See you!

Edit

Yay, it’s right here.

© 2011 by Maciej "ProwSeed" Kwas. | Permalink | Add to del.icio.us

First encountered problem

Hmm, it was a list itself I think. That was a Microsoft Word document where each name was in new line. Without any separators like commas etc. The way of creating cards was also a problem. I don’t have a lot of free time and splitting each card manually would be a total waste of it. I heard that some kind of batch is possible thru a Word app, but, firstly- I don’t have Word (I opened document with Google docs), and secondly- I don’t know how. So in this case I would have to download some trial and learn how to make it. I didn’t even checked if it is possible in my OpenOffice since I haven’t using it for a long time and simply forgot about it. About seven years ago I was really into Delphi (Object pascal) and thought I could do something with it, but I misjudged my strenght for I forgot mostly everything. And here comes php out of the blue…

Prepare the list

Ok, so I thought that would be easy run. Make an array, pass it through a loop and that’s it. Well, I was pretty right but the problems were on every step. First of all I had to change the list from

some name

another name

and another

here is something pretty much longer

blah blah blah

to

"some name",

"another name",

"and another",

"here is something pretty much longer",

"blah blah blah"

The solution were simplier than I thought. Here is a code that do the trick:

<?php

 $file = file("lista.txt"); //open up a file with names

//create a foreach statement and add " on beginning and ",<br> on the end of each line

  foreach ($file as $line) {

    echo "\"".$line."\",\n <br>"; //display every line on the screen

  }

?>

I could pass the result to the file, but that was fastest way for me.

Draw meh

Ok, so truly I will say that I made some backgrounds in photoshop, but in this example I will build a code just for one background for better clarity. Oh, and I will tell that it is pretty good idea to use a localhost for it ;) First of all, I will specify some variables:

<?php

$font = 'trebucit.ttf'; // choose your font and copy it to the folder where your script is

$quotes = array(); // paste the list printed in previous step inside the array

$im = ImageCreateFromJpeg("pusty.jpeg"); // here is our background image with pigeons and hearts 16x8cm in 300dpi

$fontcolor = imagecolorallocate($im, 0, 0, 0); // black color for text for my background is white

$fontsize = 70;

$y = 700; //distance from the top

//below is the trick to center the text

$text_width = 40 * strlen($quotes); //actually 40 should be the size of font (so 70 in this case) but it worked with this value however

$x = ceil((1890 - $text_width) / 2); //ceil function rounds up the result of math, 1890 is a total width of image

} ?>

As you can see I wanted my text to be centered. I don’t think that the calculations could be not understandable. Then I just used the function imagettftext. I decided to loop the file creating with for loop. It is most complex I think and fits here perfectly. Here is a final code with explanations:

<?php

$font = 'trebucit.ttf';

$quotes = array(

"Eugeniusz Geniusz",

"Maciek Placek",

"Jan Kowalski",

...

"Robert Burneika",

"Józef Tkaczuk"

);

//make a for loop that will stop after 108th step for I knew there will be 108 names.

for( $i = 0; $i <= 107; $i++ ) {

$im = ImageCreateFromJpeg("pusty.jpeg"); //open up the background

$fontcolor = imagecolorallocate($im, 0, 0, 0); //black for text

$fontsize = 70;

$y = 700; //distance from top

$text_width = 40 * strlen($quotes[$i]);

$x = ceil((1890 - $text_width) / 2); //center the text - distance from left that is calculated depends of name lenght, 1890 is a total widt of image

imagettftext($im, $fontsize, 0, $x, $y, $fontcolor, $font, $quotes[$i]); //background, fontsize, angle, distance from left, distance from top, fontcolor, fontface, text

imagejpeg($im, $quotes[$i].'.jpeg', 100); //save a file with best quality

imagedestroy($im); //clear the memory

}

?>

As you can see I specified $i in for statement as a 0 and based my loop on it. Pretty simple, but works. I had a problem with polish fonts, but fixed it pretty fast. After all you have all images saved in seconds. And… That’s it :)

© 2011 by Maciej "ProwSeed" Kwas. | Permalink | Add to del.icio.us

First thing – Navigator

Be sure that you have it in your side panel. It is really useful while painting. Besides the fact that you can navigate the document, you have a look-up on the whole art. It’s numer one for digital painters. However, it was working a bit different in Photoshop CS3 (I mean- better) than it is now in CS4 or CS5.

Second thing – spacebar

Yay, the old trick is here. It doesn’t matter which tool you have active at the moment. Just press spacebar and it will change into the hand tool. After releasing the spacebar your tool will fallback to previous one. It is very helpful and pretty fast- however, there is even faster way…

Honey is here

We will try to make use of the scroll button in our mouse. First of all, we will need to get some mouse button control software. I recommend this one for I am using it. After installation go to the setup of this program and choose the following:

And type this in the input:

That’s it. Try it out in photoshop : )
Happy navigating.

© 2010 by Maciej "ProwSeed" Kwas. | Permalink | Add to del.icio.us

How to draw a hot steaming pepper in photoshop
Create an amazing broken egg and yolk drawing in photoshop

© 2010 by Maciej "ProwSeed" Kwas. | Permalink | Add to del.icio.us

Update: 1st October 2010
So, the blog has a new look as well. There are some small changes needed, but actually It’s ready and steady. I’ve updated my engine from 2.6 to 3.0. Rotated the whole blog’s appearance by 180 degrees. I’m pretty happy with the output. More to say, that I’ve finished the HTML to WP translation in less than two hours.

© 2010 by Maciej "ProwSeed" Kwas. | Permalink | Add to del.icio.us

Smashing! When I heard first minute of this song I was, if not confused, just not interested in. Then I heard “So close, no matter how faaa…” and I was pressed down. I have never been posting things like that, but I wanted to spread it to the world. Get inspired!

Enjoy.

© 2010 by Maciej "ProwSeed" Kwas. | Permalink | Add to del.icio.us

In next few parts (I don’t know how many exactly there will be) we will create a lot of various cards in many different programs (I hope so). Today I will show you how to make a simpliest typography-based card in photoshop. I’m gonna show you also how to prepare our file for printing.

Link to full article: Business card tutorial part 1

© 2010 by Maciej "ProwSeed" Kwas. | Permalink | Add to del.icio.us

This tutorial contains 50 steps that will show you the full process of creating such egg. I know that the egg white should be more… transparent? Anyway, maybe it is boiled :] In the link above you will also find a PSD file.

Happy drawing.

© 2010 by Maciej "ProwSeed" Kwas. | Permalink | Add to del.icio.us

Last time I was working on the sketch base. Here the sketch is just made only to help me in composition. All the painting tooks about 30 minutes, maybe a bit more, I wasn’t checking, ‘couse I didn’t create this in one flow.

Link to full article: Center of distortion- speed painting

© 2009 by Maciej "ProwSeed" Kwas. | Permalink | Add to del.icio.us

© 2009 by Maciej "ProwSeed" Kwas. | Permalink | Add to del.icio.us