FCAP #18
Show Notes:
- You can see an example of some bad Dissolving in action in this video; it’s something that shows up a lot in (bad) PowerPoint presentations, of which I’ve had to watch far too many.
- I hope I didn’t come off as too much of a smarty-pants in the introduction. A lot of folks get pretty close to understanding Dissolve mode, it seems, but they end up getting some piece of it just a bit wrong. (Google up “Photoshop dissolve” and you’ll see what I mean.) As I’ve pointed out in the past, I always think it’s better to understand exactly how and why Photoshop does things. Next time, since I don’t have to go through the whole explanation, I’ll have time to show two or three cool things you can do with Dissolve!
- Any of the Purchase links here will take you to a page where you can pick up 10 Towns & Villages, but I hope that if you’re interested in it you’ll head over to YourGamesNow first! Not just because I make more money if you buy it there (which I do), but because it’s a great site to support. YGN is a RPG co-op, owned and operated by the folks who publish there. You might have heard horror stories about other sites giving publishers a raw deal; that doesn’t happen at YourGamesNow, and I’m proud to be a member (albeit a small one). Even if you don’t want to buy 10 Towns & Villages, I hope you’ll check out YourGamesNow the next time you’re looking for a gaming PDF!
Comments
Comment from Butch
Time: February 1, 2008, 3:25 pm
Thanks Colin! I wanted to get more into some practical applications for Dissolve, but I figured (rightly as it turns out) that what I had already would take me a good 6 or 7 minutes or air time. I don’t mind doing these “all Photoshop, no cartography” episodes every once in a while, though!
Comment from Joel
Time: February 1, 2008, 11:48 pm
So, I followed this tutorial, and then played with the effects in photoshop. If you hit that slightly blur’ed dissolve with the artistic->cutout filter, you’ve got some really nice random trees!
Comment from Butch
Time: February 2, 2008, 12:01 am
Pretty cool, eh? 
That’s ANOTHER thing I love about Photoshop! When you learn a new technique, REALLY learn it, you’re not just getting one. You’re in on the ground floor of many, many more once you start combining it with others!
Comment from Colin Paddock of the Clan Macdonald
Time: February 7, 2008, 12:03 am
One thing I like better in GIMP than Photoshop is the noise filters… Except for Hurl, which just seems to be a less-capable form of Add Noise. So I’ve been playing around a lot with Pick and Spread as well as Dilate and Erode. Mostly building heightfields for Bryce, etc…
Anyway, my pressure-sensitive pad doesn’t talk to GIMP and there are a lot of things I prefer about ps, anyway. So I thought about your lesson on Dissolve and lo and behold, I found a nice way to emulate the Spread filter. I started with a black background layer. Next, I created a new layer filled with white. I set the blend mode to Dissolve and added a black Layer Mask. I painted my desired shape in white in the Layer Mask then I used Gaussian Blur. The kernel size of the blur is roughly(maybe exactly) equivalent to the Spread size. Nice. At the moment I’m using the Brush Strokes>Spatter filter to emulate pick. It gets the same nice clumpy quality to it, anyway. A bit more work, but ultimately that’s why God or Seetharaman Narayanan created Actions…
And of course, if you’re willing to play games with channels and Select>Modify>Expand and Contract ps has perfectly workable greyscale erode and dilate methods. Those are good for building heightfields that look a lot like Bevel and Emboss Inner Bevel operations with Lighting Effects.
I should create a tutorial blog of my own: “Photoshop Maps for the Clueless by the Clueless.”
Comment from Butch
Time: February 7, 2008, 5:51 pm
Great stuff, Colin. I haven’t used GIMP in years, so that was probably three or four versions back! At some point I’d like to do a couple of episodes on combining Bryce & Photoshop, though.
Comment from Colin Paddock of the Clan Macdonald
Time: February 8, 2008, 2:25 pm
Turns out Filter>Brush Strokes>Spatter… with Smoothness set to its minimum value of 1 does about the same thing. You can then go back with a lower Spray Radius and a higher Smoothing to make the distribution clumpier. Sweet…
Comment from Jonathon
Time: March 14, 2008, 9:23 pm
A fellow Firefly fan Colin? Gorram kind of gives it away.
Comment from Chris
Time: April 2, 2008, 5:46 pm
This is a pretty spiffy tool. I always stayed away from dissolve, mostly because I had no clue what it did or how to use it, now I know and im excited to see how your going to use it in cartography. By the way the podcasts you have are great. I found them last night and have scince watched all of them, very good job with it, thank you for makeing them.
Comment from Butch
Time: April 2, 2008, 6:18 pm
Thanks Chris! Hopefully I’ll find where I packed my microphone soon, so I can get back to recording!
Comment from Colin Paddock of the Clan Macdonald
Time: February 1, 2008, 11:42 am
Thanks, Butch. These things are always great. I’ve never really even touched Dissolve after the first time I looked at it and said, “Yuck! Eight-bit theatre!”
I’ve been trying to figure out how to add noise in a given color(not polychromatic). Dissolve worked perfectly. You point out the use of gaussian blur to soften the effect. Another thing to do is to add your dissolved, blurred color on a separate layer and apply that layer at reduced opacity.
Finally, I created a layer, applied a Clouds filter, added noise, and then applied a blurred dissolve effect on the layer mask. This can look very natural, because you can have a subtle variation in color across the dissolved areas.
I know these things are a lot of work for you, but I am a terrible selfish old man and I want to see a lot more of these lessons ’cause they are so gorram useful. If I ever come into money that doesn’t have to go straight to my children, I am SO buying your book.