#ts4 edit tutorial

[gumdropandfriends]

How tf I made that post, so you can too <3

Make your edits melt into the tumblr post itself!

**Update: The way I did the first post is more complicated than it needs to be. You do not need an exact post color match. You just need a png with transparency at the bottom, and it will blend with all screens! I will test it and report back, but it should be more effective than this!

⬇️old method⬇️

Step 1: Set up the your blender scene

Step 2: Render an image slightly longer than you are used to, so the viewer is forced to scroll (this helps the illusion). I went 1280 x 2600 px, but this blurred the text, so perhaps shrink the ratio. **Make the height at least twice the width.**

Bring it into photoshop/GIMP/medibang/etc.

Alternate: Take a screenie in the sims, go straight to Step 3

Step 3: Add in black and grey divisions and headers, referencing tumblr for proportions. Screenshots pasted in are your friend, here, but be aware:

Desktop uses grey HTML color #1a1a1a

Mobile uses grey HTML color #222222

To melt into the border on mobile scroll, you MUST use #222222, and it will look WRONG on pc. Trust the process.

Both use true black #000000 for the middle dividing band. (Frankly, the greys are so close, you can use whichever color your screenshots are as the center band with no visual issue. It's the bottom where our eyes will care!)

A flat background in stage 1 will make it easier to mask and cut out your sim-shapes, but 50% opacity and the eraser tool works fine too!

Add shadows if you like, etc. Razzle and dazzle as you will!

And that's it! You've got this!

[salemssimblr]

hellooooooooo i love all of your renders and posts you're so talented oml. may i ask for a tut on how you did the smoke in this post? tysm ily :D

Hey, thank you so much ahhh!!! That means so much to me!! ILY! 😘

In truth, my method for smoke is not sophisticated at all... It's actually laughable how simple/easy my process is for this, I'll admit 😅

There is a way to do it right in blender, but for this particular trick I don't use blender (mostly because I've never been able to get it to work right, user error I'm sure haha). But if that's what you're looking for, there's an (untested) tutorial here!

I personally use photoshop for my smoke, and, I admit, brushes!

This tutorial assumes you have a basic knowledge of photoshop, but if you don't or if any of this is confusing feel free to send me an ask and I'll be glad to help!

A while back I scoured the internet for free cigarette smoke brushes and amassed a small collection of them. Unfortunately none of mine are marked with a name or anything so I can't link to specific ones, but here are a few I've found for this tut:

Click with caution! I use ad blockers and these sites are fine for me but as always be careful!

Brusheezy free smoke brushes 15

Brusheezy free smoke brushes 12

Resource boy 200+ free smoke brushes

If you're using photoshop, make sure the brushes are in .abr format!

Once downloaded (& unzipped), if you double click the .abr file it should automatically install and open your photoshop if it's not open already.

I've pulled one of my renders of Ariss (pre-smoke) into photoshop, so let's make some smoke.

Step 1: Create a new Layer!

Make sure you are working on a new, empty layer! This will be important in later steps!

Step 2: Add smoke using your smoke brushes

On the new layer, select the smoke brush you want to use, and make sure your color is set to white/off white/grey.

Hover over your image and select where you want your smoke to be. I was unable to take a screenshot of this process, but I put my smoke here:

Step 3: Adjust opacity/shading

You should have a layer for your smoke now. Double click it and the layer style window should pop up.

In this step... honestly go ham. If you follow exactly what I'm doing, it won't look the same because of differences in our base image (color, brightness, saturation, etc). But I usually adjust:

Blend mode

Opacity

Color overlay

Outer glow

If your smoke isn't on a separate layer, any adjustment you make here will be on the main layer, which we don't want!

I've adjusted mine, & ended up with this:

Step 4: Move & adjust your smoke

Because your smoke is on a separate layer, now you can move and adjust it.

This is all up to your preference! I typically just move, adjust, and edit the layer style until I get something I want.

Sometimes I'll also blur the smoke, which you can do by selecting filter -> blur -> gaussian blur, just make sure you're on your smoke layer!

You'll know you did it right when you get this window showing the transparency instead of your image, & if the smoke blurs when you adjust the radius!

& that's it!

There's a way to also use the standard brush tool and "path blur", which I've used before but don't usually like the result of it.

But if you'd prefer to try that, here's a tutorial for it!

[winterecho-archive]

Hey guys! 😊 I’ve written this tutorial on how I edit my screenshots! It’s maybe a bit (a lot) more detailed than I originally intended, but I hope it gives you some new ideas/tips/tricks! 💗 (included below: how i fake reshade xD)

So I’m gonna start with this unedited screenshot of Felicia. 😁 I don’t use Reshade in my game, too much hassle. :P Instead, I use overlay textures and Photoshop actions to make my shots look pretty~ 😁

Here’s what that shot looks like after I’ve dragged it onto my echo_base.psd (the file I use for all my Winter Echo posts). I resize the shot only after bringing it onto the psd (but for this one, I’m leaving it at the original size). For Winter Echo panels, I use dimensions of 1011x608px at 72dpi.

