I am currently working on my first sim lit. I am writing my story first and then I am going to add the photos. Do you guys use Photoshop to edit your photos and make your banners? I love your photos in Chjapter 4 @Maladi777
I use photoshop for Second Chances. Non-edited photos just look so blah to me when I open my screenshot folder. I have developed some quick photo fix filters that I run on each photo. Sometimes I have to do a bit more editing with lighting and stuff, and I am constantly learning new things with photoshop, that make my photos stand out even more.
My favorite photoshopped photo I've done in editing is this:
Green screen the truck onto the street, and then used different lighting filters for the lights on the truck. Makes it more realistic.
If you ever lose the link, you can find it on the first post of either Stories and Legacies Index Gateway thread (there is one in the Sims 4 Stories and Legacies section, and the Sims 3 Stories and Legacies section).
Be sure to check the Info page if you are interested in making link-back banners or badges, or if you are interested in making a cover art banner for the index!
Huge thanks to @CathyTea and @MedleyMisty who helped tag entries so the index is now subject-searchable; there were 600 entries to input, and their help was invaluable!
@mastressalita I just checked that blog out and it is SO GOOD! You've done such a huge amount of work, mastress, @CathyTea and @MedleyMisty , and it seems to me that it was definitely worth it!
My Sims stories: The Fey of Life - fairytales in life are few and far between (Forum thread HERE) The Chrysanthemum Tango - a story about life, death, magic, and how to be a good landlady (Forum thread HERE) Forget-Me-Not - some things just refuse to stay buried; an Ambrosia Challenge story (Forum thread HERE)
@Elizabeth94803@friendsfan367 Have you ever tried GIMP? It's free and while not quite as magical as Photoshop, it is similar and advanced. You can play around with lighting, saturation, etc. Everyting is adjustable.
Welcome @Elizabeth94803 ! Friendsfan was right, I do use Photoscape (as well as another program called Paint.NET) to make my banners and such
As for my pictures in my story, all I do is brighten them a little bit (and I also use very little cc) Maybe boring compared to the beautiful screenshots other people have, but I'm ok with that
I have a fondness for redheads in my game as well. If I were to hazard a guess, I'd say a good third of them or more are redheads. Besides just loving that color hair, it also has personal meaning to me.
My Mother was a redhead, one of my siblings was a redhead and over half of my Aunts, Uncles and cousins on my Mom's side are redheads. Plus, my son's wife is a redhead and there's a very good chance I'll be the grandmother to a redhead at the beginning of next year.
I've read many times that it's best to write what you know, so maybe that also spills over to the visual aspect of some of my sims creations too? *shrugs*
Interesting, @Karababy52, I am the only nstural redhead in my family so I guess I'm trying to populate the world with more? And there's such variety with red. I love the color.
So many things to answer! I was busy setting up a new router and watching Better Call Saul last night instead.
Re: kinds of sims to make: Axel from Uptown was deliberately created as the best possible amalgam of what typical sims of mine look like.
He's tan and dark-haired and brown-eyed and you can't discern his race and ethnicity immediately, if at all. He has beady, rounded eyes with monolids, a big, softly-hooked nose, and almost comically-huge lips. I didn't really try to think deeply about specific ethnicities because he was supposed to be a background character for @CitizenErased14. He just had to look like a Trip (tm) sim but also handsome enough to make the cut for the Ashes to Ashes universe.
But you can see those elements coming through in other characters I made (or latched onto; Harwood Clay might be a pre-made but his unusual face really shows through a lot in my own sims now), across any of my stories. Everyone is mixed-race (or more often these days, Southeast Asian/Vietnamese) and has lots of care put into their nose and lips. Even characters who are supposed to be part-alien.
