The close up of an orange lily

Autumn shots

It was a lovely sunny day of autumn and I thought that was enough of an invite for me to get out and take some shots. The main keyword these days seems to be "yellow". Lots of it.

How to make planets in Photoshop

I found a bunch of really awesome tutorials on how to make planets in Photoshop. I think some of these can be applied in Gimp too, and I will try some of them later, probably posting some of the results here.
The problem with Gimp is that it doesn't have an advanced layer blending options like Photoshop does. For example, you have to rely on a filters to apply shadows, which is destructive editing. In photoshop, you can adjust or turn off the shadow anytime!
Most of the tutorials use a texture, but I've seen some that make use of the filters to generate a planet-looking surface.

Here's the first one. It should be enough to guide you, it's universal and with some creativity you can extend the notions learned to create even more awesome images ( right-click and then select "View Image" to view it fullsize):

This tutorial was created by Dinyctis, on deviantArt.

Another tutorial by the same author is about making planetary rings to spice up your planets.

This is a video tutorial on the same subject, yet this time the outcome looks like a space movie poster:

Make a realistic Star Field! Although, I doubt they looks like this in reality... you can check Hubble Ultra Deep Field for a comparison :).

Create a meteor impact with a planet.




And finally, create an absolutely goergeous looking SuperNova:

Tutorial link.

These should be enough to make a you a space artist! Happy editing ;).

Summer Wallpapers - July

Ah, how the time flies... haven't posted anything here since spring? Honestly, I didn't have what to post, it was a rather busy period. But recently I brought the camera outside again, and decided to experiment with some wide wallpaper creation.
I was only satisfied with 2 of the photos, so I'm going to share them with you. Enjoy!

(click the images to get to the full-res version - when on Flickr, right click the image and select "Large 2048" for the highest available resolution)

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These are the original images:

Flowers in Focus

Since it's spring time, there's an explosion of beautiful flowers, some with calming fragrances. Perhaps I'm going to post more photos in this post if I'll take more shots. I may even delete some of the photos if I feel like I can do better and take more interesting photos of the same flowers.

Crocus Focus

Hyacinth( it's so close, can you smell it?)

Sunny Daffodil

Gentle Daisy

Spring is here!

A good indicator of spring has always been the snowdrop where I live. Although the temperatures are still quite low, spring is showing up shyly. I can't wait to bathe in the warm sun and start wearing some lighter clothes.
Here are some of the first snowdrops that appeared:

Auto Art

Yesterday I discovered quite a cool program. It's an application that takes an input image and transforms it into a painting, according to the parameters you set. The interesting fact is that it's not really the same thing like applying special filters in advanced editing software like GIMP or Photoshop. This program actually PAINTS. And it's really good at it. It's fascinating to press the play button and watch it work. Oh and the more powerful your CPU is, the faster it paints :).

The name of this program is Dynamic Auto-Painter and you can try it for free, although it will add a watermark to the output painting. You can choose between several painting modes(or style, however you prefer it). I tried it too on one of my photos. Once you click "Start", it will run forever, displaying the amount of brushes applied until then, waiting for you to press "Stop". The more it runs, the more fidelity your final painting will have.

Here's the image I've experimented with:

And here are the output paintings, using different painting styles:

I am simply amazed by what this program can achieve. Of course, nothing like this matches a painting done manually, with passion.

Even more Full HD wallpapers

 [Important EDIT!]

It seems that blogger resized all of the wallpapers to 1600x900( now even if you're lazy you can figure out the 16:9 aspect ratio :P). Because of that, I'm uploading them to an archive.

GameFront Mirror 
MediaFire Mirror

Again, some huge 16:9 wallpapers I created from experimentation.


Light bulb filament:

Grunge Christmas globe:

Dirty glowing light bulb:

Blue Christmas globe:

Fire light bulb:

Enjoy!