AuthorTopic: The Osmosis Pixel Technique  (Read 11582 times)

Aritriste

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The Osmosis Pixel Technique

on: January 23, 2007, 02:50:22 pm
Now, I saw a picture made by an artist here, and I found that it was very keen to this technique, so courtesy of the creator of this piece I would like to show some other artists here how to use a quick and efficient process of both pixeling and in general art, that will more than likely, depending on how you apply the technique and which depictions you use, will cut about a third of the original time that you would take to create a normal peice. Now this technique is something I call the Osmosis method, because in general you are doing things in a reverse order to acheive the same results, as you will see throughout this thread how this technique is applied to the following image courtesy of CC. Corp:



Now, once you get here this is where your preference comes in, about which colors are most appeasing to you in general, but they must be contradictory to the other. So in this case, I chose my usual colors of crimson (red), and teal, which alas as you will instantly tell when you are pixeling, it much easier to work with then simply white, gray, and black, especially as in this image's case, many blotches seeing as this was hand drawn. Now once you've decided there are several ways to do this, but it helps to have PS on the side so that the line conversion takes less than a few seconds, yet the way I did it was simply by changing the exact colors, gray, black, to teal, and crimson red, and this was the result:



Now I worked on the image above for a few minutes and shaded the plating near the neck, so it may look a little different. Yet now, because there is an exact contradictory in the colors, it's much easier to see what's what, what goes where, instead of having to guess if there is a very faint gray area or if the colors don't match, etc. Yet let me explain the concept of the process before you decide to assume that this simply is a faulty process.
In general when you use these two contradictory colors, you must be aware of how to use them. So when you convert this image in the first steps of the Osmosis method, you must be aware of the color tone of the colors that you are using. Now in my example of teal and crimson (dark red), you can tell that these colors will revert back to their original gray, and black state, but how do you add detail with these new colors? It's nearly the same as when using black and white to shade, but in this case you must do a pre-cautionary method before texurizing. So once you have changed the colors you must create a duplicate copy of this image in this state and save it some where, so that you can retrieve this later in the process. Next, simply start finding the blemishes in this picture and remove them, everywhere throughout the body of the image, so in general this takes a few minutes depending if you go pixel hunting or depicted removal. Yet once you do this, revert the image back to it's black, gray, and white state by either desaturation or by changing the selective colors. Now simply using a paint bucket and just do solid color tones in the area that you want, (keep in mind the pixeling comes later on).
Now, once you've added the colors you want save this copy, and close it. Find the other and open it.

Now with this other copy (uncleaned version) open it ,and begin to add shading by using a lighter or darker shade of the colors that you used to substitute for black and gray. The way that you do this is, as I shall example in my case, to make the color that you substituted for gray to be dark if you want the color to be close to black, or have the color that you substituted for black, be lighter if you want it to be closer to gray. This way you will have acute seperation between detail, so that you can work within the outlines within the confliction of mixed colors. Or faint colors that you can't depict due to their transparency with the neighboring color. So in general by using that older image that I showed you above, and by changing the colors back into their original state you will see that the plates that I colored in teal, are now a black and white shading, of which will be key in the later steps:



So now once you finished shading there are several various ways that you can go about the following steps, but I will go about my more favorable method, which would simply be desaturating (since this works best with my colors). Now once you have the gray version, go over the entire image one more time to eliminate any shading mistakes, but keep all the blemishes, and hard line mistakes. When you are satisfied with the shading, find the previous file that you were told to save a few steps back. Copy the image, and place it over the shaded image but change make sure to change this new layer's transparency setting so that is isn't as overwriting the previous layer and all the shading detail that you've spend your time doing. Then once you do this, all of the blemishes in the body of the figure should instantly be overwritten even with the transparency. Now once you've added this new layer, the solid colors you previously used will auto-format, and there won't be a need to texturizing depending on the methods of shading you applied in the previous steps, but this is the step where you can do the last final editations such as hardline edits. So all that is left is for you to make the editations to the lines, and adding small texture editations here and there to level the image or convert it to your preference, and removing the outerlying blemishes are much easier now since you have the body the of image, by drawing/creating a border along the outside of the hardlines and converting the image format, (if you haven't had it in this stage), and then delete the outerlying areas.

Once you've done these steps you will find out that it is not only much easier to apply detail, but it saves an incredible amount of time. Though even though this is only a rough outline of the steps of the Osmosis Technique, much of it simply requires experimentation to depict the full potential of this method. Yet as you can tell words in matters such as this only go so far, and I will be intending to back these words up by using this technique to apply it to the image above or a less complicated image, dependancy on exactly what time I attend to do a physical example due to the factor that I have a project going global this Sunday.

Regardless, I inquire that you use this technique because I can guarrenttee that it will save you a great amount of time, with results with along the same or better detail than before.
« Last Edit: January 25, 2007, 12:50:54 am by Aritriste »

Offline Ai

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Re: The Osmosis Pixel Technique

Reply #1 on: January 24, 2007, 02:44:10 am
...
What is this meant to achieve? What does it do?
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Offline Potatoes

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Re: The Osmosis Pixel Technique

Reply #2 on: January 24, 2007, 02:53:42 am
...
What is this meant to achieve? What does it do?
Did you not even read it?
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Offline Stwelin

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Re: The Osmosis Pixel Technique

Reply #3 on: January 24, 2007, 03:12:24 am
...
What is this meant to achieve? What does it do?
Did you not even read it?

