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ether — synth - WS
Published: 2011-08-29 00:52:54 +0000 UTC; Views: 5626; Favourites: 36; Downloads: 802
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Description
total disregard for chemical balance in favor of making pretty patterns. whole thing trussed up in photoshop...patterns n all.Related content
Comments: 25
chemist here, I love your background and I am using it now at work and on my laptop.
thank you for the hours you put into this. I love it.
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that's super fab. i'm a chem nerd who doesn't get chem all that well so to have an actual chemist use my completely inaccurate wallpaper image is, well, cool.
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Wow 
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didn't think of the background a la chalkboard but yieah, it does remind me of that now...!
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I really wish I knew what you did about that program...
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Yeah, Photoshop. How to make dem shapes, and make them uniform, and make them colors and glowing. I wanna learn things!
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forgot to explain the background ...
once i had created the design using the custom shapes, i just selected it and filled with a gray shade slightly lighter than the background color. then scaled that layer huge and blurred it a bit. this way it won't distract from the already busy looking main graphic.
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google is my/your friend.
1 - find a shape you want to use. in my case, i looked around for a decently clean pic (as in clean lines) of a crown ether. save it as a jpeg.
2 - take the jpeg into photoshop and use the pen tool to create a path around it.
3 - change the path into a custom shape: [link]
4 - now that you have a custom shape, create a new doc where you can replicate that custom shape however you want (resize, rotate, blah blah blah).
5 - to color it, just select the shapes' layer, create a new layer and then fill with either gradient or solid color. i used a gradient obviously.
the rest is all layer blending effects, layer effects, blur/sharpen filters, and layer masks. there are a bunch of ways to create the glow effect that you can google for...i used a combination of ways until i liked the result. playing with layers is key.
the most time consuming part was creating the custom shape and then using the custom shape to make a design.
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Thanks for this! I appreciate it muchly!
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Holla! 
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found nice clean graphics of the chem diagrams online (woohoo google image search!). took those graphics into photoshop and created custom shapes from them using the pen tool and path options. then resized them and rotated each to my liking. add gradient, selective blur, sharpen, etcetra, and voila.
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That's wonderful. The results are great
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i didn't want perfect circles actually, sorta was going for the hand drawn look so i kept the circles "bumpy".
paths are created from the pen tool and you can adjust its shape from various points. until you commit the path to a shape, it's totally flexible so my guess is that it's vector-based. shapes are raster and not vector since any changes (scaling, distort, etc) can pixelate it.
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True, makes it more natural. Thanks for the clarification, so given that, how would one make a scalable vector based circle for example that could be upscaled infinitely? I assume given your response that the circle tool would create a path? Or is it that the shapes are paths until they are rasterized?
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oh and, in answer to your question " how would one make a scalable vector based circle for example that could be upscaled infinitely?", the answer is -- use illustrator.
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the ellipse (circle) tool creates a shape. but you create a path from that shape. or even create a path directly using the shape option. a shape itself is not a path -- once created, it's rasterized.
conversely, if you create a custom shape from a path, then you can scale that shape any size you want at the beginning.
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Damn adobe and their confusing systems!
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just play with the tools and you'll see. that's how i learned.
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Definitely! Have been doing that, and it's working out just great
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