JoeC's blog

Hi all! As I am working on our "training" portal. I thought I might give you a look-see as to what the front interface will look like. So here it is:

For those of you who were at the meeting, you may remember the tutorial we did that resulted in creating the smoky trails. That was a fun one for me and prior to the meeting this is what I had completed.

Hi all! For those of you who were at the last meeting you will remember I went over a fun little new feature in PSCS5 Extended with the Repousse tool. The Repousse tool is one of PS's new 3D design tools. It is very helpful for extruding text. If you have forgotten most of the steps on  how to do that, you can check it here. Additionally, you might remember that I also said that you can bring PS3D files into After Effects. Well that tutorial will follow this one, along with a little benefical props to one of my favorite sponsors, Digieffects.

Finally, a few things about this post it is very raw. I did absolutely no editing, so you can sometimes hear my wife laughing and my baby crying. I just wanted the file up there for you :) As I get more efficient at creating these things, I will spend a little more time  on them. :) Enjoy the show!! (provided it works!) I haven't added the pre-loader yet so it might take a moment to load.

So I have had Cinema 4D for a while now and I will say honestly, it has taken me some time for me to get up to speed on it. Although, it is not due to frustrations or difficulty of the program. At the moment, I am still far from being capable at doing even some of the most rudimentary tasks. But, with that being said, I have to say that for a 3D program, Cinema 4D makes the rudimentary very simple to accomplish. This is a much different experience than working with other 3D programs.

At the March DMAG meeting we went over doing 3D in Photoshop. It was a "mainly because you can" kind of tutorial. I think that this image done in Cinema 4D will give you a good reason to say, hmmm, maybe having a 3D program in my toolkit wouldnt be so bad.

Hey All,

It has been a while since I have posted anything to my blog, so I thought I might give a little overview of what we did this last Thursday. If you missed the meeting, what a shame. It was one of our best ever. Why? Well because there was so much contribution from our members. Mark Comfort showed us how he turned himself into a Tron superhero leading us into bandying about the idea of creating a mascot for the group, a superhero mascot no less. Details to follow...

Brittany and Lynne presented the latest installment of DMAGAZINE. Looks like another great issue from a very dedicated group of people who worked very hard to make the mag happen. Kudos to you guys again.

And finally, I presented a demo on the Repousse tool in CS5. We seldom do 3D in the group and this was a first look at the power of Photoshop and its 3D capabilities. In the end we came up with an image that looked a bit like this:

When working with stock footage, one problem that I constantly face is the issue of "cleanliness". Yes, cleanliness, most stock footage is HD and so sharp you can cut digital steak with it. Well, not anymore, as in walks Aged Film from Digieffects.

Check this out.

Nothing special here. Just tinkering around. Can't wait to show you all CS5!

Ok, I like this better than what i plan on doing for tomorrow nights meeting so I am posting this one. :P Photoshop can become an addiction. This is my first hackish use of EZMask. I can recommend this product for those who are not in love with masking difficult areas. This image wasn't tremendously difficult, but it did have a lot of similar colors which always makes for a tough challenge.

Well, our next meeting is coming up and I am excited. We have grown a lot in the past couple of sessions and it is really exciting to see how this community is coming together. I wanted to take this moment to tell you about one of the raffles that is on the plate.

Alien Skin Software - Snap Art 2

Alien Skin has release its latest version of the turn a photo into art software Snap Art 2.

I have been playing with it and it is really fun. I am a horrible photographer, and an even worse artist. But this plug in helped me make something I might hang up in my house, like the closet behind all the clothes with the lights off. That's not how i feel about this plugin, just about my work. Anyhow here is a before and after example of what you can do with Snap Art. I will be giving away a copy at our up and coming meeting.

Well, 12:30 am and I am already nervous. Looks like tomorrows meeting will be HUGE. That is if all t he facebookers come. Otherwise, we will just be VERY BIG. Anyhow I look forward to seeing you all and just wanted to give you a bit of a preview of the project we will work on. I just finished it and am pretty proud. Get ready to do vector masks! Look forward to seeing you there!