a first year design student could have done a far better job!!

musta' been done by a engineer ;)
when will they learn?
scott

hi john,
not exactly "up" on PSelements so i'm not sure of the full limitations the prog has...

need to step out for a little but i'll see what i can come up with.

scott

you can lower the % for both the Blur and Smudge tool. this will in effect give you more control on how much is "blurred"  or how much the "smudge" is to go before tapering off.

i've used the "cutout" filter to create some of the limited colour range and blended those to create the underlying layer.

as far as i've been able to do, i've yet to find a "simple" solution (that has been acceptable "results-wise") but i have found you can get it down to a routine with a little patience and practice.

hope this helps:)
:)
retrocity

try reducing the number of fonts as dreamer stated and if it still is flakey, toss out your preference file (prefs), it may have gotten corrupted. PS will rebuild a new PREFs file during the next launch.

the preference file has to manage a whole lot of stuff for PS and sometimes it get messy and causes PS to go all wonky...

hope this helps
:)
retrocity

if you haven't already ran through the "uninstall" - "reinstall" process, try deleting your PS pref file. Then "re"associate the file formats to open with PS. When you launch PS again, the pref file will be "re"created.

as a force of habit, i toss and rebuild my pref file whenever PS gets wonky on me. Saves a LOT of time and trouble with backing up brushes, deactivating, uninstall, reinstalling, reloading brushes and other custom presets...

hope it all clears up for you,
:)
retrocity

sorry i've not heard of others with this issue (...and i've yet to get upper management to approve the CS5 update for me!!)

i can't recreate the issue as i'm not running CS5  yet.

will see what i can find.
retrocity

 Is the greyscale image just going to sit on top of the gradient? or are you going to fade the images into each other?

if it's just going to sit on top as a different layer in photoshop, then open both files in photoshop and just drag the greyscale image on to your gradient image. this will create a layer with your grey image leaving your color gradient intact. (if you were to do it in reverse, it would strip out the color in the gradient layer to match the greyscale color mode...)

as erosiaart stated, it only changes the color mode to match the destination files color mode.

hope this helps,
retrocity

great tut quest!

for the last step, if you don't want to use the black (or can't because it has background image...) you can mask it instead. this way you can still form the "ball" AND allow the background image (of whatever you're blowing up) to show through!

thanks for the link,
as always you are a very helpful member in the forum
:)
scott

 yeah as swamp mentioned you can do a "pseudo" uninstall by dumping the folder, but you won't really find a problem until you try to use plugin that isn't supported by the 32bit version and the app crashes.

i'd leave both and just deal with the loss of drive space (about 500mb i think...) . 

L8r
scott

 yeah
you'd need to bring in the buildings in as a separate layer and work on that.

i wouldn't use the eraser tool, i'd use the masking tool cause it's non-destructive and you can change your mind if you want (can't do that if you've eliminated the pixel information).

look at old buildings to see how the decay looks like. it shouldn't be too difficult to replicate.

:)
retrocity

try this:

create a new clean file.

choose two varied shades of green (one for foreground colour and one for background colour).

hit F5 or select the menu option BRUSHES in the WINDOW menu dropdown.

check the boxes next to some of the presets (see attached image).

click ON the preset name to call up the settings (play around with these too...)

see what slight changes to the setting do and find the look/effect you're trying to achieve. 

hope this helps
:)
retrocity

as it installs both versions without a prompt to the user, i'm not sure they can be separated easily.

i haven't had the joy  (or problem) with this issue, but i'll look deeper.

scott

 good advice dreamer
You've always been a great source of knowledge and help in this forum for years.

i don't think i've thanked you enough
scott

 i sent this link  to my boss so i can get the upgrade approved ;)

the surprise was, it actually worked!  now i just gotta wait for the actual release.

scott

 Man! i never never get here fast enough to answer the ones that will make me seem "really smart!!!""

oh well...
scott