if you click on the title you should be taken to my (my)space where you can see what ive done. the story is that ive been hacking away at this ridiculous project management assignment and doing graphics as catharsis throughout. i noticed my chimera was looking me in the face two days ago (it sits directly above my laptop on the desk) and i turned it on, made a face and took the shot. to the right is the initial pshop version.

then i gave a new color palate, started layering the facial portion, and trying to re-utilize the negative space, whilst clumsilly stumbling along... i got to 'enh.'

then i assigned it as my background on myspace, then accidently realized that even if you delete a photo from your personal photo collection, it still remains on their server. now it MAY be that in due time, they will purge those marked for deletion, but for now im hosting my image on their site. (this is a releif after numerous failed attempts at sourcing photos from all over the place; first it was images.yahoo... but they have dynamic address so that plain just didnt work... then i tried sending it to myself via gmail, but they just wont let myspace servers in.)

then i became compelled to clean up the obviously tiled image im my (my)space background. after searching and running through a few tiling 'how to's' i basically figured out that, although procedurially differnt, the results ended the same.

the concept is that you need to move the images boundaries to the center of the image, so that you can freely edit accross them then, effectively "hiding" them. the following is the walk through. if you are so compelled, i recomend trying it... to figure this next part out was actually a challenge to me; after i posted it i thought "wow. that was actually HARD." i was/am stoked.

1) any graphic will do, must be a rectangle. mine was black and white, so this kept complexity down, although those who are "ballson" can go deep into whatever...

note* youll notice that the main portion of my graphic has self contained content; the shoulders and the top of the hair are the only edge-breaching elements, so that sliding the face arround (next step) was easier...

2) working with a copy of whatever image your using (incase we have massive crash action), go to filter > other > offset. click "wrap arround." it doesnt matter what amount (of pixels) you chose as long as its a significant portion of the image (say, 33 - 50%) and you remember them. this effectively places your edge seems within editable distance from the edge. BUT! remember to still stay away from the edges; any stroke you do now that touches an edge will show up again when you recenter the image.

3) now that your image is looking alot more abstract that at first, start dealing with the edges. in my image, its the squiggly hairy-armpit lookin areas that are cover ups for hard seems. i just tried this with a complex image (of me in a pub) and the result is lots of cloning-tool turned abstract weirdness. once the first round of edges are dealt with, move the image at least one more time to reveal any edges you hadnt noticed before. (to keep track of all this image moving, i initally moved the image down and over 50%, then on the second move up and back 25%, leaving me with a predictable amount to finally correct for).


i suspect that a rigid methodology could be constructed for creating really nice and smoothly tiled images WITHOUT wastefull use of the clone tool and probably WITH layers, creating a nice interwoven effect... someday...

the last one is what the complex tiled image looks like. basically, its ugly. the clone tool shows, and its fairly clear where the edges WERE. but you can see how the process works...