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Posted on 21/02/05 10:26:40 PM

Dezolat0r
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Latest friday challenge - cage the beast

Hi all,

I was just wondering in the latest Friday Challenge, Steve gave us a sample of metal to make into bars for the cage. I can see other people in the topic have managed to do this very effectively, but I have no idea how they did it.

Could someone please explain to me how they made that little sample into a whole series of bars?

Thanks in advance

Posted on 21/02/05 11:10:17 PM

Glen
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Re: Latest friday challenge - cage the beast

I would guess that they selected the little sample, then using transform they stretched it to as long as they wanted. then copy the layers to the required number- good luck

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Posted on 21/02/05 11:15:52 PM

Glen
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Re: Latest friday challenge - cage the beast

you can have this one if you want

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Posted on 22/02/05 00:14:37 AM

Dezolat0r
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Re: Latest friday challenge - cage the beast

Oh man, I can't believe it was that obvious.

I'm an idiot. Thanks though Glen!

Posted on 22/02/05 06:40:10 AM

maiden
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Re: Latest friday challenge - cage the beast

There is another method too:
Ctrl click the iron bar icon in the Layer Palette to select it and then ALT+Shift+ the arrow key (whichever direction your bar is to be strectched) and keep tapping that arrow key will create copies of it within the existing layer to create one long bar.

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Posted on 22/02/05 08:13:02 AM

trinityofone
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Re: Latest friday challenge - cage the beast

I used that method to make copies of the bars but the initial one was created with Free Transform.

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Posted on 22/02/05 08:17:57 AM

Steve Caplin
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Re: Latest friday challenge - cage the beast

At 06:40:10 AM 22/02/05, maiden wrote:
There is another method too:
Ctrl click the iron bar icon in the Layer Palette to select it and then ALT+Shift+ the arrow key (whichever direction your bar is to be strectched) and keep tapping that arrow key will create copies of it within the existing layer to create one long bar.

That method is fine, but comes unstuck if the end of the bar (or whatever object) is shaded slightly differently from the rest. You get a series of ridges at 10-pixel intervals all the way up.

For a job like this, I always use the stretching technique, and then shape the ends to make them look circular. This is the piece of metal I use for all my ironwork!

Posted on 23/02/05 4:41:00 PM

BobbyJo
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Latest friday challenge - cage the beast

Hiya

I resized the bar to make it tall and thin. Then to get the effect I wanted I chose a light grey for the foreground and and a dark grey for the background. I then did a gradient fill from top left to bottom right. Presto hey! A bar that looks oldish. Then I made duplicate layers. I would have put some rust on it but I couldn't think straight at that time of night

The friday challenge really does does absorb my time. I even missed Eastenders !!!!!

Could someone please explain to me how they made that little sample into a whole series of bars?

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Posted on 23/02/05 5:23:04 PM

maiden
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Latest friday challenge - cage the beast

At 4:41:00 PM 23/02/05, BobbyJo wrote:
Could someone please explain to me how they made that little sample into a whole series of bars?

What I did was to press the Alt key and left mouse drag duplicate copies then I linked the layers and used the align tools to align & distribute them evenly.

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Posted on 23/02/05 6:34:04 PM

trinityofone
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Re: Latest friday challenge - cage the beast

Maiden, I don't think that was a question, it was the quote from the initial post

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Posted on 23/02/05 7:44:40 PM

maiden
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Re: Latest friday challenge - cage the beast

Oh right, sorry I'm a bit tired from Bus Driving School - Bus in gear but brain isn't.

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Posted on 23/02/05 8:28:08 PM

tabitha 1
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Re: Latest friday challenge - cage the beast

Sorry to change the subject Maiden...

... But your driving a BUS???

How cool must that be... GO GIRL (in a very envious kind of way!!)

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Posted on 23/02/05 8:35:40 PM

Steve Caplin
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Re: Latest friday challenge - cage the beast

In fact, is that you in your bus in your piccie? Looks like it's been taken through a bus window. Could just be a webcam, I suppose.

Posted on 23/02/05 9:52:59 PM

Dezolat0r
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Latest friday challenge - cage the beast

At 5:23:04 PM 23/02/05, maiden wrote:
> At 4:41:00 PM 23/02/05, BobbyJo wrote:
> Could someone please explain to me how they made that little sample into a whole series of bars?

What I did was to press the Alt key and left mouse drag duplicate copies then I linked the layers and used the align tools to align & distribute them evenly.

So the bars are created on a series of different layers? How many did you have in total?

I thought having loads of layers took up lots of system resources so I merged my bars once I had enough of them, to prevent them slowing my computer down. Was that a bad idea? >_>

Posted on 24/02/05 05:32:27 AM

maiden
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Re: Latest friday challenge - cage the beast

Yes Tabs, I joined Driver Training Monday 13th Feb having fun at the moment but the heavy snow we're having of late is causing some problems.

No Steve, I took that image using my mobile phone in my car so it was actually taken with me holding the camera phone in my outstretched arm.

At 9:52:59 PM 23/02/05, Dezolat0r wrote:
So the bars are created on a series of different layers? How many did you have in total?

I thought having loads of layers took up lots of system resources so I merged my bars once I had enough of them, to prevent them slowing my computer down. Was that a bad idea? >_>

I only created them on different layers to properly align and distribute the bars - once I had done that I could merge the linked layers to create the cage side.

But yes too many layers can drastically reduce the computer's processing speed and reduce the amount of spare memory. Even with 1 gigbyte of memory and a 1.6 ghz processor sometimes my Photoshop comes to a crawl, this was especially so when I created a bamboo image in Illustrator to use for the cages in the background - at first I didn't merge the layers until I saw that the document size was pushing 250 megabytes and moving the layer sets around was really taking far too long.

So what you did was good Photoshop planning.

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