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Ron's waves. . .

cclesuecclesue Posts: 420
edited October 2015 in The Commons

and similar items. . .

I purchased this item  a while back but never tried to use it till now. I've tried to open in PS the png file below   

 

 

Instead I get this weird image

 

Is there a tutorial on how to use these things?

Post edited by cclesue on

Comments

  • CypherFOXCypherFOX Posts: 3,401
    edited October 2015

    Greetings,

    To use the wave brushes, specifically, I don't think there's a tutorial.  But at the core, there should be an .abr file, which is 'Adobe Brushes', essentially.  You would import this into Photoshop, and it gives you a bunch of brushes to use with the brush tool.

    I found this video to be amazingly helpful: 

    I don't use Photoshop, I use Pixelmator, but a lot of the techniques work there as well.  (It does mean that I can't use some of Ron's more photoshop-oriented sets, though, unfortunately, like the custom shapes and such).

    --  Morgan

     

    Post edited by CypherFOX on
  • srieschsriesch Posts: 4,243

    I don't own photoshop so I'm not sure what to do there. 

    However I did just purchase a bunch of Ron's stuff today and to get them to work in gimp, all I had to do was move the .abr files out of the deeply nested string of folders they unzip from into one folder, then tell GIMP what that new brushes folder was (and possibly restart GIMP), at which point they all appeared in my brushes.  There wasn't anything special I had to do.

  • ANGELREAPER1972ANGELREAPER1972 Posts: 4,560

    I've considered buying a lot of his? stuff(could be female can't tell by names)  but wasn't sure how much of it could use fully using Paintshop Pro x7 which is supposed to be able to use a lot of Photoshop Plugins besides the brushes and tubes and such but some of the products list  Adobe Photoshop Tools (.TPL),  Adobe Photoshop Layer Styles, Photoshop Custom Shape Tools for example so I don't know if I could use these

  • CypherFOXCypherFOX Posts: 3,401

    Greetings.

    So, I have all but 8 of Ron's store items, out of 93.  I haven't tested all of them, but nearly every one of them has .abr files, or straight psd files.

    Because I use Pixelmator, not Photoshop, I can't use the Layer Styles (.asl) or the Custom Shapes (.csh, which means his Sci Fi Custom Shapes are right out), and Photoshop Tools (.tpl), but brushes (.abr) and photoshop layers (.psd) I can always use.  So I use the HECK out of Ron's Explosions, for instance, which is all awesome PSD layers.  He also used to have the very excellent Ron's War Elements, but it's no longer in the store, which had muzzle flashes, fire, blood, debris, and more, and it was all stuff I could use.  Unfortunately War Essentials has a lot of stuff I can't use, so it's on the list of stuff I don't have. :(

    I'm fairly sure that Custom Shapes, Photoshop Tools, and Layer Styles are *very* custom to Photoshop, and don't carry over to other applications.  I'd be happy to be shown wrong, but in all my searching, I haven't found a way to use any of them in Pixelmator, and it's one of the best alt-Photoshops out there, and definitely the best for money (~$15).

    Ron's Waves, however, are just brushes, very nice and nothing fancy. :)

    --  Morgan

  • scorpioscorpio Posts: 8,533

    You can open the brushes in a program like ABRmate and it converts them to PNGs I only have Photoshop 7 so I have to convert the brushes.

    http://www.texturemate.com/abrMate

  • ChoholeChohole Posts: 33,604
    edited October 2015

    As I use brushes quite a lot, and collect them I tend to unzip them into a folder called "Brushes" and then add them to PS when I need them.  Once I have finished with them I reset brushes back to the default set, to keep PS load time to a minimum

    load brushes.jpg
    446 x 595 - 147K
    Post edited by Chohole on
  • McGyverMcGyver Posts: 7,085
    edited October 2015

    I'm not sure how to install the brushes through Photoshop, but the way I've always done it is manually by going into the main Photoshop folder, going into Presets and dropping them into the Brushes folder... I usually have Photoshop closed when I do this, because just like fonts, new ones don't kick in until Photoshop is restarted.  But I've got CS3, and that is quite old now... Maybe newer ones don't require that... Or maybe even CS3 doesn't need it done that way... I dunno, I've been doing it manually since Photoshop 4...?

    Edited to add- I think that doing it that way is more of a Mac thing, I forgot why but I vaguely remember there being some issue way back with unzipping them into that folder and them not working right... 

    Post edited by McGyver on
  • Joe.CotterJoe.Cotter Posts: 3,362

    I'm guessing you may be asking how to use this greyscale 'thing' to create the neat colored effects people get using the brushes. Ron did include some tutorials in one of his flame brush series for how to do fire with all of the colors. I wish he would have included tutorials in all of his brush sets similar to the fire one as it would have made life much easier for people not familiar with using brushes in a photo editing tool.

