My very first filters were keepers!

Hi everybody. New Here. VERY NEW.

I've been tooling along with my little filter maker and having a grand old time, especially since I never even heard of a filter until about a month ago and just downloaded FF 2.0 yesterday.

I made my first filters yesterday and tried to add variants to them to impress you all, only to have saved them the wrong way and I ended up oversaving the alternate versions instead. I have spent 12 hours trying to duplicate my original efforts, and although I've gotten some okay stuff, it isn't as good as those first two filters I made. These are easy and elegant little filters with quick renders and they are so darn useful for me. I have 4 filters but none is as great as the originals were.

The object of the game is twofold: to make some filters that will take pixellated B&W scans from old images and make them look spiffy but not run through the live trace factory; and 2. to make a popular filter (or series of filters) so I can get a bigger discount on the Professional Version of Filter Forge (which I don't need, I just want).

In a way I guess I am looking for tea and sympathy since I lost my best originals, but I also wanted to introduce myself and say hi. Maybe I am also looking to see if somebody says I should grab that 33% discount that expires in 6 days or "don't bother with making any filters because surely out of 7000 there would be one that will work for your task."

So, "hi" and Happy Labor Day to the US forum members.

You can just call me Lime, but I am Suzy from Indianapolis.

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Lime wrote: I made my first filters yesterday and tried to add variants to them to impress you all, only to have saved them the wrong way and I ended up oversaving the alternate versions instead. I have spent 12 hours trying to duplicate my original efforts, and although I've gotten some okay stuff, it isn't as good as those first two filters I made. These are easy and elegant little filters with quick renders and they are so darn useful for me. I have 4 filters but none is as great as the originals were.

Welcome to the fun Lime...hehe yep much like Stevie I had that happen also...I would dare to say that most here may have had that happen once before...
I had a filter that I even posted images of in the fourms only to have it change after posting samples of it....dooooh..

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I made my first filters yesterday and tried to add variants to them to impress you all, only to have saved them the wrong way and I ended up oversaving the alternate versions instead. I have spent 12 hours trying to duplicate my original efforts, and although I've gotten some okay stuff, it isn't as good as those first two filters I made.

If you happen to use Mac OS X, use TimeMachine to constantly backup your home directory and you will have your filter library safe from stupid changes.

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Lime wrote: Wellll, see, here's the rub: The Filter Forge Library is mostly boy-stuff and I want girl stuff. LOL! I

hehe..

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Lime wrote: So, while I'm not advanced, there are a lot of holes in the filter library that could be plugged with ribbons and bows and bubblegum. hahahaha.

Yep there are still many many filters that can be built...Just even in the frames portions...To many ideals and to little time..

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Lime wrote: CF&M, I forget your name, but I know for a fact one of the wonderful filters I downloaded is yours...cemetery fences? It's one I worked with for a good long time yesterday to see what cool stuff it could do. Is there was way to open the filter editor and use my own fence drawing with your gold? Is that kosher or considered bad form? (Just curious; I have more on my plate than working on this, but it occurred to me that gold finials on top of my wrought iron fencing would be lovely.)

Thats alright there was a time or two I forgot my name..
Yep that would be absolutely fine..and thanks for using it..
But of course and most importantly have fun..
Would be cool to see your final filter or at least an image...Is it one that you are going to submit?

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Lime wrote: Wellll, see, here's the rub: The Filter Forge Library is mostly boy-stuff and I want girl stuff

check out Ahimsa's stuff, Foxxee's stuff and who else, guys? there's also several pattern and fabric and plaid type filters, as well as curtains and some other more feminine type stuff. there are even some flower types, though these are somewhat difficult to make and tend to render rather slowly. we've even got some cute, furry little critter filters

and welcome to FF. nice to see a skirt back in here. the testosterone level was getting pretty high.

Nice work!!!

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Lime wrote: use Stevie J's MetalShop filter

Your choice in author's filters is exquisite!!! ....

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Lime wrote: am running Vista 64 with 6 mgs of RAM. I have a super-duper graphics card, the specifics escape me, though. My husband thinks all my rendering problems will go away by adding Windows 7. I was wondering if I could use a bit more RAM instead. Does anybody have an opinion?

You mean 6 gigs of RAM, right??? RAM will add rendering speed....Windows 7 will add stability....

Another "trick" to speed things up is to delete page file, defrag HD, and then recreate contiguous (unbroken) static page file with max and min set the same at three times the total amount of RAM.....like have an 18 gig static page file if you have 6 gigs RAM.....

