Thanks Tony. I call this series my high detail grunge style, with some Jixipix and Photoshop thrown in... I would do a tutorial on this style, but this forum is so hopeless for storing things, like presets and tutorials, it hardly seems worthwhile. It would just be lost in the mists of time, like a canoe over Niagra Falls...
Ian, you have a special group for sharing presets, and you can explain your process after your posted picture. Everything is here to make it possible…. :-)
Bernard, I don't like to argue about these things, but this forum is lousy for finding tutorials and presets. I would waste my time and yours pointing out how difficult it is to find either.
Perhaps you think that a tutorial you did on one image a year ago is accessible to new visitors?
And that you don't have to scour through each and every post in the preset Group to get any of the files?
The bottom line is you're comfortable with this format. I'm not. I think it is inefficient and contemptuous of the new user. It does not lend itself to learning.
Sorry about the harsh words. But there is a better way to do what we're doing here, now.
I just wanted to answer that posting is possible, but you're right when you say it's difficult to search tutorials from old postings, there is certainly a better way !
Ian, what would you suggest we do to improve the forum?
From a historical standpoint, the current ning based forum is a hundred thousand times better than the old DMN based user forum. So i feel the decisions we made and the things we did to make this forum were good things.
But i agree that it can be hard to find things here sometimes. I have better luck searching from the top search field. But one issue with that is that it searches across everything, as opposed to being restricted to within a specific section.
Groups seemed like a cool feature when ning first offered them. but they haven't really carried through the development of that particular feature to the degree they should have (in my opinion).
I'm kind of offended you think we're being contemptuous to new users. Quite the contrary.
So when you say there is a better way to do things, please speak up, and please be very specific. Because we also have to deal with the reality of putting together a forum like this. I'm not sure what other options to using Ning we have, other than building something custom in wordpress. And I don't think finding something on a wordpress site that has a lot of posts on it is necessarily any easier than finding something here.
So if you have suggestions about other ways we should be building the forum, please speak up.
Some people will put effort into making their own presets, others will put effort into finding a preset they like in the hundreds that have been posted.
The site's search functions work middling to well if you know what to specify in the search.
John you have suggested that you might organize the posted presets into a new collected post before. maybe this would be a project for an intern.
Tutorials posted by users add to the richness of this place Ian, I am sorry that you do not feel that sharing your insights is worth the effort. Even when the work uses other software it can be very interesting to see how an image was constructed or learn the thought process behind the construction of then image.
We lost a lot when posterous went out of existence. John had hundreds of tutorials posted there.
Replacing that content would be an interesting effort maybe it gets put into this forum, maybe it exists separately in a venue that is more searchable and organized to be a learning center. I for one feel that having the discussions in this forum are part of the value added to SA.
I'm not trying to blame anyone in particular for the way things work out. The fact that a lot of tutorials are attached to image posts is unfortunate, as it almost always guarantees that the tutorial will be lost in the linear timeline. The dedicated Tutorial Group is a good idea. But navigating it is counter-intuitive. You have to navigate all the way to this URL just to list the tutorials:
I don't feel that sharing my insights is not worth the effort. I enjoy producing tutorials, and would be happy to do so. I just dislike the idea of the effort being lost in the obtuse navigation.
Storing the presets is not something I think is best accomplished in this forum. I think Liveart is correct when he says that it a separate endeavour. I use a PHP script on my own website to list images in a particular folder:
Something like this would work very well for the presets. What is unfortunate is that to do it well, you would have to adopt a naming system that included a preview for the visitor. So you would need two files for the same preset, such as:
wonderfulnewpreset153.zip
wonderfulnewpreset153.jpg
Loading them into the application is another matter. An import function in SA would be useful here, rather than the current manual system, which is unnecessarily complex. Importing a preset should be as simple as choosing the preset, and choosing which preset hierarchy you want it stored in. Messing around with the directories on the HD is a bad idea for even experienced users.
Thanks John. I think it would be really productive for new users to be able to access the work that has gone into these unique presets. Some of these efforts are exceptional, and are a valuable addition to the application. i won't push my luck on the import function :) Perhaps you would be kind enough to add that to the list of desired features for SA 5?
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These are turning out really nicely Ian!
Thanks Tony. I call this series my high detail grunge style, with some Jixipix and Photoshop thrown in... I would do a tutorial on this style, but this forum is so hopeless for storing things, like presets and tutorials, it hardly seems worthwhile. It would just be lost in the mists of time, like a canoe over Niagra Falls...
