Backgrounds

[FOAtHeart]

Anyone who's kept up with my piccies has noticed a lack of.......you guessed it.

Backgrounds.

So I was thinking if anyone could help me. I have Adobe Photoshop Elements if people know how to do CG backgrounds and I have various real mediums for backgrounds done from those.

Any tips?

[Doomed2k]

I'd help you out, but backgrounds aren't my strongpoint either.

[Gam]

i wish i could help you...
i don't even have photoshop, well i'll just stick to the pencil

[Sayara]

Well, BGs are hard... but fun to do!

Though i dont use Adobe... i use Paintshop Pro, and they got alot of Graidents to make nice blending colors together... Look for it, Gradients...

Like everything else though, you just gotta practice with it,

Make a Nice sized Space (500 x 500?) and try something... anything... an Ocean... a Forest... a field (easiest) http://www.pso-world.com/psoworld/images/phpbb/icons/smiles/anime1.gif Just try!

And for Real Media (Like Markers...etc) Good Luck! I cant do those either! XP

________
Lbo Dispensary.Com (http://dispensaries.org)

[Jared_T]

Well normally backgrounds well have less focus that the subject, so the detail isn't as important. When I first started taking classes for art I was encouraged to fill as much of the paper with the Subject as possible, more importantly don't be afraid to have it go off the page. Do close ups and so on. Unless you are doing a "Where's Woldo" pic or you have something in the background to show off, keep the background simple and use something that will enhance the subject.

I'm not sure if that helps. Maybe I can find some images to illistrate.
But as far as BG just remember to keep the focus on what you want the subject to be.

[Relam]

Sometimes just slapping some color on in your background is better than nothing. What I do when I'm lazy (which is most of the time) I'll slap a color down and then use the dodge or burn tools to create a gentle gradient. I prefer to do it this way because I think the gradient tool looks too artifical for my taste.

Another thing you can do is make a pattern. This is like slapping the color down, but even better. Makes you seem not as lazy. Basically to create a pattern create an image, I usually make a 500x500 pixel image. I then fill the background with a color and I proceed to mark blobs down or whatever shapes. The most IMPORTANT part to keep in mind is to not touch the edges. Put down blobs, shapes but don't touch the edges. Then, goto Filter>Other>Offset... Set the offset on your horizontal to 300 pixels. Then add more blobs. Make sure the Wrap box is checked otherwise this trick won't work. Again, make sure to not hit the edges. Once you've finished, goto your offset function again and set the vertical to 300 and the horizontal back to 0. Now add more shapes. When you're done, set the offset back to 0.

You should now have a seamless pattern. Save this as a tif file. Now goto Edit>Set to Pattern. Goto your image, and select the layer your background pattern is going into. Select Edit>Fill. Click the drop box and select fill with pattern and choose the pattern you just made. When you apply this will make a seamless pattern without any easy indications of a direct repeating pattern, or obvious seams that make it look ugly.

The complicated and hard way of doing it is to draw and color a landscape, which involves looking and practice drawing landscapes, perspective and all that nonsense.