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Lime wrote: As far as the testosterone goes, I'm ust happy you didn't say "There goes the neighborhood!".

sometimes, when the neighborhood goes it's a good thing

and i agree, those are very good designs and wrought irons. love the lampposts. i tried to do a wrought filter but couldnt work out how to twist the metal. and i think someone else posted a partial wrought iron, a start of one, here in the forums...somewhere.

as for win7 and more ram. win7 definitely. ram yes, if you have a 64 bit system. if it's just 32 bit then more ram wont even be used due to limitiations of that system. however, iirc, FF puts a limit on how much ram it uses... i think.

Whoops. The files didn't upload.

Remember on the ribbons that I'd like to make them transparent.

Lime Ribbon.ffxml

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StevieJ wrote: RAM will add rendering speed

Will not (unless you run many memory-hungry applications at the same time).
Filter Forge never uses more than 1.5 GB of RAM.

Hi lime, the filter looks interesting, the modes need tightening up, unfortunately there is no remapping available, you could use separate blend components of the choices that work and then run them through a switch

GMM, Thanks for the number. I *do* use several memory hungry applications at a time, and I noticed none of them ever gets above 1.2 GB of usage. Usually at 1.2 the individual program freezes necessitating a hard exit through task manager.(Paint Shop Pro is the biggest offender, but Illustrator and Corel Draw and Firefox and Word perfect are right up there, too - almost always at 750-1GB of memory use.) This has nothing to do with Filter Forge and everything to do with my poor computer usage: I always have way too many open documents and images and programs and too little free disc space. Yeah, yeah, I feel a lecture coming on, not necessarily from you, but from somewhere, and yes, I've been cautioned before, and yes, I live with it.

Carl, Thanks for looking. It's scary, but I actually follow what you're saying. I'll go back and click the remapping boxes (the easy part hahaha) and take another look at the modes. I'm not sure what tightening the modes means But I want to switch out the processing components to the 2.0 versions, anyway and I think that will clear a lot of it up. It seems to me the options change as I switch the box connections which should have clued me in that I had it going the wrong way, but whenever I go to clean it up, I lose a valuable asset to the filter. (Some quality I really liked such as a little glow around the dark edges disappears for example.)

CF&M, Yes, I tried the Alpha Channel, but I could never figure out what to hook it up to, then what to attach it to - the "Set Alpha" directions in the FF help don't have an image that shows both output and input. I just tried it again with your example, but everything goes transparent. As I look at your example, I see your duck is transparent, too. How do you get it back again? When I get the transparency, then the image is transparent along with the gradient and noise. If I blend that with the original image, I lose a lot of my gradient and noise effects, and any efforts to bump up the opacity of the image with the stripes or checks goes to the whole image. My boxes look really messy in the filter maker. That's my cue that things aren't right.

You do not have to walk me through this - I can figure it out. I can especially figure it out if all I have to worry is the final product (private filters for my own use). But Stevie is right: I don't think I can come up with a public script for the filter library.

Now I have to read the fine points of the FF basic version abilities and if I can edit existing scripts and save the resultant girly versions I make.

Thanks for all your help!

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StevieJ wrote: RAM will add rendering speed

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GMM wrote: Will not (unless you run many memory-hungry applications at the same time). Filter Forge never uses more than 1.5 GB of RAM.

If one machine has 1 gig of RAM....and a second (same GHz) machine has two gigs of RAM....won't the second machine render the same image faster....

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StevieJ wrote: If one machine has 1 gig of RAM....and a second (same GHz) machine has two gigs of RAM

If 1 GB is compared to 2 GB, you are right. But the Lime's machine already has 6 GB... and every extra gig added will hardly contribute to the rendering speed (though depends on the number of programs running simultaneously.)

think of the cpu speed as the workman. he's what's crunching the numbers. ram is the space he works in. if there's plenty of space, then it's all on the cpu, but if space is short then you either need more or you get into the pagefile system, which is a little trick windows does to turn some of your harddrive into ram. however, harddrive acccess speed is way slower than ram, so you start to see sputtering and slows.

so, if FF is limited to 1.5 gigs of ram and you have 6 gigs of ram on a 64 bit system, you'd have to have some pretty hefty apps going to seriously slow things down... in theory. however, windows also has a bit of trouble with memory fragmentation. it's the same thing as harddrive fragmentation but it happens quicker because ram is the workspace and everything goes there first (mostly). so, if you've got a huge picture with tons of layers and 100's of operations going on it and you have FF open and are rendering 30 minute or more render times, guess what, that harddrive light is going to start going crazy as you move into the pagefile system.

if you have vista or win7 just watch those little meters on the right side of your desktop and you'll get a pretty good idea what's going on.

