Where is Ron's stuff ?

Orpheus13

Okay, so I got quite a few of Ron's great products.

The brushes are fine and easy to find. Now, I struggle a bit with finding exactly how to access or use :

•  Ron's Explosions and Ron's Blood : I found the Photoshop files, which include all images in layers, is it the only / easier way to use them or is it possible / better to access the separate images (and where) ?
• The .pdf or .mov tutorials : I'm struggling to find them by researching in the file explorer and unzipping, there's gott to be a simpler way !
• The backgrounds (for Ron's Rain for example, can't find them at all)

Thank you

 

TangoAlpha

If you installe it using DIM, there's a little menu button at the right-hand side of each entry, and there you'll find an option to show all the installed files.

Orpheus13

Great info, thanks !

And what about .PSD files, that's the only way in which the Explosions layers come ?

BeeMKay

Check out the "/General/deviney" subfolder of your content directory, that usually has a folder in it labelled by the package name, which then contains all files that are not brushes.

I'd also recommend manual install for this type of content. It's a lot easier, since you can tear apart the subfolders and relocate the content as you wish, and have less confusion as to what is in there and what goes where.

Pixel8ted

Orpheus13 said:

Great info, thanks !

And what about .PSD files, that's the only way in which the Explosions layers come ?

Yes. Only PSD files are included. If you don't have Photoshop or Photoshop Elements, I believe Gimp will open them. There are probably other options out there that will open a PSD.

Always manually install.

I keep a folder called "Deviney" in my Pictures folder with subfolders set with product names with included PSD files etc to make it easy for me to find them. Presets like brushes, styles, patterns and shapes I load into my Photoshop preset folder(s).

Since there isn't a PDF included with Ron's Blood, I made myself a couple of cheat sheets. I could use bridge to preview the PSD contents but not really my preference. There are too many layers to make it worth the effort to separate out all of the Explosion PSD file contents. I just drop a solid color layer at the bottom of the layers stack; turn off all the layers then click through the layers to find an what I think I might want to drag into my image. ( The solid color under sometimes helps me view what all is going on with the effect as sometimes it's hard for me to see all of the effect elements when it is over transparency.)

Copies of my  Ron's Blood Cheat sheets...nothing special just the promo images with the PSD file numbers matched to the blood drip/spatter.
 

Orpheus13

Thanks ! I'll copy that.

Yes I use Photoshop of course, just wanted to know if there were separate jpgs but your modus operandi is fine, I'll copy that too.

Pixel8ted

I thought there was a good chance you used Photoshop but there was always that chance not. I use Bridge so rarely...I almost forgot I could view a PSD with it. LOL

A lot of Ron's stuff has a PDF of each of the brushes but not the Blood or the Explosions sets. No Mov. file either.  So, it's not you missing stuff...those items just weren't included.
 

Orpheus13

Yeah, and too bad because Explosions sure could use a manual !

kaotkbliss

There's an option in photoshop to export the layers to individual images. I haven't done it in a few years so I don't remember exactly where it's at, but I'm sure someone can help yoy find it.

Pixel8ted

kaotkbliss said:

There's an option in photoshop to export the layers to individual images. I haven't done it in a few years so I don't remember exactly where it's at, but I'm sure someone can help yoy find it.

OMG, you are the man or woman. Doing that never crossed my mind....seriously awesome advice.

In PSCS5 extended, have PSD to convert to layers open then go File<Scripts<Export Layers to Files..in dialog that comes up Choose a Destination Folder (make before starting this process); set file type to PNG 24 (non lossy); then click Run. It will take a while to go through the layers but it works. Just to be warned sometimes my PS crashed doing this with the generic "there's been a problem and this program needs to close error" but I just opened PS up again after crash and process worked fine. Had this happen on a couple of these so don't give up if you get a program crash.  I think the crash was because those PSD files have so many layers.

BTW, I got inspired and made copies of my Blood PSD files into PNG files using a Batch action. Write an action...Have a file open; record action  file<Save as PNG<Close. I have with copy. Anyway, I copied my Blood folder of PSD files just in case I messed something up, then  went to File<Automate<Batch...select desired action in window then set my source and destination folders. I ended up with a folder with original PSD and new PNG files. I could have probably cleaned that process a bit more by checking off some of the batch options but happy with result anyway.

Snips displaying how great this turned out. 

Edit: Export Layers to Files Dialog Box. Be sure to set it as PNG-24 not PNG-8.

kaotkbliss

Glad I could help :)

Orpheus13

You both did, that's great thanks !

I'm glad that the questions I asked ended up helping even experimented users.