Hi GC'ers,
I am unhappy with the Gold parts of this Brooch I am creating.
I need some practical/technical advice.
I created some paths. then stroked them in mid grey colour.
Blurred an Bump mapped.
Tried to adjust the Alpha curves to tidy them up.
Applied a chrome preset to Value curve.
Mapped to Gradient the result.
I have attached just the Gold parts in an xcf because the whole project compressed was too big to upload.
You will require Gimp 2.8 to view this xcf file as I have used Layer Groups and assume that older versions of Gimp will not load this file.
Can someone spare some time and offer some guidance please.

fluffybunny: i think this is going to be quite fantastic once it's finished - it looks quite fantastic as it is, but i'm assuming it will look even better when you've finished it and you're satisfied with the look of the gold parts. but what exactly is it you don't like about them?

Great sister Mary Frances that's nice! :O
I'll take it!

Your sweet AnMal.
The outer thin parts have become pixelated. I'm not sure if 'hot' pixels is the term for it.
I could just erase them and tidy each end individually. But I'm looking for a way of avoiding it happening.
Hence the reason for me explaining the steps I followed, and providing the xcf with the pre-bump mapped shapes is so someone might demonstrate their process and I can compare the results.
Anyone willing to share their knowledge/secrets?

I think at this juncture you're pretty much stuck erasing the extra pixels. You can take the gold parts only and soften the jagged edges with a soft blur, gaussian by 1 or 2 maybe. Then lessen the effect maybe if you need to with an alpha curve. Esper is kind of the guru on that though so maybe he'll chime in with some wisdom soon.

Jeepers Fluffy, what is it you dont like about this. I think it is beautiful, and I love the look of the gold. It has such a soft and shiny look about it and the design could be patented.
As far as my eye can see, I wouldn't do anything else to it.

It's wonderful.

There are few people on GC who's work I admire as much as yours fb and this piece is a great example of why. It is totally amazing! I've heard the term hot pixels but never knew what it meant. I'm pretty sure G'MIC has a hot pixels fix if that is what it is. One thing that can be done is what fractal software does to anti-alias - work twice the size then reduce to half but that won't help you now. Gimp has an anti-alias function under filters - enhance which is usually too subtle to be of any use but might be of use in this case as it's only individual pixels that need it. I hope you finish this work to your satisfaction because it is totally gorgeous!

Agree with every thing said before.
If I created that I'd be so proud to even have that ability. But then I'm not a perfectionist. - (You get what I finish up with)

Nice work Fluffy.

It is beautiful, and so detailed. The only way I know of to help with pixilation is a slight blur then a select, grow or shrink, and cut.
I am so busy, I have not been able to even keep up with reading 100%, and I miss being able to try out more of the tutorials and such. Hopefully work and projects will slow down after the holidays.

As I have said before, always up for a challenge.

What I did, Ran Gmic's dream smoothing filter on the 100% gold layer, I set "Iteration" and "Opacity" to there maximum values and unchecked "Equalise at each step", then ran filter. Using the grey Layer, I created a selection for the image which I then inverted and used to crop the 100% layer. When I tried this process on the other layers found a horrible artefact started to appear in the centre from the scaling. So I deleted the 40,60 & 80% layers and rescaled them from the new 100% layer. The colours seemed a bit muted so added a new layer of all the spirals and set this layer to "Overlay".

For the pin done exactly the same except done a selection around each layer first before running the "Dream Smoothing" filter.



Attached is the XCF file, should just open in gimp.

wow, that worked great he4rty, Fluffy will be surprised when she sees that. good job

Nice one he4rty. Being in layers helps a great deal. My own choice would have been G'MIC's thin brush smoothing but you've done a great job with that.

Molly, Erisan - Thanks for the comment, the image can still be improved by going>Layer>Transparency>Alpha to selection then Select>Shrink and shrinking selection by 1px the Select>Invert and then applying a Gaussian blur of 2px, this would need to be applied on each of the layers.

Definitely looks wonderful he4rty.

Good job he4rty

It does look great, and appreciate you spending precious time and effort.
I will give your ideas a run through but I agree with everyone's comments, it looks good.
I'm glad you rescaled each layer from your 'new' original sized version, that is always the practice I follow too.
Cheers mate.

I always like to keep things in separate layers Erisian, as you say it has many advantages.
I will try the thin brush smoothing too. Thanks for that tip!


And what, my WIP version didn't even deserve a comment? (Joke - guys)

@Everyone else who replied. Thanks for your praise and compliments/suggestions. I'm blushing.
I will try out these new suggestions and will add them to my knowledge bank. Thank you all for sharing with me.

I think it looks great.
My only suggestion would be to try out Gmic's dream smoothing, but that was already suggested, and very nicely too I might add.

Thanks again everyone for the praise, comments, tips and advice.
Here is the finished work.

Peace!
@hearty: I wasn't expecting that Dream Smoothing filter to turn the background black when run with your settings?!?!! I bet you were surprised when all the ghostly chains appeared when doing the chain layer, I know I was!