Maybe I wasn't quite up front on my Windows 7.. I bought my new computer a week before the offers of a free program update. But it still smarts. maybe not as much as it smarted a year ago, but still. I would have had to spend another 15% of the cost of the new computer! Or something like that. I don't really remember, but it seemed like a rip off.

Another thing I should clarify - 30 minute render times!!!??? Um, I was complaining about 90 second render times. LOL! I shall hang my head in shame for thinking 90 second was too long.

New Topic -- I mapped and fixed up this Pop Art filter which I love. (My new avatar is dressed in it). So, can anybody take a look at it and see if my modes are tightened up? I'm still not quite clear on what that meant, thought I think I got the general drift.

Thanks!!

Lime's Pop Art Fixed.ffxml

oh, and notice how i used multiple image components. this is the only component you can use repeatedly without any time increase penalty. at least, i think it's the only one, but at least that one you can use repeatedly.

ok, when i say i cleaned it up, all i did was rearrange the components physically to make it easier to read/see/follow/understand. i didnt actually change out any components or remove any or add any. i just physically moved things around

as to your question of looking at two filters at once, sel ect all the components from one filter... yes, highlight ALL of them at once, and right click over one of them. pick 'copy' and this will put the whole thing (minus the results component) into the clipboard of windows. exit out of that filter and go to your other filter. enter the editor, right click again and hit 'paste'. this will place the entire filter, with all the lines from the other filter into the workspace of the 2nd filter. it wont be connected to the results, however, so you'll have to plug each one of the filters into the results to compare things.

also, there is a quick way to select all components and their lines at one time. go to the results component and right click. in the little menu that shows up pick the 'select all' or however that thing reads and it will highlight all components at once. i think you can also hit 'control a' and it will do that too or go to the top menu and pick select all fr om there.

then, after you've done all that, go read the documents and help files

I'm tweaking my Pop Art Filter (which will be renamed) and wondered about sliding the Vibrance by Kochubey script in there? Do I email him and ask permission? Do I just do it and thank him in the description? I'm still unclear over what is stealing and what is using existing filters as a stepping stone.

My idea was to offer the whole thing as written as an option in the check box. Yes or no for Vibrancy.

Similar topic: Speaking of borrowing things fr om other scripts, WH ERE are people finding some of the things they use? Dust, Scratches, trash, 12 color panels...I am seeing all kinds of things that I do not believe are available to me. Now, I haven't memorized all the settings yet, but I have opened them all up. I am pretty sure I'd remember trash and hair and scratches and dust. I want them! Do I just open a filter and snag them? ---> See paragraph one.

Excellent!

Naturally she's a lady. I bet 99% of the filters I have downloaded are feminine, but I figured 90% of the filter library was masculine, so I was hedging my bets on the pronoun.

The link in your example gets me a 404 error, but I think I get the drift. I'll find one in the library when the time comes - first I have to figure out the controls and how to attach them.

Thanks!

Edited to add: I got it all figured out, but the added vibrancy ruins "the look" of my filter, so I'm going to stop here on it.

oops - i included the parenthesis in the link. Here's the link: http://www.filterforge.com/filters/7647.html

Hey Everyone,

Hi Lime,

Welcome to the Filter Forge Forums, I see you are off & running, a great start!

I wanted to mention, if you write Customer Service @ Filter Forge & ask them nicely for a extension, they will give you an extra 30 days, unless the policy has changed?

When I joined I was in too big a hurry, never thought I would make filters, & only purchased the Basic Edition, wish I would have held on to that $80.00 a little linger..I was wong again!..lol. I hope you love it here, I like your fresh spirit & enthusiasm!

Have a GREAT day / Evening,

Ron

Good morning everyone,

Hi Lime,

You are welcome, & thanks for the compliments.
I hope you can work it all out to stay onboard here.

Enjoy, & have a GREAT day!

Ron

Oops. That didn't occur to me at all, Carl. Well, it occurred to me when I saw some of the bad blends, but I didn't realize there was a fix for it.

I'm saying "ooops" because I already turned in the filter, complete with bad blend modes. Oh, well, Version 2, any one?

Craig, I ordered Windows 7 today. 80 bucks instead of the original 200 - that would have been 20% of the cost of my computer, and that's what I was so honked off about.

I have another interesting question (observation). More people have Version 1 FF than Version 2, right? Wouldn't a person who wants her filters to be high usage be better off submitting a version which could be used in both versions, i.e. Version 1 compatible? I think I made a mistake.

Just sayin'

Thanks for the directions, Carl. I see the switch, but oddly I haven't opened a filter yet that uses it to understand how it worked.

Lime