Hanarky

Not sure, if this is of some interest or in the right forum. I am exercising paths right now and a good way to do so for me, is to choose a form with the freeform- tool and then try to recreate it with the paths-tools. The white shape in the pic is a freeform-shape and I modified it a bit, since I like more edgy forms. It's far from being perfect, but a good start

Actually I think, I will get a big fan of the paths-tool. It makes a lot of fun to create things with it. Maybe the one or other newbie gets encouraged to work with it.

Hanarky

P.S. let you surprise, when I am done with the paper-curl tut

hmm, why are the pics posted here so much darker than on my pc? [confused]

Welles

Nice exercise, Hanarky. I consider your stylization of the fleur-de-lis to be in the tradition of "King Louis VI meets Darth Vader." (and a venerable tradition at that!) [righton]

Stroker

Might look darker because of the white background on these boards. Just a regular optical illusion. If that's not the case, then you will have to do some gamma or colour management or something.

Open the doc in Photoshop.
Grab the magnifying tool and zoom way out so that the canvas is way smaller than the working window.
You should now have a bunch of space between the canvas and the working window.
Grab the paintbucket and pick pure white for the foreground colour.
Hold shift and click in the extra space.
That extra space should turn to white and your image should look considerably darker.

Using shift + paint bucket is a great way to help lessen the tricks being played on your eyes. I am constantly changing mine to a neutral colour in the general shade of the piece that I am working on. That is, if I'm working on a brighter piece, then I'll lighten that area; and if I'm working on a darker piece, then I'll darken that area.

Give it a try.
If that's not it, I'm sure someone will steer you in another direction.

Hanarky

Stroker, I tried out, what you told me and you are right. Having set the extra space to white, darkened the pic a lot. I never noticed that, since I have every canvas in my pc turned in a medium grey, since ths hard white color hurts my eyes. An additional darkening effect comes, when I scale down the pic to about 500 pixel width in "Save for web" for posting here. I always use the 1024 x 768 picture seize for my pics and exercises, since I want to have place, when working. I will consider your hints in future. Thank you

Hehe, and the fleur-de-lis is something historical, like google told me now. Lol, I thought it is only a shape. But so what, times have progressed and I am sure, every Klingon will be proud to wear it on his suit. Glad, that you liked it, Welles

Hanarky

wbiss

Good work Hanarky! :}

Once you've mastered PS's vector tools, you'll wonder how you ever lived and worked without 'em before!

Great tip Stroker! [righton]

Ferlin

Hanarky,
If you love PS vector tools you will LOVE Illustrator. And you can easily import from one program to the other.
Ferlin [righton]

Hercules

Hanarky Nice way to exercising the pen tool and the paths. [righton]