Strife Journal Entry 78

[strife_journal]

Comments

[lunadaisy]

though biting smiley cookies in half is always strangely satisfying ..

[i_am_stillwater]

Heya... just had a thought...

I don't want to try and copy you or anything, but around a year ago I was thinking of doing my thesis on using livejournal to create an entirely believeable but nonexistent human being....

only for people to find out that the said being is, in fact, a rock.

I'm looking at the said rock as I'm typing this, and I was wondering if you could make some sort of photoshop tutorial... I love what you did with the entries, and the text, but If I plan on making something about "my pet rock" I thought it might be fun to make a picture journal like this one...

Could you teach me what you do with photoshop to make your entries?

[strife_journal]

Sure. You take a digital photograph, take the largest dimension down to 7 inches in "image size." Then you lay down words. If you want the outline around the words so it's more legible, you right-click on the words and you shoul get "blending options" and then you go to "stroke" and mess with width and color of the outline. Then you can add other frills, like the lines I lay down (it's just a style thing that I like) or stamps or other design elements, if you want. Then you go to "file" then "save for web" and save it onto your computer, then save it to a webspace that has bandwith and then post it on livejournal. Voila!

[i_am_stillwater]

Hmmm... okay.

I'll try and decipher this.

Let's say I use a cybershot cam... always comes out around 28 x something or other inches...

I resize the picture to scale, then I use a word box function, and then follow your lead to spruce up the text, correct?

Do you do anything else to the pictures? How many shots does it take for you to get it right?

[strife_journal]

Sometimes I hit "adjust auto-levels" to make sure that the colors are evenly balanced, but for the most part, my photos are already evenly balanced because my camera is mad-pimptacular. I generally take the doll outside (outside lighting is ALWAYS better than flash, I cannot emphasize this enough) and snap a whole bunch of shots, then use the ones I like in the webcomic. I've gotten better at just taking good ones. I've discovered different compositional elements I like, and how to take good ones. I have also discovered that when I take the photos, there has to be a dull or even patch somewhere in the picture in which to put the text. Otherwise, if the text is on a patterned/textured/otherwise interesting surface, it becomes difficult to read, like when you go to webpages and there's a multicolored background and you can't decipher the words.