# Comunity project: Know Photoshop? Join in!



## niko (Jan 28, 2004)

Allright,

I was using Photoshop to move plants around here:
http://www.aquaticplantcentral.com/...tic-plant-club/77266-journal-tributary-5.html

And an old idea seemed like a good one again.

Back in 2002 a friend of mine and I embarked on an ambitious project. To create a fully blown aquascaping software. The plans provided for features like:

1. Set the dimensions of the tank
2. Choose gravel/wood/rocks from a database of high quality images
3. Choose plants from a database of high quality images
4. Be able to position and resize all elements freely.

We made some progress for about a month and then lost interest due to the fact that we needed quality images of plants to create our database. The main functionality was very much done. We even talked about including a "live connection" to plant sellers that had the plant you clicked on in stock right now. Visionary thinking allright, way ahead of its time even today. So...

Now it's 2011 and quite a few people have joined and are joining this hobby. I guess quite a few of us are at least familiar with Photoshop. So here's my idea:

---> Create a free library of plant images on a transparent background.
---> Create a free library of substrate/wood/rock images on a transparent background.

If only a few of us start that project it will probably grow to something very interesting pretty quickly. In Photoshop you can resize, move, adjust the color intensity of the images. You can place them behind each other in any way you want. You can save the "unfinished aquascape" so you can look at it later and decide if something needs to be changed. And you can share it with anyone around the world.

The cool thing is that all these manipulations are VERY basic in Photoshop. Anyone can master them in about 5-10 minutes. Anyone.

We discussed something like that about 2 years ago here I think. One good option is to not use high quality images of the plants, but blurred ones. Like a watercolor painting. The point of this entire project is to give everybody an easy way to aquascape virtually without much effort. Look at the discussion on the link above. There is so much you can learn by moving pictures of plants around a digital aquarium!

What does everybody think?

--Nikolay


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## Michael (Jul 20, 2010)

Since it was my tank being virtually re-designed, I must say I was impressed. And persuaded by some of the proposed changes! Now will you teach me Photoshop?


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## niko (Jan 28, 2004)

Well, it really will take 5 to 10 minutes to learn everything needed to create a virtual aquascape from nothing. The skills would be useful to also photoshop people's heads on different bodies but that's just a stupid side effect, haha.

I posted this topic yesterday but I have to say I'm surprised with the lack of responses. As many facets as this hobby has (people into gadgets, into photography, into diy, etc.) the idea proposed here does not seem off the wall.

Maybe, as usual, only 1 or 2 people need to start it and then it will grow. I posted here because of the apparent lack of access to many plants. I can certainly go around town and take pictures of the 110+ species we have as a club. But that is quite the monumental effort. Plus the idea can grow entirely on the internet. 

--Nikolay


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## Tex Gal (Nov 1, 2007)

What do the plant images need to look like. Do you need the entire plant devoid of anything around it? Do you want a single stem, a large mass? Give us a little direction and we can see what we can do.


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