So that's OK, then.

So I'm healthy, not slovenly after all.

In other news, I've been learning Photoshop and Illustrator. I'm reasonably impressed with both. Previously I've used the likes of Paintshop Pro, Xara and (more recently) Gimp, but I have enough of a need to do lots of diagrams that I don't really have time to mess around. I gave up on Inkscape -- lovely though it may initially appear, it wasted me a lot of time. Grr. *slap*

OK, so here's my first attempt with for-real Photoshop:



( Medium resolution version )

The image is not quite what it initially seems. The bottom of the scene is a panorama constructed from about 6 or 7 separate images, colour/brightness corrected and stitched together, and the sky is actually from a completely separate photograph. I had to modify one or two things very slightly -- the railing in front of doseybat doesn't in real life stop near her, it actually runs right along the top of the concrete, but it didn't match up properly between some of the photos that made up the panorama so I painted it out. I've just invested in a reasonably decent tablet (a Trust 6" by 8" thingy with a pressure sensitive pen and a 3 button mouse), so I'm finding this a far superior interface in comparison with my usual use of a mouse or one or other of my Touchstream keyboards.

Next up will be redoing all the artwork for my paper in Illustrator, so expect one or two things to get posted here as that happens.

To follow up on another post, I've decided to go with the triangle inside the rounded rectangle. I know it lost the vote, but my co-author wants that version, and a bunch of async types in the lab also voted that way, so who am I to argue? :-)

Colour and Tritone versions of that image...

( Medium resolution version )

Traditionally, duotones, tritones and quadtones are created by overprinting the same monochrome image with different colured inks, typically each having different levels of contrast. You can get some very subtle effects, or go in for false colour lunacy if you prefer. I went for something that looks a bit like a platinum print -- I was going for an 'Ansel Adams' kind of extended contrast, plate camera look. The highlights are overprinted in silver, and the shadows in a dark brown. I'd love to get an A3 or larger print made -- the huge resolution is too much for A4 really. I like the look.

For completeness, I thought I'd upload the original colour version too

Diagrams done, fluffy has had enough for today...

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