Valentine's Weekend In Pseudo Review

My Valentine's Day is not over folks. It's tomorrow, because my girl was out of town this weekend ...unfortunately.
Dunno who the idiot is who planned that youth conference thingy over V-Day.
grrr.

Anyways, hopefully it should be a good day. I need to get to bed so I can get up earlier, for related reasons.

Today I didn't do too much in photoshop.
I did change my blog background to something for Valentine's Day a few days ago, for those of you reading this via a reader who didn't know...
It was hard to do - I wanted it to suit the month without coming off entirely gay.

I think it's good, though - it just replaced the snowflakes with hearts - another pain-in-the-neck blending mode experiment.

I think I want to emulate Lee's ideas somehow. His area of expertise is Illustrator, and he's incredible. You can find him at Leetopia. I love his blog look of late.

Today my brother was playing with a pic of Bowser in PS CS2 on our wrecked up old computer. I let him use my CS4 - I think it's easier to use - it's definitely faster.
I'm wondering if this will become a trend - considering we don't usually get along so well, it might be a good thing.

Valentine's Weekend Number One

Today I worked on Valentine's day stuff in Photoshop all day.
Something is wrong with my CS2, so I'm using just CS4 now.
This is the yield of all I've been doing.
Most of the tutorials out there are nothing but abstract art focused around either a single heart or multiple ones.

It all became the same after awhile, so I elected to just make all the different hearts at once. There are nine different ones. The original background I worked on was disgusting, so I tried turning it red and that didn't help. I tried blurring it and it looks awesome now. All of these hearts can be found in one form or another at:
Web Design's "Romantic Design Trends"

It's pretty cool, in my opinion. I'm a guy - if it were any other time of the year I'm sure you'd think I'm gay. I apologize for being in touch with my feminine side. (just kidding.)

I learned how to do lots with blending options and layer styles - particularly gradient overlays.
I know how to do the little shiny reflections now! That's something that's been eating at me.

Learning Photoshop

I've had Photoshop for a long time, but I remember the days I wished I had it.
It's probably the most incredible (and expensive) art program in existence.

The background I'm using for this blog was made from scratch in Photoshop a while back.
I have Photoshop CS2.
My favorite tools are the pen, clone stamp, and blending options.

I have seen the unveiling of Ps-CS4, and I'm drooling. It even has paint-to-mesh support. If they ever get around to adding mesh construction, It'll be an all-in-one 2d-and-3d creation workshop.

There's a few art websites I'm a member of, such as DeviantArt and PhotoShopTalent .
PhotoshopRoadmap is an excellent teacher of any trick you want to learn.

I've written a few tutorials, and while I'm not a five-star artist, from what I've seen, I 'm one of the leading experts on the internet in creating smoke.
I can't help you with wispy fractal candle/cigarette smoke; my expertise includes all other forms, though, such as fire smoke, mist, fog, smog, and any other gas-like substance.

If you ever want to learn to photoshop realistic smokiness, especially since halloween is coming up, then I'm the guy you need to talk to. you can email me at: plasmarob@yahoo.com