amongst fancier (edited or not) artsy shots. I'm not sure how we get around that other than to say "Don't Be Intimidated" and "There's value in all kinds of photos...edited, artsy-fartsy, raw, snapshot-type..." I post in the SL Feed, and that is all raw screenshots and the daily life snaps absolutely have value.

[kiramanell]

14 hours ago, Ajay McDowwll said:

Okay, I might as well bounce on in 🙂  I was playing around on one of my fountains this morning (I have WAY too many, because of course I do).  Here's the raw shot:

And here's the edited shot:

I usually just tweak the lighting a bit, with a touch of cropping.  This one I got all "I'm going to play with my stamp tool!" so I removed a random cube my husband had rezzed (he's trying to script something to explode into bacon, for reasons I do not entirely understand) and some buildings I kind of didn't like.  Looking at the end result though, I could have just removed the cube, maybe, and did the teensy bit of curve adjustment I did.

Edited to add that I'm still very much an SL Photography newbie.  I took the class on SL Photography at Caledon earlier this year, which helped with some setting issues... other than that, I generally just find where I want the picture, pick the pose, set the windlight I want (this was Daytime Shadows; Bryn Oh's Mayfly is another favorite), and commence to clicking.  I love how I got the dragonflies in this one 🙂

 

Love it! ❤️

At first glance (pre-coffee time), I thought "Hmm, there's a transparency issue on her hand." Then I said to myself, "Oh, no wait, you moron, that's just water! It's supposed to be transparent!" 😜 My brain does stuff like that.

Anyway, lovely shot of a lovely avatar. And your curves are just fine. 🤪

[kiramanell]

59 minutes ago, Seicher Rae said:

And yes, sometimes showing raw photos, or the snapshots of daily fun SL, can make people feel a bit intimidated if they are thrown in amongst fancier (edited or not) artsy shots. I'm not sure how we get around that other than to say "Don't Be Intimidated" and "There's value in all kinds of photos...edited, artsy-fartsy, raw, snapshot-type..." I post in the SL Feed, and that is all raw screenshots and the daily life snaps absolutely have value.

 

I'm still undecided what I personally find more intimidating: to be among ppl who who post extremely high-quality, artsy images, or among folks like you, who are such natural photography talents, that they get it right in one shot. 😋

[kiramanell]

11 hours ago, CaerolleClaudel said:

I am soooo glad to see kira posting pics! I would like her post 10 times if I could (maybe I need to dust off some alts, lol 😉 ).

 

No pressure, right?!  😜 Seriously, I'm blushing while reading it, and you are very dear for saying so, 😳 but I'm an absolute dilitant when it comes to this stuff.

[Panteleeva]

when i arrive at very beautiful place,i always think which dress will look the best to pose there or which light setting i should use. But here s just me in a beautiful place

[Ajay McDowwll]

6 hours ago, kiramanell said:

 

Love it! ❤️

At first glance (pre-coffee time), I thought "Hmm, there's a transparency issue on her hand." Then I said to myself, "Oh, no wait, you moron, that's just water! It's supposed to be transparent!" 😜 My brain does stuff like that.

Anyway, lovely shot of a lovely avatar. And your curves are just fine. 🤪

I didn't know whether to like or laugh... so I picked laugh for your wordplay lol

[Marigold Devin]

20 hours ago, Maitimo said:

Thankyou! The dress is from a full-perm mesh template that I textured myself. I love that dress so much. Buying a full perm kit and making my own, whatever colour and pattern I fancy on any given day, is working out to be a much cheaper way of extending my wardrobe rather than buying fatpacks.  Maybe one day I'll get organised enough to put them up for sale. Unfortunately, while making the texture takes me less than thirty minutes, texturing a whole pack of multiple sizes, making demo versions, making a texture-change hud, making an ad photo and setting up a marketplace listing takes hours.

And the shoes are from KC Couture; they look so good because they are the best shoes in SL, IMO.

Notes all down, especially about the shoes.  I really ought to start wearing shoes again. 

You should put some things up for sale. If you get time. But I know how time can just pass much more quickly being absorbed into such projects as you are involved with. I am quite in awe of creative people. 

[CaerolleClaudel]

2 hours ago, kiramanell said:

 

No pressure, right?!  😜 Seriously, I'm blushing while reading it, and you are very dear for saying so, 😳 but I'm an absolute dilitant when it comes to this stuff.

There is technical perfection, and there is what makes me smile. I liked a lot of different things about your pic, and it made me smile, and it makes me smile thinking of you posting pics, so overall was a more positive experience than viewing some of the gorgeous, perfect photos on the other thread.