Life Behind A Lens

The aim of this tutorial is to show you how to produce a mist or fog effect on an image like this:

(Image used with Little-Red’s permission)

Here goes then :)

• Open your image in GIMP and carry out any other work that you’re planning on it (sharpening, softening, adjusting contrast etc etc)
• Duplicate your background layer and make sure that your ‘copy’ (the top layer) is selected.
• Go to Filters->Render->Clouds->Plasma in your main image window.

Note: Once the Plasma dialogue window is open, you can cycle through different ‘seeds’ to generate different effects.

• You will now have a visible multicoloured layer and your actual image hidden underneath. Don’t Panic!! It’s supposed to be like this :)
• Next step is to turn your cloud layer into greyscale (Colours->Desaturate)
• Now, all you need to do is adjust the opacity by moving the slider above the layers section of the layers, channels, paths etc tool window. Do this until you get the level of fog cover just how you want it. (Around 30% is normally a pretty nice place to start, but it does depend on how thick you want the effect).

That’s it, job’s a goodun.. Have fun making your crispy clear images all misty :))

This is another Selective Coloring Tutorial for Gimp (Although I suspect that it’s probably all but identical to the technique used in Photoshop). A very simple method of carrying out SC work on solid objects (buildings, cars, balls, bricks etc etc).

Here’s how it works…

• Open up your image in Gimp.
• Zoom in 200-400% so you can get a nice smooth selection of the area that you want to colour.
• Use the lasso (free select) tool to trace around the edges of what you want colored (Third icon in on the top row of the toolbox window or Tools->Selection Tools->Free Select in your main image window)
• Make sure to pick your starting point at the end (or obvious point of your object) so you can easily close the selection once you have traced the outline of it all.

Note: To add other areas of the image to your original selection, hold down shift as you click your additional lasso starting points.

• Then hit CTRL+I to invert the selection (which chooses everything outside of your colored region)
• Then just Colours->Desaturate or choose whichever method you normally use to convert to B&W

That’s it. very simple..

This is with special thanks to JGetsinger for posting the original information on this method in the Selective Coloring Group Tutorial & Help Forums and permitting me to duplicate it like this.

Have fun with that coloring! :))

Embedding a youtube video into Redbubble is actually pretty easy..

To do it, simply type:

youtube:///

and then add the latter part of the youtube web address (shown in bold type)
"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sTJ7AzBIJoI" for your chosen video. Like this:

youtube:///watch?v=sTJ7AzBIJoI

Lastly, if you want the video to play automatically when someone visits the page containing your video, add the following code to the end of the above...

&autoplay=1

Like this: youtube:///watch?v=sTJ7AzBIJoI&autoplay=1

That's it.. Job done..

Easy huh? :)

*Note: The video must have embedding enabled for it to work within RB!*

For anyone that's curious, here's the video that the code above belongs to:

Okey, so this tutorial is here to give you a basic overview of the coding used in Redbubble to format text, add text links, embed pictures and link from your embedded pictures..

Formatting Text

Two basic formatting styles for use on Redbubble are Bold and Italics.. To produce bold text, simply add an asterisk at each end of the text that you want to enhance..

So, *I like Redbubble* will give you I like Redbubble
Italics is pretty much the same only you need to use an underscore..

So, _I like Redbubble_ will give you I like Redbubble

Text Links

Text links are useful for pointing people from one part of your Redbubble area to another. If you have an image and piece of writing that are related, for example. To do this, you need to put quotation marks at the start and end of the text that you want to link, follow it with a colon and then add the web address that you want to link to. Like this:

"Ross's Redbubble Profile":http://www.redbubble.com/people/Psychosis

The result of which will be Ross's Redbubble Profile

Embedding Images

Embedding an image into an area of RB is just as easy as highlighting text in bold or italics..

Simply add an exclamation mark at each end of the images html address.. So;

!http://images-0.redbubble.net/img/art/border:blackwithdetail/product:laminated-print/size:small/view:preview/3709388-5-black-string.jpg!

Will give you:






















(Ignore the link on this image, it's blogger asking if you want to see a bigger version, not part of the code!)

Linking From An Embedded Image

Basically, this is a combination of the code for embedding an image and linking from text, like this:

!http://images-0.redbubble.net/img/art/border:blackwithdetail/product:laminated-print/size:small/view:preview/3709388-5-black-string.jpg!:http://www.redbubble.com/people/psychosis/art/3709388-5-black-string

Which will give you this:






















To be really clever, you can also place a small text bubble within the code so that when someone hovers over the image a small text popup appears.. To do this, just add the relevant text, in brackets, after the image address and before the second exclamation mark, like this:

!http://images-0.redbubble.net/img/art/border:blackwithdetail/product:laminated-print/size:small/view:preview/3709388-5-black-string.jpg(Black String)!:http://www.redbubble.com/people/psychosis/art/3709388-5-black-string

I hope that helps out a bit.. :)