I am currently working on my first sim lit. I am writing my story first and then I am going to add the photos. Do you guys use Photoshop to edit your photos and make your banners? I love your photos in Chjapter 4 @Maladi777
I use GIMP (free!) to sharpen and brighten my screenshots. It started way back when I was playing TS3 on a crummy laptop. Sharpening and bumping up contrast helped make the best of fuzzy, middling graphics. And I think it worked well enough, even if I wasn't fooling people into thinking I was playing on a gaming desktop. Having to play on low graphics settings stinks, but good composition and editing can take screenshots far (and on the flip-side, no graphics card will save you from bad composition )
Plenty of people post unedited screenshots and they look fine! The sharp stuff has just become a part of my style now.
I asked this question in my reading circle, but since it's Q&A Monday in the Lounge, what are your thoughts on complex character development? How do you illustrate and develop the many layers of your characters? What makes your SimLit characters most interesting?
Thanks @AdamsEve1231. I've been struggling with this.
I like giving everyone a background. Backgrounds give context and a place to develop from. And in spite of the "you're more than your race/disability/sexuality/trauma/etc." rhetoric, growing up with any of that shapes you. It does! For building characters, it gives a lot of context and justification for how they are, whether how they start or where they end up.
I still like Sinbad from Eight Cicadas as an example of a great if very obvious course of character development...
He was a nasty, neurotic mess of a criminal, with that all having clear roots in his background. He had severe parental issues and a difficult, poor, and abusive upbringing. And his development from introduction to death was through putting him through life events where he had to change. He had to learn to live and work with Annette when he had nowhere else to go, and become nicer and a better colleague to her. He had a child and got married, and had to soften his attitude towards them. He had to make peace with how his dad neglected him because, like it or not, he was surrounded by people who loved the guy when he was alive. He gained a particular compassionate side towards children and people who were abused, like with his willingness to try and help Hannah escape her mother's influence, so she wouldn't end up as bad as he did.
Sinbad had a complex set of problems rooted in his background, and he developed without breaking free of it either. He still had a snippy, vulgar, nervous side to him to the end. And he wouldn't care about Hannah as much if he wasn't abused as a child too.
Whenever I revisit that universe, anyone else can get revisions but I'm honestly pleased with how his development turned out. Love him.
Where I'm stuck now is with how I started this post: Axel! He does change as a character as the story goes on (at least becoming more and more obsessed and unhinged), but I usually never have a character free of past issues. But his upbringing was...outrageously problem-free. He had well-off, loving parents and grew up in clean and safe Windenburg, and received little impactful prejudice for being mixed-race and having an immigrant mother. The one "problem" he lists of missing his cousins is completely overturned by him being such a jerk to them! I do worry about him being shallow and bland to start off with and going on a downward spiral thanks to a breakup and having two women tell him "no" for once. But perhaps it's a necessary kind of character to write.
I use GIMP (free!) to sharpen and brighten my screenshots. It started way back when I was playing TS3 on a crummy laptop. Sharpening and bumping up contrast helped make the best of fuzzy, middling graphics. And I think it worked well enough, even if I wasn't fooling people into thinking I was playing on a gaming desktop. Having to play on low graphics settings stinks, but good composition and editing can take screenshots far (and on the flip-side, no graphics card will save you from bad composition )
Plenty of people post unedited screenshots and they look fine!
I agree.
Staging and composing the shots is tricky on its own. Editing can be fun and it can help fix some unfortunate choices made during staging . (Info for non-GIMP users: you can adjust the perspective of the photo. I wouldn't say drastically 'cause it looks funny, but it's a cool tool). As a reader I enjoy seeing different approaches to the in-story pictures, just as I like different writing styles.
I've also just finished this week's Better Call Saul!. (It comes out on European Netflix a day later). And I'm rewatching Mad Men to sleep. These shows are to my eyes like curry hummus is to my mouth, or better. Each scene is staged and shot so masterfully... that I wanna curl up and cry because I'm a talentless person with conjunctivitis.
Seriously though, I've been working on one, long, chapter for 2 months and now that I've put it together, it looks like crap, because walls keep changing the colour. I don't know how I'd missed that before and why that happened at all( does anybody? I know it's something to do with the sun, but going from white to brown/orange seems extreme), but I'm sure now that stretching the work for too long is really bad.
