tools that fight back

[egypturnash]

Geeze. I had the weirdest problem with Photoshop just now.

I'd abused the hell out of that pen sketch of Peganthyrus last night and this morning. It was Done. At that point where there were still a few issues, but that "add more and it dies" sense was kicking in. So, I saved it, then shrunk it down to the first size I needed to output for archives, then hit 'Save for Web'. And it came in pale, and it wouldn't let me turn on the 'ICC Profile' to embed gamma information in the file. Somehow, the color profile was getting lost between the main body of PS and Save for Web.

I tried a bunch of things - flattening, spawning a new file from it, manually assigning a profile - nothing worked.

Finally, I thought sideways and saved out a full-resolution TIFF. Which Photoshop quite happily embedded color profile information in. Then I went to Illustrator and loaded the TIFF. It came in perfectly, centered and sprawling across the edges of the artboard. I did 'Save for Web', and it got the profile information with no problems at all. Told it what size I wanted, saved the first version, re-did it for the second version (different max sizes for different archives). I ♥ Illustrator. I ♥ Photoshop.

A nice little bit of annoyance to finish off a distant, sad piece, a goodbye to a character I've had and worn for a long time. Thanks for everything you showed me about myself, Peganthyrus.


bandwidth: Yerf

Photoshop 7.

Comments

[koogrr.livejournal.com]

Wow and ouch.

[kamenkyote.livejournal.com]

Very cool real-media feel, and somewhat early 60s as well. I can't help but wonder if you'd have had less wrestling with the real media than PS provided you!

Good luck on this weekend's endeavors!

-T'

[queenofstripes.livejournal.com]

Kamen is right. I have a silly idea. Might you consider doing a farewell tribute to Peganthyrus in the form of a mix CD, with that as the cover?

[shatterstripes.livejournal.com]

heee. I'm not sure it's one I'd want to have lying around. Or what'd go on it. Probably a lot of Barry Adamson...

[queenofstripes.livejournal.com]

I'd almost be inclined to humbly request to pick the playlist, but I'm not sure what'd be worthy...

[shatterstripes.livejournal.com]

It's hard to know.

Noir, evil, smoky, sexy, snide... someone once made a Peggy-themed mix tape for me that included stuff like Siouxsie's cover of "Trust in Me", which is a very Peganthyrus song in many ways. And very oblique jazz, probably. And modern pseudo-noir mutations.

Hell, if you have suggestions...

[baxil.livejournal.com]

The only similar song that comes to mind is Delicious Blue's "Vampire," although it's a little more subtextual. (Copy at tomorrowlands/pvt/peggy; I doubt lyrics are anywhere on the web, so just grab the song and give it a listen.)

Not that I actually ever really talked to her any -- just going by what you've said here ...

[trikotomy.livejournal.com]

Hmm... noir, evil, smoky, sexy (not really "snide")... maybe Puscifer - REV 22:20 (http://www.lyricsbox.com/puscifer-lyrics-pray-6dbvshq.html)?

The style doesn't fit with her, but I started thinking of "Gotta Knock a Little Harder (http://www.jazzmess.com/merch/cds/movie/gottaknockalittleharder.html)" when the first stirrings of this change came about way back in late October(?).

Incidentally, I didn't know her, yet I'll miss her.

[queenofstripes.livejournal.com]

Ever heard any Supreme Beings of Leisure?

[shatterstripes.livejournal.com]

I didn't hve any technical hassles at all aside from final export. I did a lot of geeky layer only-in-the-computer stuff in it.

I was kinda going for a Bill Sienkiewicz feel to the colors. He feels kinda tackily seventies to me sometimes, not sixties... go figure. And Peggy's definitely pretty forties in there, as usual.

I might postpone the 24h comic - I think I'm coming down with a cold. Sore throat and headache plus endurance marathon of drawing may be a very bad idea; I'll see how I feel in the morning...

