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After stuffing my face into tons of scientific articles on Late Cretaceous Lamniformes, I decided that I'd want to draw some sharks. Here's a drawing of the two infamous sharks of the Niobrara Formation Cretoxyrhina mantelli and Squalicorax falcatus as partners-in-crime. I've made the Cretoxyrhina ≈6-7 meters and the Squalicorax ≈2 meters. As 2 meters would be the same size as a very tall 6'6" human, you could imagine the Squalicorax as the tallest ordinary human and see how much bigger Cretoxyrhina is. I've always felt like Squalicorax would commonly accompany predators like Cretoxyrhina to "help" strip bare the latter's kill (Crow sharks are indeed inferred by scientists as opportunistic feeders or scavengers), almost as if Ginsus had them as little cronies. Also, the common name Crow Shark sounds somewhat similar to crony. Now what if we started a new nickname for Squalicorax as a crony? That would be hilarious and maybe realistic. EXTRAS

So i'm not a pro at Photoshop but i decided to do a little edit of one of my Keichousaurus.

Over the past few days I've been drawing up another paleo-reconstruction. After some time conflicting on which animal to draw, I settled on the rather under-celebrated pliosaur Simolestes vorax. S. vorax is a Jurassic pliosaur related to Liopleurodon, but is estimated to grow up to 10 meters in length, rivaling the size of the more famous pliosaur Kronosaurus. Heck, at one point there were even some theories that Simolestes was the owner of a gigantic lower front jaw dubbed "The NHM Symphysis", which was believed to be from a pliosaur exceeding 15 meters in length! Again, I used a Huion 1060PLUS Drawing Tablet and used Photoshop CS6. This time, drawing was a bit annoying due to constant need of omitting head details depicted on the skull I referenced. It took me a week to finish, and probably 5-6 whole hours in solid time due to the constant drawing/erasing.

So I drew a paleo-reconstruction of a noteworthy but sparsely-known apex predator Temnodontosaurus eurycephalus, which was believed to be the top apex of the Early Jurassic until the rise of proto-pliosaurs like Rhomaelosaurus. Unlike its famous squid sucking sister T. platydon (metaphor, not literally), T. eurycephalus had a thick skull with deep jaws and large robust teeth suggesting a macropredatory diet and probably fed on other ichthyosaurs, plesiosaurs, and anything else that it could swallow (Also, growing lengths of over 30 feet, it probably could swallow everything other than another Temnodontosaurus) This is actually my first time finishing a paleo-reconstruction using only a pen tablet and photoshop (All my other drawings were either unfinished or done on paper). I used a Huion 1060PLUS drawing tablet and Photoshop CS6 to draw this. Took at least 3 hours to draw, and I heavily referenced the holotype skull to draw the head. Turned out pretty neat, but I don't know if I should color/shade this.

I am embarrassed to say I made a novice mistake in literally every single photo I've ever uploaded. My monitor's color profile has been inaccurate since the beginning. Here's an example of what I mean: True colors is the picture I uploaded to TFF. Photoshop colors is what it looks like on my computer. For a long time, I've felt that "something" was off with the colors of the pictures I uploaded. My fossils sometimes looked too saturated, and sometimes too dark. I chalked it up to an unavoidable issue as I was uploading from my computer to different platforms such as Facebook. Only recently did I do a screenshot comparison and reading up online, and I realized I've been looking at photos in my monitor on the wrong color profile! You see, my monitor's settings has always had "color enhancement" on (those buttons you press on the bottom/side of the monitor). But Photoshop doesn't understand those settings! So Photoshop ends up giving me CYMK color profile, but I should've been on RGB color profile. What this means was that a photo that might look undersaturated on my monitor is in fact perfectly fine by itself, but in my attempt to "correct" the photo, I end up oversaturating it. To correct this problem, all I had to do was to turn off all monitor color enhancements. Now Photoshop is finally displaying the right colors! I've got about 200 photos to desaturate...

It's not always easy to take great photos of your fossils. Often, we have to deal with poor lighting and bad angles. Here's a quick guide to improving the quality of your photos with Photoshop. (Note: this is not to say you can just work with any crappy photo. Taking a decent shot helps save you a great deal with time, since photoshop editing would be minimal.) 1) I've taken a photo of my ammonite. Unfortunately, I lack a specialized lighting system, and the sun wasn't helpful. So it's up to Photoshop to fix this. 2) Fire up your Levels editor tool (CTRL + L). You'll find it under Image > Adjustments > Levels. You want to make use of all available input levels. Drag the slider to do so (see red arrow). 3) Now, use sample in image to capture white point. Use the tool and click on any white spot in your photo. 4) Looking better, isn't it? And that was done with just the level editor tool in literally 10 seconds 5) Crop your image. People mainly want to see the fossil, so go ahead and crop out the background, stand, and your hand etc; use your discretion, retain what is necessary to give the photo a scale of size, while getting rid of anything else that distracts. Add a scale bar (stick to CM or inch) with the Horizontal Type tool (T) and Rectangular Marquee tool (M). 6) This step is optional; adjust brightness and contrast as you like. But don't over-adjust your photo! We want the fossil to look as natural as possible! 7) And we are done! Easy, wasn't it? As said at the beginning, do try to take good photos if you can. Leave photoshop as a last resort. Here's a chart to working with Aperture, Shutter Speed and ISO. Take note of the difference in lighting and sharpness. If you lack Photoshop, you can download GIMP for free; the same general concept applies to it too > https://www.gimp.org/ If you have any questions or requests about Photoshop, feel free to ask me