Making graphics with FF ... my Gallery

I always hoped more people would post their own artwork using FF. I was inspired lately by Chazzy's Blocky filter because I mentiond to him that it would be more useful to me if he added a saturation node. To my surprise he did. This how I recently used it.

I design T-shirt artwork and this is one example of what I do. I'm not any kind of great artist but some crazy folks do buy my stuff sometimes.

The figure was created in Poser and I applied my own Old Book Illustrator filter to it. The background was started with a design I made with my Puzzles, Streaks,and Strings filter followed by Chazzy's Blocky and finished with my Colored Dirt filter as a final.

My T-shirt site is Captured Image Design in case you want to check out more designs.

Wow! Amazing work!

Here is another music related design of mine of a banjo picker. Again I used my Old Book Illustrator on the figure. The background was created by starting with a blank file with a filled background. Then I applied some random contrasting colored lines and splashes. Then I applied my This Way and That Way filter. To produce a rough wall kind of feel I used my Color Texture Emboss filter.

My Website.....Captured Image Design

You can get Abstract art by just banging away on the random variations button on any distortion type filter and wait for something good to show up. If you use a filter that only does small area distortion or color effects you can get more control of the final results. Here is an image I did in just a couple of minutes withh the goal of an example rather than great art.

Most of you folks have figured out by now that I'm not a rocket scientist when it comes to creating filters and making art. I have been trying to create computer art since 1979 with my trusty old Radio Shack Color Computer. Back then if you wanted software you had write it yourself, so I learned enough basic programing to create graphic software. I always believed that creating was as much an art form as a technical problem. I see making and using FF filters much the same way. I just sit down and play until something nice happens. That is why I like abstract art and texture backgrounds. Watching the pretty colors and shapes appear on the screen is kinda therapy for me.

I started this abstract with a random graphic created with a basic program I wrote ..

I liked the shapes and textures, but I ran the filter again and got more of a paint brush effect. Is It Art? Who knows, but I like it ....

My T-shirt website ... Captured Image Design

The second element of my style has to do with embossed texture. One of the first graphic programs that could really do a job of embossed backgrounds was Painter. You could do so much with it's paper textures. You could make your art look like it was painted on everything from wood to plaster to anything in between you could emagine. FF added a whole new dimension to adding backgrounds. I found you could emboss both the image and add subtle embossed background texture as well. The texture did not have to be tiled and look very regular. It could vary in size and shape depending on color or lightness or flatness of image color. It Added possibilities to improving my texture style. Several of my filters have variations of this technic.

This is a simple example of embossing texture. I started with my Puzzles, Streaks, and Strings filter. Then I applied my Color Texture Emboss filter. I love the ability to do this without using tons of layers and styles in Photo Shop.

My T-Shirt shop website is ... Captured Image Design

One of my first filters to use the technic of simplify and outline was Fake Buzz. It was an attempt to do in FF what I had been doing with other filters for quite some time. It was cool to come up with something that worked and was much faster than all the layer work I had been doing. It is more subtle than some of my other filters. It makes an image look a little less real. I wasn't trying for some kind of fake painting method, just some stylilized reality. That is what I used on this spooky guy .......

My T-shirt web site is ... Captured Image Design

I ran my Fake Buzz filter on the face and then flattened the layers. I ran my Color Texture Emboss filter on the whole image. It gave the background a more intense emboss and just some subtle areas of texture emboss on the face to give the feeling of it being carved from some imperfect material. I think art should have imperfections. It looks more real world that way ......

My website ......Captured Image Design

I don't blame you, I wouldn't wear that face on a t-shirt either. But some folks have different taste than we do. I wouldn't wear a t-shirt with my face on it either, but some guys do .... Thanks for the comment .....

Just to show I'm not all about weird stuff. Here is a little cutie I designed from Daz3D's Victoria model. A nice subtle use of Old Book Illustrator on the figure and a background created with 2 new filters I just submitted to FF. I first used my Ripples In Time filter and then then my Sand Blast filter. I'm finding the Sand Blast is not as predictable as I originally thought. I may have submitted it a little to soon. But I do like what it did in this image ....

My T-shirt shop is .....Captured Image Design

Ron ..... I checked back and I do think it was your filter .... Sorry I should have given you credit .... As I mentioned I am kinda old with attention issues .... Thanks much for the nice comment ....