Ian, you have a special group for sharing presets, and you can explain your process after your posted picture. Everything is here to make it possible…. :-)
Bernard, I don't like to argue about these things, but this forum is lousy for finding tutorials and presets. I would waste my time and yours pointing out how difficult it is to find either.
Perhaps you think that a tutorial you did on one image a year ago is accessible to new visitors?
And that you don't have to scour through each and every post in the preset Group to get any of the files?
The bottom line is you're comfortable with this format. I'm not. I think it is inefficient and contemptuous of the new user. It does not lend itself to learning.
Sorry about the harsh words. But there is a better way to do what we're doing here, now.
Regards, Ian
Ian, you're right too.
I just wanted to answer that posting is possible, but you're right when you say it's difficult to search tutorials from old postings, there is certainly a better way !
Regards, Bernard
Ian, what would you suggest we do to improve the forum?
From a historical standpoint, the current ning based forum is a hundred thousand times better than the old DMN based user forum. So i feel the decisions we made and the things we did to make this forum were good things.
But i agree that it can be hard to find things here sometimes. I have better luck searching from the top search field. But one issue with that is that it searches across everything, as opposed to being restricted to within a specific section.
Groups seemed like a cool feature when ning first offered them. but they haven't really carried through the development of that particular feature to the degree they should have (in my opinion).
I'm kind of offended you think we're being contemptuous to new users. Quite the contrary.
So when you say there is a better way to do things, please speak up, and please be very specific. Because we also have to deal with the reality of putting together a forum like this. I'm not sure what other options to using Ning we have, other than building something custom in wordpress. And I don't think finding something on a wordpress site that has a lot of posts on it is necessarily any easier than finding something here.
So if you have suggestions about other ways we should be building the forum, please speak up.
Some people will put effort into making their own presets, others will put effort into finding a preset they like in the hundreds that have been posted.
The site's search functions work middling to well if you know what to specify in the search.
John you have suggested that you might organize the posted presets into a new collected post before. maybe this would be a project for an intern.
Tutorials posted by users add to the richness of this place Ian, I am sorry that you do not feel that sharing your insights is worth the effort. Even when the work uses other software it can be very interesting to see how an image was constructed or learn the thought process behind the construction of then image.
We lost a lot when posterous went out of existence. John had hundreds of tutorials posted there.
Replacing that content would be an interesting effort maybe it gets put into this forum, maybe it exists separately in a venue that is more searchable and organized to be a learning center. I for one feel that having the discussions in this forum are part of the value added to SA.
I'm not trying to blame anyone in particular for the way things work out. The fact that a lot of tutorials are attached to image posts is unfortunate, as it almost always guarantees that the tutorial will be lost in the linear timeline. The dedicated Tutorial Group is a good idea. But navigating it is counter-intuitive. You have to navigate all the way to this URL just to list the tutorials:
https://studioartist.ning.com/group/studioartisttutorials/forum
I don't feel that sharing my insights is not worth the effort. I enjoy producing tutorials, and would be happy to do so. I just dislike the idea of the effort being lost in the obtuse navigation.
Storing the presets is not something I think is best accomplished in this forum. I think Liveart is correct when he says that it a separate endeavour. I use a PHP script on my own website to list images in a particular folder:
http://ianmcpherson.com/jixipix/
Something like this would work very well for the presets. What is unfortunate is that to do it well, you would have to adopt a naming system that included a preview for the visitor. So you would need two files for the same preset, such as:
wonderfulnewpreset153.zip
wonderfulnewpreset153.jpg
Loading them into the application is another matter. An import function in SA would be useful here, rather than the current manual system, which is unnecessarily complex. Importing a preset should be as simple as choosing the preset, and choosing which preset hierarchy you want it stored in. Messing around with the directories on the HD is a bad idea for even experienced users.
Cheers, Ian
Interesting idea you mention Ian about setting up a separate preset website (or web-presence). I'll think about that.
I also wanted to mention that all of the old posterous tutorials mentioned in the discussion above are available online archived here.
Thanks John. I think it would be really productive for new users to be able to access the work that has gone into these unique presets. Some of these efforts are exceptional, and are a valuable addition to the application. i won't push my luck on the import function :) Perhaps you would be kind enough to add that to the list of desired features for SA 5?