The real problem is that within all of that text in the first post, never once does it describe what this process is actually trying to accomplish. all the author ever says is "this is the ideal way to do this technique" (in short.)

If this is a technique for pixel art, it is easier to just reduce the color count and then work over it, and if this is for just plain ol' digital art... it doesn't make sense to do this at all. It seems like whatever is going on here... there is a better way to do it.

Now, I saw a picture made by an artist here, and I found that it was very keen to this technique, so courtesy of the creator of this piece I would like to show some other artists here how to use a quick and efficient process of both pixeling and in general art, that will more than likely, depending on how you apply the technique and which depictions you use, will cut about a third of the original time that you would take to create a normal peice. Now this technique is something I call the Osmosis method, because in general you are doing things in a reverse order to acheive the same results, as you will see throughout this thread how this technique is applied to the following image made by Flaber: [...]

It does not explain anything about what this is supposed to accomplish. Are we missing something?

Offline pkmays

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Re: The Osmosis Pixel Technique

Reply #4 on: January 24, 2007, 03:17:23 am
I read the thing twice, and it went over my head in several areas both times.

It would be extremely helpful to have some screen grabs, lots of step-by-step images, and more specifics as to how the process is carried out. For example, one of your steps is to "simply change the colors from grays to teal and crimson," and I know of at least four ways to do that in Photoshop, but I'm not sure which one would be best to get the same results as you. And someone unfamiliar with coloring lines digitally would benefit greatly if you get more specific and told them how. I also don't think it'd be a problem showing how it's done specifically in Photoshop, because the mass majority of graphic artists use it or have access to it, and it isn't that difficult to apply the same theory in Paint Shop Pro, GIMP, etc. Also, the final image could just as easily have been made with some simple levels adjustment, and it seems like that is the final result for all the previous effort.

This seems interesting in theory, and I'm always looking for ways to speed up my workflow. You've put a lot of effort into this, but it still needs more work to be a coherent, easily understood tutorial.
« Last Edit: January 24, 2007, 03:20:18 am by pkmays »

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Re: The Osmosis Pixel Technique

Reply #5 on: January 24, 2007, 03:20:12 am
After reading it again, i guess that it's essentially supposed to just clean up lines when translating traditional art into digital medium...?

It seems like such a lengthy process, still. I tend to just use the levels editor and play with the sliders until my scanned lines are clean... is there anything substantially gained from doing it this way?

Aritriste

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Re: The Osmosis Pixel Technique

Reply #6 on: January 24, 2007, 03:34:20 am
After reading it again, i guess that it's essentially supposed to just clean up lines when translating traditional art into digital medium...?

It seems like such a lengthy process, still. I tend to just use the levels editor and play with the sliders until my scanned lines are clean... is there anything substantially gained from doing it this way?

Cut down immensely on time. I said this in repetition throughout the post.

@Ai, this simply is another way to do it, and it's the fastest I know of, so it may/may not be the best way, but it's the best that I know.

@PkMays, this should essentially speed up your work speed, but as you said I can clarify it deeper but I only did the general outlines so that it opens up ways for others to apply different methods. Yet I will do a complete defined route on how exactly to do everything, yet it will restrict exactly what you can do, but yes I will define it more when I gain the time to do so.

Offline The B.O.B.

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Re: The Osmosis Pixel Technique

Reply #7 on: January 24, 2007, 03:39:03 am
May I ask why you posted this in the pixel art thread? I honestly believe this should be in the general discussion thread. Seriously, I didn't see one ounce of pixel art in it. I don't know the general mind set of others in this forum, but when I go into a thread, or read a post, and I see it's subject as "Pixel Art", yet I see none what so ever in the post; then I 'm just going to skip the description and look elsewhere. But seriously, where is the pixel art?
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Aritriste

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Re: The Osmosis Pixel Technique

Reply #8 on: January 24, 2007, 03:45:56 am
May I ask why you posted this in the pixel art thread? I honestly believe this should be in the general discussion thread. Seriously, I didn't see one ounce of pixel art in it. I don't know the general mind set of others in this forum, but when I go into a thread, or read a post, and I see it's subject as "Pixel Art", yet I see none what so ever in the post; then I 'm just going to skip the description and look elsewhere. But seriously, where is the pixel art?

In the first post I did shading via pixels, and the main pixel peices are following. So in general this is both a tutorial, and a pixel art presentation.

Offline Stwelin

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Re: The Osmosis Pixel Technique

Reply #9 on: January 24, 2007, 04:04:31 am
In the first post I did shading via pixels, and the main pixel peices are following. So in general this is both a tutorial, and a pixel art presentation.

There is no obviously placed pixels though. if we cannot tell where you placed individual pixels, it defeats the purpose. Just because you change a few pixels to clean up a piece that is nowhere near pixel art does not qualify this to be posted in this section.

Cut down immensely on time. I said this in repetition throughout the post.

Cut down immensley on time doing what? The only thing you seem to have done is taken the long route of cleaning up lines. I could do the same thing in about 2 steps with the  levels sliders in Photoshop. I really don't understand.