    I will give a quick overview for anyone who's interested. Basically, the brush is a greyscale object that works like a stamp. Many brushes are like this and it would make more sense if they were called stamps, but it is what it is. If we select a color, and stamp with the brush, it will stamp that color at various shades of the color and opacity levels. If we create a layer or series of layers over our original image and then stamp on top of the original with various stamps from a family (like various flame stamps) at various colors, (orange, yellow, blue) we get a fire effect. For a better understanding of the process we can Google "photoshop brush tutorials" however, we will have to filter through all of the brush tutorials which actually refer to 'brush' uses and try to find ones that refer to the 'stamp' methods. Again, why Adobe couldn't have created a separate 'stamp' function.... donno.

  • ChoholeChohole Posts: 33,604
    edited October 2015

    To my mind brushes of this sort are really designed to be used during Post work, so they assume that there is a back ground on which to then add the detail with brushes.

     

    An old image, using an older version of some of Ron't brushes. PS 7.  not a good image, but it was done back in 2010, using Bryce 5 on an aging single core system using WinXP and PS 7.

     

     

    PS, these are not the brushes currently on sale here, as I said they are an earlier version, brought at another store.

    Post edited by Chohole on
  • cclesuecclesue Posts: 420
    edited October 2015

    I guess I didn't make myself clear on this. . .  I'm not asking about the brushes and how to use them but rather the png files provided with this specific set. I use png files when saving from rendering in either Poser or Studio and none of them react in this manner. The above is what happened when I tried to open the stand alone png image provided with Ron's Wave package. I get similar goofy things happening when I try dragging the unopened png file on to my open PSD image.

    Again this is for using the png files. . .   not the abr's.

    Post edited by cclesue on
  • ChoholeChohole Posts: 33,604

    I am not getting that.  I opened one pf the PNGs and then dragged it onto another image,

    ron's wave.jpg
    1600 x 1113 - 457K
  • scorpioscorpio Posts: 8,533

    I've had this happen with a couple of the pngs from the blood set, redownloading solved the problem they had somehow become corrupt.

  • cclesuecclesue Posts: 420

    Reloaded set as suggested and this seemed to work fixing the pngs. . .  The problem now is how to make the B&W pngs look ike real crashing waves.

    Any tutorials on this?

  • ToborTobor Posts: 2,300

    You'll need to paint in the color of the sky and sea as an under layer, then apply the wave(s) as white ink over that in a separate layer. If you look at his group shot image, you can see as a demo he using what appears to be a consistent blue-to-green diagonal linear gradient. You can start with that, and then blend in lighter and darker variations of those colors on another layer.

    There are other ways, and you can mix-and-match. For example, you can apply a gradient to a layer (example forground to color or transparent), and make a layer mask for it. Fill with black, then apply a wave as white. The gradient shows through the mask.

  • ToborTobor Posts: 2,300
    edited October 2015

    Double post

    Post edited by Tobor on
  • ToborTobor Posts: 2,300
    Chohole said:

    PS, these are not the brushes currently on sale here, as I said they are an earlier version, brought at another store.

    Thanks for reminding me to check the sales ... just snagged four more. I have many of Ron's sets, but I'm not quite up to what some people here have. Give me time, though, and I'll catch up.

  • WendyLuvsCatzWendyLuvsCatz Posts: 40,336

    I know this is a necrothread but has anyone encountered problems reading abrMate png exports in other programs?

    some like irfanview don't see the alpha others like Zbrush cannot read them at all

    oddly Carrara sees them perfectly

  • mwokeemwokee Posts: 1,275
    I think the real question is what do you want to accomplish. Post work is a matter of taste, skill, and vision. There are a million ways to accomplish the same thing in Photoshop. The wave PNGs by themselves are not going to create a nice wave. As stated previously, you need to paint the background and drop the PNG on top. You may need to erase portions, warp them, etc. There are wave creators and water products where I rendered a base and then used Ron's brushes for details. Many of the PNGs are redundant, they may have an equivalent brush. I probably should make a video on what you can do with Ron's products and then retire on the income I would make from that. Ron has JPG backgrounds too. I use a metal rust background as an overlay to give renders texture. The Grit and Dirt brushes do just that, you can add dirt to objects so the renders are not so clean and sterile. The Lights and Shadows brushes can create various lighting effects. I even use Steam and Smoke to add haze and surreal lighting effects. But to answer the question, the PNGs generally are not a place-and-done object, it most likely will require additional tweaking.
  • WendyLuvsCatzWendyLuvsCatz Posts: 40,336

    Mwokee this thread is 4 years old

    I already apologised for necromancy 

    I only resurrected it as some posters here used AbrMate to convert Ron’s brushes but the results are not read by Zbrush so I had to with hours of difficulty run several other conversations

    Was asking for ideas

    I think the original poster by now has addressed his issues 

  • mwokeemwokee Posts: 1,275
    edited July 2019

    I'm a slow reader. But the techniques I describe have benefit to others who are learning post work tricks.

    Post edited by mwokee on
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