I asked this question in my reading circle, but since it's Q&A Monday in the Lounge, what are your thoughts on complex character development? How do you illustrate and develop the many layers of your characters? What makes your SimLit characters most interesting?
It's something I wish I could do, but in the end I can't.
No matter how I look at it, all the characters I've written for can basically be scaled down to something basic. An unattainable standard that I shall never reach.
I am currently working on my first sim lit. I am writing my story first and then I am going to add the photos. Do you guys use Photoshop to edit your photos and make your banners? I love your photos in Chjapter 4 @Maladi777
I edit all my screenshots in Photoshop now. Uneditted pictures are usually too dark. My favourite tools are gradients and Gaussian blur. I downloaded tons of lovely gradients that do wonders to my pictures.
I also use Photoshop to create banners.
I asked this question in my reading circle, but since it's Q&A Monday in the Lounge, what are your thoughts on complex character development? How do you illustrate and develop the many layers of your characters? What makes your SimLit characters most interesting?
In general ( not just SimLit) I write down characters' psychological profiles. I mean, I'm not a psychologist, so it's not a professional profile, but I use my own experiences, other people I know and research. These profiles entail backstories of course. Then, I try to update them as the story progresses and the characters evolve. It helps keeping track and give an opportunity to think through what changed in the characters.
The other thing I pay a lot of attention to, is differentiating how the characters act around various people and in various settings. Having them have a few sides and choosing when and to whom they show each one. Not really in a cynical way- it can be a messy, disorganised character proving how well-behaved they can be to a superior they admire. It's not just for show- it's about what the other person bring out in them.
Or a lovable, kind girl channelling her inner witch onto a bank clerk that triggers her.
@Elizabeth94803 I use photoshop cs5 for my screenshots, it has two very handy features that I use all the time a) Actions - Basically you can record a sequence of things to do and then just click a button to repeat them automatically! I recorded a custom action that I called "Basic Enhance", that touches up my screenshots a bit b) Image Processor - The most amazing thing ever. Basically I can select a folder with images for a chapter and tell the image processor to resize the pictures, save them as JPGs and run my basic enhance action on all of them. Then when I click ok, the processor does all of this automatically to every image in the folder! Once you set up the action to run and the settings, editing is no more than one button click for 20 images for me I love it!
I don't know if GIMP can do these things, but if you don't have photoshop, GIMP is still a very potent alternative you can do a lot of basic editing that will make your screenshots look better. My "pro tip" is to look into Histogram tweaks (I think this is called "Levels" in Photoshop and GIMP). it's really easy and makes screenshots SO much prettier.
@Elizabeth94803@friendsfan367 Have you ever tried GIMP? It's free and while not quite as magical as Photoshop, it is similar and advanced. You can play around with lighting, saturation, etc. Everyting is adjustable.
@Acarb90 and @Elizabeth94803 Welcome to the forums and to this thread! I hope you'll like it here! And I wish you plenty of inspiration for SimLit!
As for the image editing question, I also use GIMP. Mostly for optimising and sharpening and adjusting the levels. Sometimes I do some extra effects if needed.
My Sims stories: The Fey of Life - fairytales in life are few and far between (Forum thread HERE) The Chrysanthemum Tango - a story about life, death, magic, and how to be a good landlady (Forum thread HERE) Forget-Me-Not - some things just refuse to stay buried; an Ambrosia Challenge story (Forum thread HERE)
You guys have no idea how happy i am to have found these forums. I always knew they existed,but i just never thought there was an actual writing community here. Mod the sims used to have a great writing community back in the sims 2/3 days, but it really died down now =(
I actually wrote 2 sim stories before over there (West of Somewhere and Pulse). I just never finished them, because there wasn't much feedback and I had lost all my motivation to keep writing.
Comments
I use photoshop for Second Chances. Non-edited photos just look so blah to me when I open my screenshot folder. I have developed some quick photo fix filters that I run on each photo. Sometimes I have to do a bit more editing with lighting and stuff, and I am constantly learning new things with photoshop, that make my photos stand out even more.
