[DannyRaphael]

Disclaimer:
Although I've gotten to know Stephen LeQuier (aka: Trimoon) through e-mail, forum interaction and having helped him with some tutorial verbiage on occasion, I'm mostly an admirer of his fabulous artwork. He did not ask me to start this thread.

- - - - - - -

Several months ago I purchased Trimoon's "Artistic Expressions" CD, available here: http://www.Trimoon.com

Well, today I finally had a chance to try it out.

To make a long story short: It's great.

The lessons are in Macromedia Flash format and are applicable to Photoshop Windows and Macintosh, versions 7 and later. Each method is presented in video format from beginning to end -- every stroke, every tool change -- and is accompanied by helpful commentary.

If you've ever struggled to understand how to use the Art History Brush, Trimoon puts it through hoops you cannot have imagined. It was a huge eye-opener for me.

The CD includes:
* The video lessions (Watercolor Portrait, Sketch, Ink Sketch)

The Ink Sketch tutorial is out of this world.
See: http://www.pbase.com/trimoon/image/35817247

The Watercolor method can yield very impressive results, too:
See: http://www.pbase.com/trimoon/image/35586235

* Photoshop Lighting Effects filter presets
* Texture files (to be applied with the Texturizer filter)
* Numerous Smudge Tool, Brush, Art History Brush and Eraser presets
* Instructions for installing the files plus a link to install Flash if you don't have it yet
* Images used in the lessons, including Tom Selleck and John Wayne

Bottom line: The only way I could be happier is if I could paint faster and would have check this out sooner. It's the best $18 U.S. (plus shipping) I've spent in a long, long time.

For those of you living outside the U.S., Trimoon does ship internationally. Send him e-mail for details.

The attachments:
1 - Original image (Note: the copyright notice is my doing, not Trimoon's. This isn't a "creative portrait" challenge.)
2 - The result of applying Trimoon's watercolor method (sort of). IMPORTANT: I followed the instructions "generally speaking," but deviated quite a bit to serve my own purpose. The sample watercolor (see link above) illustrates a more typical outcome if you don't get distracted like I did and follow the instructions.
3 - Just for the fun of it I opened the Trimoon output in Painter, but had I followed Trimoon's steps to the letter, this would not have been necessary.

Anyway, it's been a fun day. I'm looking forward to doing more experimenting with his methods.

~Danny~

[Xaran]

Sorry Danny but I have to disagree with you over the Flash Tutorials - I dont think they are a patch on the Quicktime ones. The content is excellent (as always from Steve) but the quality of the sound on the Flash movies is not good at all.

I have told Steve this and said I hope he goes back to Quicktime for future ones.

Christine

[glikster]

I wonder what version of Flash he's using? I just produced a Flash-based presentation for my job using Flash MX 2004 and it comes with Flash Player v.7 which has an INCREDIBLE audio compression codec specifically for speech. The quality doesn't change from the uncompressed to the final compressed version.

[DannyRaphael]

[quote=Xaran]

Originally Posted by Xaran

Sorry Danny but I have to disagree with you over the Flash Tutorials - I dont think they are a patch on the Quicktime ones. The content is excellent (as always from Steve) but the quality of the sound on the Flash movies is not good at all.

I have told Steve this and said I hope he goes back to Quicktime for future ones.

Christine

A fair point on the sound quality. It definitely could have been better.

Since the methods are visual recipes for the application of custom tool presets, filter settings and textures and they are presented as a continuous and uninterrupted screenshot vs. typed step-by-step instructions, I had no difficulty following along even with the volume off. (As a matter of fact I didn't have my speakers hooked up the first time through.)

In retrospect I should have mentioned:
* For those not used to video tutorials, it will take some getting used to clicking Stop/Play and switching back and forth between the tutorials and Photoshop to apply subsequent steps.
* If one has never installed custom .tpl files into \Presets\Tools and/or loaded a .tpl file via the Presets dialog, consulting Photoshop help or a quick Google search (photoshop install .tpl) will be necessary. Although the process is not difficult, it's definitely not intuitive. IMPORTANT: Be sure to choose the Append option for each .tpl file.
* While most have used the default textures in the Texture > Texturizer dialog, one must choose the "Load texture... " from the dropdown menu in order to access Trimoon's texture files.
* Although Steve provided a QuickTime movie on how to install and use the custom Lighting Effect presets, a mention of how to install/load the .tpl and texture files would probably have saved him a lot of e-mail.

Had this been a music CD it would have been disappointing to be sure, but I'm glad we agree "the content is excellent (as always from Steve)."

Thanks for sharing your thoughts, Christine.

~Danny~

[DannyRaphael]

Here's one I did based on the "Ink" tutorial. I followed the steps "closely" this time.

Original image courtesy of Trimoon.