Today my 50th filter was posted. I'm not good but I'm persistent. If you aren't making filters yet, try. Just drop in an image input node, the output is already there, and put something in between. (It doesn't matter what .. keep trying) connect up some sliders and save the sucker. Hit the the variations button and watch the magic happen. Most fun you can have with your clothes on.

On this image I used the only filter of mine that the FF folks rejected. I think it was because it was similar to one that already existed. That wasn't because I copied someone elses. Now and again one the old timers here in the forum will rant about how most of the new filters are crap and just copies of older better filters. I do not believe that FF is rocket science. Most of this has all been done before. It is pretty much PhotoShop actions with a GUI. Most of what you can do with it can be done with PhooShop and a few other add-ons. There are some folks up here who have the time and knowledge to produce some complex and really cool filter, and I appreciate their efforts. The rest of us can just have some fun trying everthing until something cool happens.


The image is the last image with my Hammered Metal filter applied .....

My Website ...Captured Image Design

I design T-shirts and specialize in music related artwork. I create the artwork lots of different ways. My site is called Captured Image Design because I thought in the begining I would use filtered photos of musicians I had taken over the years. Well, unfortunatly for me they have copyright laws that say you cannot sell images of anyone without their express permission. Like that was gonna happen. So I had to make do with some of the few friends I have and me.

This is a photo of me playing the guitar very badly. I used my Fake Buzz filter with a little Pseudo-HDR Color filtering to improve color. I love making people wonder if it is art or is it a photo. Lots of color flakyness and strong texture and outlines.

My Website ... Captured Image Design

Some photos taken on a night stage are hard to get looking good because the background is so dark and the stage light make the musician glow and loose definition. In this photo of Eddie “The Chief” Clearwater I used my Fake Buzz filter again but with some extreme settings to really make it pop. You may notice that when enlarged it looks pretty rough with splotchy colors. The fact is that pictures printed on newsprint stock are usually only a couple of inches in size. When they are that small it is hard to see the roughness and the color intensity really makes the photo look good.


My T-shirt site ... Captured Image Design

This is an example of increasing contrast. Way back with the first KPT set of filters there was a filter called Color Contrast. With it you could create contrast that did not effect just light and dark but also the intensity of color. Using a method based on high pass sharpening you can add contrast to and image that affects all the colors. My HDR Color Contrast filter attempts to do this. That is what I used in this example. Notice how the face takes on more definition and sharpness. This image would be best viewed at a smaller size as the full size seems a little overdone.

This filtering is similar to the last, but I did more color manipulating. It created a kind of dry brush look to some of the color. I like how this makes the face look. I like the way the grain and detail enhances the shapes on the leather jacket as well. I used my Old Book Illustrator with this image.

You may notice that several of my filters have HDR in their titles. High Dynamic Range effects give the ability to increase the range and brilliance of color and improve detail. The normal way to achieve this is by shooting a number of bracketed images and layer them together, combining them with different modes. Man, that sounds like too much work for me. I try to fake it. There are several commercial filters such as Topaz and some online tutorials and actions that can create Pseudo-HDR images. I used ideas from some of the tutorials to try to come up with my own versions of fake HDR.

This image was taken on a windy rainy day on Oahu’s North Shore. I actually don’t think it needs any improvement. When I see it I am reminded of a specific time and place. This moody image makes me feel the damp breeze on my face and smell the salty ocean mist. Let just say we need a postcard image. We need some HDR magic.

Another element of HDR photography is the increase of detail. That with the increased color range gives the image a kind of super realism. I started with this pumpkin image.

HDR taken to extreme can produce some very nice effects. I like the look of real and unreal together. We will start with this dark cone flower picture …..

This field of clover photo was treated in a different way than previous ones, but the results have a similar look to them. The before image is a bit flat.

The example photo I use here is a not very interesting image of a Fort Lauderdale beach. It is too busy with no real center of interest to draw your eye to. A few years ago, not long after I took it, I ran a fake watercolor action on it and sold a couple of framed copies. I was never very happy with it and pulled it back out recently and fooled with in in FF.

I want to thank all you folks that have checked out my t-shirt site. It has upped my google rating a bit. It was never my intent to get you folks to buy my stuff, but it is really cool to me that some of Y'All took the time to have a look.


My T-shirt site is .... Captured Image Design