Here’s what the shot looks like after I’ve turned on my four overlay texture layers above it. I have a large collection of these because I use them in my illustration work. Most of my textures I get from Adobe Stock (or make myself) but you can find a lot of great free ones on google images by using search terms like “gradient texture” or “overlay texture” (to get the best ones, change your image search settings: Tools > Size > Large). Here are the four I’m using for Winter Echo without their overlay effects applied:

And here are the specific overlay settings I’ve applied to each one:

This requires a bit of trial and error! If you use this method you’ll probably end up mucking around with the overlay effects and opacity a lot because the results will vary according to the textures you’re using and the lighting in the shot underneath. These specific textures and their settings took me a while to settle on and I’ve used a variety of others in the past. 😊

This brings me to the Actions Panel! xD If you use a lot of lighting and colour adjustments on your shots, actions are a really good way to record them so you can apply identical effects to each shot. The shot above has had my “WE Indoor New” and “WE Colour Adjust” actions applied. But that doesn’t help you much, so here’s what I’ve actually recorded for those actions:

Photo Filter

First step is always Photo Filter. Sims shots tend to come out a bit too warm imo, so I usually apply a Cooling filter (LBB is slightly purple).

Exposure

Exposure is a bitch to adjust because it will often have wildly different effects in different lighting. So I usually only adjust this a little, and let my textures do most of the lightening/brightening. You can get some very interesting effects with this though (e.g. I used to increase the offset a fair amount to make my shots look more dusty/soft).

Colour Balance

Again, my textures and photo filter are doing most of the work here, but I always add a bit more blue to shadows, and sometimes a bit of yellow to highlights just to take some redness out of skintones.

Levels

I use this instead of brightness/contrast. Just to make whites a little more white, and blacks a little more black, because sometimes my textures can make them a bit dull. Adjust as you like!

Noise

I used to use an overlay texture for this, but I like the consistency of Photoshop’s Noise effect. 😊 Don’t go nuts with this! A tiny bit of noise goes a long way. xD (and also, a higher noise level that looks good on a close up will make your wide angle shots look like a blurry mess, trust me 😅)

That’s all the effects I use in my recorded actions! Next step is...

Dodge & Burn

I only use this on shots that need a little extra depth, and only on faces/hair/clothing. Mostly I use the dodge tool on the T-zone of faces and the burn tool (with a large, soft brush) around the sides of faces. Keep the exposure very low to control how much shadow/highlight you’re adding. (You might also want to work on a duplicate layer for this step, in case you end up hating the result and wanna go back to the original xD)

That’s pretty much it for how I edit my shots! Obviously I haven’t gone into the tiny editing things like smoothing really angular edges, fixing clipping, etc or we’d be here all day. 😅 But here’s a little bit extra about how I make my speech bubbles:

I use Photoshop’s Rounded Rectangle tool on a new layer...

The corner radius can be adjusted in this panel. If you can’t see this panel, you can find it under Window > Properties.

Then I use the Polygonal Lasso tool (right-click on the Lasso tool to find the Polygonal Lasso) to draw a triangle on a new layer, and fill it with white.

I merge the two layers (the rounded rectangle layer & the triangle layer) and bring the opacity down to around 75-80% (depending on the shot in the background - if there’s a lot of detail behind the bubble, it needs to be more solid so the text stays readable). I’ve added text afterwards in this example but I always put the text in first, so I know how big the bubble needs to be and where to place it. I keep all these bubble and text layers in the psd until after they’re posted, so I can easily make edits as needed. 😊 (but I don’t keep them forever, because I’d have thousands of layers by now and the psd would take 10min to open 😅)

I hope that was all easy enough to follow!! If you have any questions at all about any of this stuff, or need help with Photoshop in general, please feel free to leave me a comment or shoot me a message! I’m always happy to help 😁💗

[blushchat]

GIMP TUTORIAL: smooth skin & edge

a simple gimp tutorial how to smooth the skin & edge from your simmie! keep reading. ♡

for this tutorial you need GIMP 2.8 or higher (you can find it here), the free plugin G’MIC (here) and basic knowledge of GIMP. 

1. place your sim on a new layer (a transparent background isn’t important, but much easier)

2. select your sim layer and go to filters  → G’MIC

3. go to repair  → smooth (antialias). set your settings similar to mine. if you want to smooth it more or less, just play around with the settings. click OK.

4. go to filters  → repair → smooth (diffusion). again; set your settings similar to mine or just play around. then click OK.

5. that’s it! i just added a few curves to my picture.

I hope it was helpful, tag me in your edits!  ♡

[wrenpity]

do you have any tips for gettin hq headshots of your sims (except for hq mod)? I'm not entirely sure how to go about it especially since you can't tilt your screen the way you could in sims 3..

Hi nonny, I don’t know exactly what you mean, but there is not much I can do in the actual game to take hq headshots except from hq settings, you know? (I don’t even know what hq mod is lmao sorry) I always take my screenshots in cas, never in the actual game if you are curious. 

The only thing that I do for making my portraits more “put together” is always using topaz clean, It’s a very efficient tool for making details pop and smooth things out, but I tend to use a very light hand. 

in this post  you can see my settings and I explain how I make my sim’s skin smoother 

other thing that might be helpful is once you’re editing your portrait (in photoshop) if it’s looking a little pixelated or blurry, basicly if it looks low quality, from all the effects you used or the quality of the image itself, you can always add noise, it won’t make miracles, but most of the times helps to blur those pixels or imperfections, again, with a very light hand (if the image is extremely low quality to begin with, it won’t help) this is how to add noise and how it looks:

I wish this was somehow helpful nonny, there isn’t anything special I do for my headshots or my edits in general for making them hq, but feel free to ask me anything that comes to your mind, and we can work it out! ✨