Forums → Art, Music, and Writing → Tutorial Thread! Ask for help here.

p.s. also, if anybody has a question for any particular technique, including drawing or design or whatever etc. not limited to photoshop, you may also ask here, and hope somebody answers your question!

If the thread takes off, we'll eventually get a feel for who's a resident expert of what, and maybe everybody can get in on the sharing!

Even if it's only 8:00 in the morning, I'll excpect lots of replies within the hour. Great Job Klaus (And Strop :P).

I'll try to reply if people ask something I can answer.
I don't know that much about effects, but I do know a few things about drawing.
I approve of this thread. It can become a very good tool.

Dooes anyone know how to use GIMP? I recently downloaded it and am having trouble getting to grips with it. Does anyone have any tips for people new to this software such as myself?

Gimp is actually quite close to photoshop in nature. Just experiment with different effects and stuff for fun. Get a feel for it. Also just go online and find gimp tutorials for stuff. Even if you don't use it for anything just learn it and then one day you can mix a bunch of tutorials and make something cool!

Well, I love to draw, and I love computers. So, I put 2 and 2 togethor, and came across MS paint. I know the basics, but is the a possibility where you can create special effects? Take Arax's GFX art battle thread, for example. People make amazing 3D effects. I can only draw sguiggles! Any help, Klaus?

Woody: what do you plan to do with the Gimp? If you wish to draw, I would suggest familiarising yourself with the brushes (especially as you can edit them yourself), and the layers dialogue.

If you wish to play with colors, photoedit and apply effects, look for the scripts and the "colors" menu. Note that the majority of effects can only be applied to a single layer. Also note the different 'modes' of the layers (and brushes).

I may be a little off because I haven't transferred across to GIMP 2 on this computer yet, but need to. My question is really "what the heck does the chain on the layer's dialog do?"

I can draw ok with GIMP but im not sure how to go about doing the effects so thanks for the help strop.

I was wondering that aswell strop. I have no idea what it does either.

@flappybob999:
MS Paint is known among artists to be one of the crappiest drawing programs around, mainly because it is so friggin basic.
There is no way to add cool effects in MS Paint, other than to colour each and every little pixel with care (admitted, the true masters of that can do really amazing stuff).
I'd suggest you browse around for some better programs, Gimp is a nice free one and not overly complicated once you get the hang of it.

@ Zophia: I agree that MS Paint is not at all sophisticated.

However this is not because it is a terrible program on the whole, but moreso because it is Raster, not GNU, like GIMP. As a Raster image editing program it is quite excellent, and provided you know what you're doing with it, it is possible to achieve pure awesome in MS Paint.

do you have a step by step tutorial for me?
i have problem drawing,colouring yes.everything that photoshop provides i dun know how to use them.

does effects come in handy when making a 2d image?

@Strop:
Those who know what they are doing in MS Paint can make pretty amazing stuff (you're not so bad yourself at that, Strop), but for newbies who wants to make an image look good, it is pretty difficult to use. I never had the patience to learn using the curve tool and what else there is to make it look pretty.
It's pretty good for fast resizing and cutting, though, if you can work with squares. Main reason I don't like MS Paint is that there is no fade, meaning smooth lines and colour transitions are very time consuming to do.



@shermzx:
Effects such as lighting comes in very handy in 2D art. And, well, the rest of trying to teach you stuff is already moved to our profiles (sorry everyonee else who would have liked that kind of information).

Anyone wanting to do animations in Gimp, this is the simplest way (I think):

1) Create a layered image, each layer will be a separate frame in the finished animation, the first being the lowest in the layer stack.
2) Click the Filters button in the image window.
3) Select Animation>Optimize (for GIF)
4) Save the new (and optimized) file with a filename and the .gif extension to the filename (i.e. example.gif).
This brings up the 'Export file' dialog.
5) Select Save as Animation and click Export
6) Select whether or not to loop forever and how long each frame shall be displayed (100 milliseconds pr. frame gives an fps on 10).
7) You're all done. Enjoy the moving gif.

Optimization is not required, but it makes the file smaller and there's not really any reason not to do it.
You can preview the animation by selecting the Animation>Playback option.

So you will just help us step-by-step, or will you just give us tips?

Main reason I don't like MS Paint is that there is no fade, meaning smooth lines and colour transitions are very time consuming to do.