Image Ready has quickly become one of my favorite apps. As Bone mentioned earlier, Photoshop never seemed to handle JPGs as good as it could have (lousy compression), but then came ImageReady. Since the two are tied together it's almost like an extension of Photoshop or like being in a filter dialog. It's compression options more than make up for what Photoshop lacks. It's a lot like Firewire (Macromedia).

Thanks for the kind words.

If I understand your objectives correctly, these are really 'masking/selection problems' to be solved. To select the sky (and not the trees) you can use the 'Color Range' selection. Select a piece of the sky and adjust the slider until it looks like you got about what you want. You will pick up a few stray pieces in the roof and windows but you can paint them out in Quick Mask mode. Then expand the selection by a pixel or two, depending on the resoluiton of your image,to get rid of the "fringe". The attached image was created from your upload. I'm sure your original is a higher res image and if so your results should look better than mine. To create the rays you can use the same selection (save it as an alpha channel once you make it) and simply (okay, it may not be simple) paint away where you dont want the rays in Quick Mask (after you dup the selection so you don't screw up the original). Then just paint in your rays. If I have misunderstood what your are trying to accomplish I apoligize.

I've never used PSP myself but maybe if you could post an image of what the effect looks like someone here could tell you how to , or if it can be done in Photoshop. BTW, Phtoshop can open PNG files so maybe you could create what you need in PSP and then bring it into Photoshop? I suppose that defeats the purpose but then again I'm not sure what "Picture Tube" is either.

...to a cross.

My only constructive criticism would be in regard to the small vertical link buttons. It's not as easy as it could be to pick the one you want and it's not immediately apparent which one you've checked (if you want to go back to an image). If you look close you can figure it out if you remember enough about the image. Maybe just number them? That might make it easier to discuss them with a client anyway.

Well,.... first of all there really is no way to achieve the line work since they were originally ecthings and the lines conform to the shape of the volumes they depict (meaning, not straight across like some etching styles), However, using the halftone filter (under the Sketch filters) OR using the Conte' Crayon filter (also under the sketch filters or maybe a combination of both, you may be able to create an etched look that serves your purpose. Take the image of your face and desaturate it (turn it into a grayscale image) and then run those filters to try and get it close to an ecthed look. Merge that (or a duplicate layer) with the bill image (or a duplicate image of that) and destaurate the whole thing and create an adjustment layer or layer effect to bring the color back into it. Doing it this way will ensure color uniformity since you'll be adding color back into the whole thing at once rather than trying to adjust your face to match the bill (much harder to do). I've not tried this myself but this is how I'd start anyway. The hardest part is going to be achieving the etched line look in your face.

Well it's already been said twice so I guess three times a charm. Excellent idea Yoshi!

I'm assuming you want the gradiant effect to take place across the width of the stroke for the entire length of the stroke (like mixing red on half a brush and blue on the other half and then painting a long stoke that blends from red to blue the entire length of the stroke). The fade set up works from the begining of the stroke to the end of it so that won't get you fade you're talking about. The only way I can see doing what your talking about in Photoshop would be to create a section of gradiant and then use the smuge tool on it. That would be teadious though. I don't know if you have Painter or not but in painter you can control the color of the 'bristles' more. I've never set one up to do a gradiant type stroke (gradating from side to side within the brush stroke) but it seems like it would be possible. If you find something that works (in Photoshop, please post it! I'd be interested in knowing how to do something like that.