My favorite photoshopped photo I've done in editing is this:
Green screen the truck onto the street, and then used different lighting filters for the lights on the truck. Makes it more realistic.
Also my banner was made using photoshop.
Second Chances | Different Rain
@mastressalita I just checked that blog out and it is SO GOOD! You've done such a huge amount of work, mastress, @CathyTea and @MedleyMisty , and it seems to me that it was definitely worth it!
The Fey of Life - fairytales in life are few and far between (Forum thread HERE)
The Chrysanthemum Tango - a story about life, death, magic, and how to be a good landlady (Forum thread HERE)
Forget-Me-Not - some things just refuse to stay buried; an Ambrosia Challenge story (Forum thread HERE)
As for my pictures in my story, all I do is brighten them a little bit
Interesting, @Karababy52, I am the only nstural redhead in my family so I guess I'm trying to populate the world with more?
Find me elsewhere:
My EA App ID: livinasimminlife
Livin' A Simmin' Life Stories
My Worldbuilding Blog
Simblr
My Sims Pinterest
If you'd like to download you can find the build in my gallery under Lost Boys Den or download it here.
Source Inspiration
Build Newcrest 2.5
are you talking about you or your sims? lol. sorry couldn't resist at least i'm more relaxed today.
Re: kinds of sims to make: Axel from Uptown was deliberately created as the best possible amalgam of what typical sims of mine look like.
He's tan and dark-haired and brown-eyed and you can't discern his race and ethnicity immediately, if at all. He has beady, rounded eyes with monolids, a big, softly-hooked nose, and almost comically-huge lips. I didn't really try to think deeply about specific ethnicities because he was supposed to be a background character for @CitizenErased14. He just had to look like a Trip (tm) sim but also handsome enough to make the cut for the Ashes to Ashes universe.
But you can see those elements coming through in other characters I made (or latched onto; Harwood Clay might be a pre-made but his unusual face really shows through a lot in my own sims now), across any of my stories. Everyone is mixed-race (or more often these days, Southeast Asian/Vietnamese) and has lots of care put into their nose and lips. Even characters who are supposed to be part-alien.
I use GIMP (free!) to sharpen and brighten my screenshots. It started way back when I was playing TS3 on a crummy laptop. Sharpening and bumping up contrast helped make the best of fuzzy, middling graphics. And I think it worked well enough, even if I wasn't fooling people into thinking I was playing on a gaming desktop. Having to play on low graphics settings stinks, but good composition and editing can take screenshots far (and on the flip-side, no graphics card will save you from bad composition
Plenty of people post unedited screenshots and they look fine! The sharp stuff has just become a part of my style now.
Thanks @AdamsEve1231. I've been struggling with this.
I like giving everyone a background. Backgrounds give context and a place to develop from. And in spite of the "you're more than your race/disability/sexuality/trauma/etc." rhetoric, growing up with any of that shapes you. It does! For building characters, it gives a lot of context and justification for how they are, whether how they start or where they end up.
I still like Sinbad from Eight Cicadas as an example of a great if very obvious course of character development...
Sinbad had a complex set of problems rooted in his background, and he developed without breaking free of it either. He still had a snippy, vulgar, nervous side to him to the end. And he wouldn't care about Hannah as much if he wasn't abused as a child too.
Whenever I revisit that universe, anyone else can get revisions but I'm honestly pleased with how his development turned out. Love him.
Where I'm stuck now is with how I started this post: Axel! He does change as a character as the story goes on (at least becoming more and more obsessed and unhinged), but I usually never have a character free of past issues. But his upbringing was...outrageously problem-free. He had well-off, loving parents and grew up in clean and safe Windenburg, and received little impactful prejudice for being mixed-race and having an immigrant mother. The one "problem" he lists of missing his cousins is completely overturned by him being such a jerk to them! I do worry about him being shallow and bland to start off with and going on a downward spiral thanks to a breakup and having two women tell him "no" for once. But perhaps it's a necessary kind of character to write.
outrun / blog / tunglr
Your Disney builds never fail to amaze me !
