Sunday, April 23, 2023

Crowdsourcing Art Knowledge

No, this is not about machine learning (which isn't artificial intelligence, no matter what they keep calling it). This is more basic.

I turns out I know nothing about visual arts. The last time I learned anything was in kindergarten when they told us the primary colors were red, blue, and yellow, and then I became a programmer (uh, there were a few years in between) and found out they changed the rules and the primary colors are really red, blue, and green. My life has been a lie.

So mostly I do things in GIMP (because I'm too cheap to pay for Photoshop) and click on buttons and add layers and choose "colorize" and try every filter that exists and hope it all looks good. That either works or I give up and do something else.

But I know other people know what's going on and do these things with intention. So my question here is:

How do I make this look better?


The final cover will look something like this:

I need to go back and darken the bottom of the image so the text stands out, but first I need to fix the disappearing dragon. And maybe other stuff...

The image is made from these three pictures I licensed from DepositPhotos: a brick wall, a person, and a vector dragon.





The dragon completely fades into the background.

I'm guessing I need to... desaturate the brick background before adding the person and the dragon? Is that the term I want?

If I can figure out the right terms, I can find a video on YouTube that will tell me how to fix this.  I hope.

Friday, April 21, 2023

Quick Break For Very Important Info

I've been busy doing stuff (hey, someday I'll get this book in shape!), but I just wanted to say that there are five absolutely adorable kittens on the kittencam, so if you were waiting for new fosters, this is your chance!

(4 boys + 1 girl, no names yet, and they're about 5 weeks old)