[radd.livejournal.com]

I stand amazed and inspired.

Otherwise, I've never seen Photoshop do anything like that before. I'm definitely glad you founda solution. Perhaps it's only fitting that this piece was completed in Illustrator, though.

[shatterstripes.livejournal.com]

PS7, lots of use of the half-assed art brushes that are new to it (it ain't no Painter, but I was too lazy to move it over). Especially the one that looks like chalk. And one that's supposed to be little scattered leaves, but just turns into a loose splotty brush at the scale I worked at.

And over it all a 50% grey layer that I'd added noise to and processed a little, in one of the 'light' mix modes at around 5% - instant texture.

It did make me grin to end up touching it with AI for the finish...

[medox.livejournal.com]

Lovely! The textures are gorgeous.

[slinky-treecat.livejournal.com]

Instead of 'Save for Web' have you tried using ImageReady? It should be installed, if you have Photopoop 7 installed. It gives a broader range of possabilities, at least that's been my experience with it. Plus it's handy for roll-over effects and .gif animation. ^_^

[shatterstripes.livejournal.com]

I like SfW because it's right there. And I've never had problems like this with it before; usually it gets handed the color profile and what it outputs looks like what I drew. Something went weird in PS, I think.

Although usually I use Illustrator, so who knows?

[slinky-treecat.livejournal.com]

ImageReady is 'right there' as well: Save the .psd and click on the 'swap' button on the bottom of the tool pallet to boot IReady and load the .psd automagically. :)

[shatterstripes.livejournal.com]

Huh. Well, how about that. I never knew.

"Please convert the Image to RGB color mode before you jump to ImageReady." Grrr. (And yes, I'd tried converting to RGB before doing SfW, too. Maybe I need to just save a few files of my custom actions and suchlike and wipe/reinstall PS7...)

...nope, looks like the color profile gets dropped on the floor somewhere along the way to ImageReady, too. It turns out just as pale in IR as it does in PS's SfW. Weird. Gremlins.

Well, when I first started using AI, before Save for Web, I had to load my final AI files into Photoshop to generate a gif/jpeg from them... and now there's a pleasant symmetry in doing it the other way around.

[slinky-treecat.livejournal.com]

Weirdness.. could it be the CMYK->RGB that's altering the colours? It shouldn't, really.. the RGB pallette is broader than the CMYK. It's going in the other direction can be problematic. Hmm.. is the file many layered when you go to save for web? It could be a problem with rendering the layers during the flattening of the image. I've heard reports that the image sometimes changes slightly when going from layered to flat .psd

[shatterstripes.livejournal.com]

Oh, I tried all that yesterday - flattening first, going to flat RGB... I ate up a good hour and a half, at least, just wrestling with Photoshop. I've learnt to get stuff out of it that's decent, but I don't think I'll ever like it. Something always gets in the way for me. Like this.

I admit that a lot of that wrestling was waiting for PS to grind on a full-page 300dpi 38-layered CMYK image... (No, I am not crazy enough to hand that to SfW - resize first!)

Why it thinks I don't want to send the color profiles the image was done under to the web-render tools, I have no clue. Photoshop needs a spanking.

[kajarainbow.livejournal.com]

Yea, verily a nice picture. In all seriousness, Peganthyus has this distant look, it seems like, like she's about to disappear. And the odd thing is, I really can look at this and see that it's not you anymore. Maybe it's just the general disassociative vibe to the whole picture.

I never really knew that particular facet, but I could feel from your previous entries about this the sheer history that persona had. But I'm glad that you do seem to be moving toward a better self.

[shatterstripes.livejournal.com]

Someone else said similar things about the original sketch. "No soul there", I think. No eye contact, formal pose, attentuated shapes, abstracted coloring... looking about to disappear is fitting for a character that already has.

I wonder if and when Twin will turn into something in the way rather than something to try to be. (She)'s not a representation of me the way Peggy was; I kinda hope (she) never is.