GIP

[vilakins]

I was feeling obscurely guilty that I've snaffled two gorgeous B7 icons lately (a lovely Vila living for ever from tkurogrym on b7icons, and this fabulous Jenna one from snowgrouse) and so I thought I'd better have a go at some myself. So I spent last evening playing with my limited software and I've now got most of the B7 crew represented in my icon set.

The Cally is very simple, but I did a lot of fiddling with effects on different layers for the others, especially the Soolin one as the source picture wasn't very clear. I just need a Servalan and a Travis now, and perhaps I'll let Avon have an icon all to himself too.



I'm considering downloading the Gimp. Is it fairly intuitive? I've used Photoshop and Fireworks in different jobs and PS Elements 2 at home, so I can usually figure out differences in interfaces. Is it hard to pick up and does it need much tweaking?

Comments

[matildabj.livejournal.com]

There's a b7 icons comm? *goes*

I saw and admired your Tarrant one earlier!

[vilakins.livejournal.com]

Thanks! It's a fairly new community with some lovely icons. I've snurched two so far; this is the Vila one I mentioned.

[spacefall.livejournal.com]

Heh. Ace Rimmer Tarrant :D

[vilakins.livejournal.com]

I've always thought Tufty was a bit Ace Rimmer; the dashing hero without the imagination to be afraid. :-)

[spacefall.livejournal.com]

He has that sort of voice too ;)

[vilakins.livejournal.com]

Yep. I once requested a story with Tarrant and Soolin and an Ace Rimmer connection from kerravonsen because they just go so well together. [goes to look] Ah yes, here (http://www.livejournal.com/users/kerravonsen/60238.html) it is.

[redstarrobot.livejournal.com]

Ooh, love the Cally and Dayna.

GIMP is great. Doing basic stuff is easy, and you pick up more and more as you go along. Best thing to do is play with it. The Cally/Nine wallpaper I did was on GIMP.

[vilakins.livejournal.com]

Right, I'm getting it tonight. I know trixieleitz has it and she does lovely stuff too.

I did another Cally and a Blake I may offer to others at some stage coz I'm not sure I'll use them myself.

[redstarrobot.livejournal.com]

Layers are the most fun thing ever to play with, after doing image editing without.

[vilakins.livejournal.com]

Yep. Except for the Cally one, they all had layers. The Soolin one had about 5 I think. At least with my new puter I can't crash it with too many at once. Actually I'm pretty pleased with PSE2 except for its lack of effects and not having anti-aliasing on text. It did well on the cartoons too; they require at least 3 layers.

[snowgrouse.livejournal.com]

Yay!

And boo to silly guilt over snarfing icons, they're there to be used!:)

*pets Tarrant again*

[vilakins.livejournal.com]

[grin] Tuftiness!

[astrogirl2.livejournal.com]

Oh, those are nice! I may snurch the Cally, I dunno. I've really got to go through my icons and figure out what I really want to keep and what I can part with. :)

[astrogirl2.livejournal.com]

Oh, if she's snurchable. I probably misread on that point. Then again, I already have a Cally, anyway...

[vilakins.livejournal.com]

They weren't up for snurching, sorry, but I have a Cally that is. It's dark and angsty so you may like it; I'll send it tonight. If you don't want it I'll post it sometime when I get some more icons made I can offer people because so far it's just two. You might like the Blake too, now I think of it.

[astrogirl2.livejournal.com]

'Sokay. Like I said, I've got too many icons already, and I have a Cally. But I do like that one!

[vilakins.livejournal.com]

Aww. You might like the other one too.

[kalypso-v.livejournal.com]

The first few times I tried to use Gimp it reduced me to tears. Then trixieleitz sent me some instructions which were so much simpler than anything online, and since then I've got reasonably confident on a limited number of functions, though I know I've only scratched the surface. There's a community at gimp_users which is sometimes helpful; the answer to about 90% of beginners' queries is "switch mode to RGB".

[vilakins.livejournal.com]

Thanks for that! I've been pretty happy with PSE2 till now but I need more cool stuff as I only have a few built-in effects. I found some good GIMP tutorials a while back which I adapted to PSE2 and I hope the fact that I've used two other graphics programs will allow me to pick this up quickly. I'm usually good at that but open-systems stuff written for geeks by geeks can be rather counter-intuitive.

Heh. Spirograph owl foxing the FBI. [thinks: must take pis of Athena the furry owl and post]

[mistraltoes.livejournal.com]

Ooh, look, you have a Callyport icon! That's from your story. Lovely. :)

[vilakins.livejournal.com]

You remembered! Thanks! :-) Here's a babe for you.

[mistraltoes.livejournal.com]

Hee! That's super. And accurate.

[trixieleitz]

Nice icons! That's some careful masking on the Tarrant one, I can tell.

I pimp the Gimp, but you know that already ;) On Windows, you just download and install the app and the runtime environment (GTK), no tweaking required, unless you want to add scripts and things.

I struggled with the interface a bit at first, but, now that I'm used to it, I find other software less intuitive. I love having all the commands under the right mouse button - you don't have to hike all the way up to the top of the screen to do something. Sounds silly, but you know how hard all that mousing can be on your wrist, and keystrokes aren't so appropriate for software where the main input is via mouse or tablet. I have the side button on my stylus configured to right-click, so working with the tablet is just as straightforward as with the mouse.

And if you go for it, I'm happy to answer any questions. Once you're used to the interface, you'll probably find that your PS knowledge will transfer quite easily. I've used a few PS tutorials to figure out how to do things in Gimp.

[vilakins.livejournal.com]

Thank you for that! I daresay it'll take a while till I'm as proficient as with PSE2, but I already have links to tutorial sites.

I have the side button on my stylus configured to right-click

So have I. :-) I love my Wacom tablet.