Do you also play The Elder Scrolls Online? You can find me there as CathyTea, too!
Thank you! One last build the question now is what will it be?!
I agree.
Staging and composing the shots is tricky on its own. Editing can be fun and it can help fix some unfortunate choices made during staging
I've also just finished this week's Better Call Saul!
Seriously though, I've been working on one, long, chapter for 2 months and now that I've put it together, it looks like crap, because walls keep changing the colour. I don't know how I'd missed that before and why that happened at all( does anybody? I know it's something to do with the sun, but going from white to brown/orange seems extreme), but I'm sure now that stretching the work for too long is really bad.
It's something I wish I could do, but in the end I can't.
No matter how I look at it, all the characters I've written for can basically be scaled down to something basic. An unattainable standard that I shall never reach.
Part One(Complete 9/24/16) /Part Two(on hold)/Short Stories(on hold)/Twinbrook 1996(on hold)/Ten Crystal Hearts (on hold)
I own the TS3 Store as of 12/11/16 (sort of. It's complicated)
I edit all my screenshots in Photoshop now. Uneditted pictures are usually too dark. My favourite tools are gradients and Gaussian blur. I downloaded tons of lovely gradients that do wonders to my pictures.
I also use Photoshop to create banners.
This is my own favourite photoshopped picture.
HEFFNER LEGACY│Simblr│Heffner Legacy Discussion │ Origin ID: Maladi
In general ( not just SimLit) I write down characters' psychological profiles. I mean, I'm not a psychologist, so it's not a professional profile, but I use my own experiences, other people I know and research. These profiles entail backstories of course. Then, I try to update them as the story progresses and the characters evolve. It helps keeping track and give an opportunity to think through what changed in the characters.
The other thing I pay a lot of attention to, is differentiating how the characters act around various people and in various settings. Having them have a few sides and choosing when and to whom they show each one. Not really in a cynical way- it can be a messy, disorganised character proving how well-behaved they can be to a superior they admire. It's not just for show- it's about what the other person bring out in them.
Or a lovable, kind girl channelling her inner witch onto a bank clerk that triggers her.
a) Actions - Basically you can record a sequence of things to do and then just click a button to repeat them automatically! I recorded a custom action that I called "Basic Enhance", that touches up my screenshots a bit
b) Image Processor - The most amazing thing ever. Basically I can select a folder with images for a chapter and tell the image processor to resize the pictures, save them as JPGs and run my basic enhance action on all of them. Then when I click ok, the processor does all of this automatically to every image in the folder! Once you set up the action to run and the settings, editing is no more than one button click for 20 images for me
I don't know if GIMP can do these things, but if you don't have photoshop, GIMP is still a very potent alternative
Until It Breaks (Complete!) | Tribe Arayeo | Discovery (Complete!) | Vee is for Vortex
Julyvee Twitter | Julyvee Youtube | A Quick Guide to SimLit | PARTY IN THE USA
Origin ID: Julyvee94
outrun / blog / tunglr
i just downloaded it.
are they free?
I love using "actions" ,because my stories have a certain look and i want all my screenshots to essentially have the same look.
(btw I'm new =)....hi! )
welcome i'm one of the 2 cohosts here.
As for the image editing question, I also use GIMP. Mostly for optimising and sharpening and adjusting the levels. Sometimes I do some extra effects if needed.
The Fey of Life - fairytales in life are few and far between (Forum thread HERE)
The Chrysanthemum Tango - a story about life, death, magic, and how to be a good landlady (Forum thread HERE)
Forget-Me-Not - some things just refuse to stay buried; an Ambrosia Challenge story (Forum thread HERE)
You guys have no idea how happy i am to have found these forums. I always knew they existed,but i just never thought there was an actual writing community here. Mod the sims used to have a great writing community back in the sims 2/3 days, but it really died down now =(
I actually wrote 2 sim stories before over there (West of Somewhere and Pulse). I just never finished them, because there wasn't much feedback and I had lost all my motivation to keep writing.