[Dthind]

I was recently asked by one of my companys VP's to create a 'cool looking' plasma energy wallpaper for his PC.

Help !

All I have is PS6. And I do more print work than this kind of thing.

I think he is talking about energy bolts, neon colors, 3d effects, wild blues, etc.

What is the best way to make this ?

Edit: Added First (crap) attempt:
Edit: Removed picture, was just plain ugly.

Decided to buy the boss a program, rather than agonize over it (company pays).

[ May 13, 2001: Message edited by: Dthind ]

[Loki]

First of all, tell your boss that he's got absolutely no taste (YUCK!) - and therefore get fired and don't have to do the job.

If this should not be the solution you're striving for, maybe some of that works:

* maybe the '3D effects' needs more definition - don't know what that means.

* the quickest solution would be to get a filter collection like 'AlienFX' or one of the KPT filters - one of the earlier ones I guess - they have more texture filters. And I think that's what your boss wants.

* If you shouldn't have access to filters like that, you'll have to play with the filters in PS6. I can't really point you to any specific ones, but here are some tricks to get something:

- generate noise over a colored background (created with the airbrush and maybe those 'wild blues') and then blow it up about 800% (make a smaller selection, blow that one up).

- gaussian blur it

- try to use curves and drop the darker half of the pattern to pure black

- copy and turn pattern 90 degrees and switch layer mode to the more fancy modes 'overlay' 'exclude' or something like that

- use distortion filters over it


you get the point.

One last recommendation: try to nail your boss down to specify what he wants as good as possible.
But hearing this I think he's a boss who doesn't know what he wants, so next trick is:

Always show him 2 or three versions (not too many, otherwise he gets confused) to pick from.
And then you could say "What about a mix between A and B"
Or you make one you like and two absolutely awful ones, to get himt to pick your's - But careful - he might pick the awful one - then you're truly screwed

but you probably know that all anyway - sorry if I got carried away