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View Full Version : Playing around again...


brettbrandon
03-23-2012, 01:30 PM
Was looking for something simple and came up with this

http://www.brettbrandon.com/shades/images/Simple01.jpg

Then after some more playing around, I came up with this...

http://www.brettbrandon.com/shades/images/BirdsEye01.jpg

May be a little bit before I can finish them.

Brett
dbarrow
03-23-2012, 02:35 PM
I like the wood look. I did a bass player's web site with that idea a while back. It was all different wood backgrounds. What tools did you use to construct those?
brettbrandon
03-23-2012, 03:53 PM
Photoshop and a picture of a piece of bidrseye maple.

edit: Almost forgot, and a graphic of brushed metal.
solarex
03-23-2012, 05:07 PM
I like the gray shade
dbarrow
03-23-2012, 08:49 PM
Photoshop and a picture of a piece of bidrseye maple.

edit: Almost forgot, and a graphic of brushed metal.Do you have a template that you start from and then chop up the pieces? What is your process. I have gone in and tweaked some other shades, using the resource editor, but what is the process for starting from scratch?
brettbrandon
03-23-2012, 09:26 PM
Do you have a template that you start from and then chop up the pieces? What is your process. I have gone in and tweaked some other shades, using the resource editor, but what is the process for starting from scratch?
First I use a program called PE Explorer to access the individual bitmaps. To start, I unloaded all the bitmaps into a folder. I usually start with the Wide Mixer because you can see it all at once on the screen. Besides, when you are done, all the parts are used in the Z Mixer as well.

I did create a template of all the numbers and text that appears in windows with the values set to full width. I made another layer with just the buttons cropped. How I did it was by using a white Wide Mixer background so all that shows up is the text and buttons that are displayed. Take a screen print with all buttons on and all windows filled with text at max. Then knock out the white and you are left with what the program layers onto the background. It really simplifies the placement of the windows and such.
EXAMPLE
http://www.brettbrandon.com/shades/images/Demo01.jpg

Most of the windows and buttons are created with Layer Styles. For example, I take a midtone grey square and depending on what style you apply, it could be a window or button. That way I can drag say all the windows into a new shade, change the style, and not have to relayout all the windows.

I'll open the FOH Wide Mixer graphic in PhotoShop and start layering all the new pieces on top of it. I will take a copy of the original and put it on the very top and set the Opacity to about 30***37;. That way it is almost transparent and you can align your graphics underneath it. Some of my PhotoShop Wide Mixer files have hundreds of layers.

All the wood is from this pic. Once again I used layer styles to get the different color tones and brightness.

http://www.brettbrandon.com/shades/images/wood09.jpg


I don't know if any of this makes sense or helps.

I also made more progress on what I'm now calling BirdsEye (maple, not the peas...)

http://www.brettbrandon.com/shades/images/BirdsEye02.jpg

Brett