Selecting your PSU characters in Photoshop with Layermasks

[Sayara]

Hi again. 6 months ago I suggested a newer way to select your PSU characters into different backgrounds.
http://www.pso-world.com/viewtopic.php?topic=141224&forum=12

Well I learned an even easier technique that you can use and abuse, edit and fix all with the paint brush!
The Layer Mask is a very amazing tool that allows you to easily remove backgrounds from your images and bring them back if you goof up.

Im going to take my image of Tingle doing a "Nanoblast" pose (thanks Lexi o.o) into this image with gorillas
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v26/Snoopychan/gorillas_play_6.jpg

Ok, now with my image; I want to get rid of most i can from the image. (Its a very noisy image.)
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v26/Snoopychan/Tutorial%202/tut1.jpg
See, i don't want that much from the photo. So i put a blue line around the area i want; and selected my Crop Tool and cropped the image. (Copy/Paste into a new image works as well.)

Now; its always good to make a duplicate of your working image to refer back to if you make mistakes. Drag the background layer into the new layer icon. Then Click the New Layer icon on your layers palatte 3 times. Use the paintbucket to fill in a Black Layer, A Whtie Layer and a 50% gray Layer.
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v26/Snoopychan/Tutorial%202/tut2.jpg
See that icon i point at in green? Well having the BACKGROUND COPY selected click that icon to make a LAYER MASK. The way layer mask works is simple.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v26/Snoopychan/Tutorial%202/tut3.jpg
Using BLACK on the paintbrush chops off whatever it you paint over. In this case since i have a gray BG behind Tingle's layer you see the gray. But i don't want a big hole in my character. TO fix this.
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v26/Snoopychan/Tutorial%202/tut4.jpg
use white paint to repair spots you masked incorrectly.


Now I've gone a head and painted quite a bit out but
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v26/Snoopychan/Tutorial%202/tut5.jpg
I ate a huge chunk of Tingle's shoulder! Oh no ;_;. If i were using eraser tool or some other tool I'd have to Ctrl Z and possibly lose alot of work progress and thats no good.

However with this Layer Mask tool, i can easily go back in and apply white back on her shoulder and then clean up the extra parts again with black more carefully with a smaller brush.
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v26/Snoopychan/Tutorial%202/tut6.jpg
All better!

Ok. I'm gotten to the point im almost done.
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v26/Snoopychan/Tutorial%202/tut7.jpg
Now if i were doing a serious image I'd be more careful with doing this But for tutorial purposes i will stop here.

You don't want to see any of the extra parts of the background anywhere on your character. Use your 3 test bgs. Alternate them by turning them off and on.
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v26/Snoopychan/Tutorial%202/gbw.gif
See; this way you can see if you missed anything. I did a poor job but that'll be alright for my image.
Again like with the quick mask tool; the bigger the image the better. Don't try this with a cellphone photo or something like 200x 200.

Well, I am all done now. I am going to place Tingle onto the Gorilla photo now.
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v26/Snoopychan/Tutorial%202/tut8.jpg
But look at this! All of your hard work on the mask was saved and followed Tingle to the next location. Inevently i could of done all of my masking on the Gorilla photo and had the test BGs behind this image too but either way you can get the job done.

Now you can go ahead use some filters to brighten her up, or blur her in a bit to make the image more fitting to her surroundings anything goes!

Well good luck with your adventures in photoshop.
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v26/Snoopychan/Tutorial%202/gorillas_play_6ge.jpg
Go ahead and play with this technique. It is quite a handy tool that only requires some mouse clicking, a paintbrush tool and some good nerves. http://www.pso-world.com/images/phpbb/icons/smiles/icon_smile.gif


Sayara's Super Speedy Photoshop Shortcuts:
X alternates between the foreground and background color on your color picker. So Have Black and White ready

B is the paintbrush tool selector (in case you wanted to zoom or crop or something.

[ and ] are the brush size increaser. [ is obviously smaller
] is larger.
Or you can always right click to open the Brush Options.

Holding spacebar and clicking acts as a hand moving tool (Drag around your photo.) Just let go to return to normal.

Holding Shift while clicking in Paintbrush makes straight lines. Click one spot somewhere, hold shift then click elsewhere it'll make a straight line to the next location.


Have fun http://www.pso-world.com/images/phpbb/icons/smiles/icon_smile.gif

I'd like to thank Jon Goell who taught me this amazing trick and many other neat tools in Photoshop CS 3 (but most of them apply through 6.)




<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: Sayara on 2007-10-20 09:42 ]</font>

[Sami]

Bump? Meh w/e.

Instead of using a brush you should use a pencil, you can cut out your character without losing any detail or messing it up. I did it for my sig, which by the way needs an update.

For a quit job this will work, but lossless is much better.

[Sayara]

With game graphics sure, the lossless pencil works, but if for whatever reason you want to do photos, then brushes work better since you can vary the smoothness and blur of the edgesd.

[Sami]

Yeah well, i do not agree fully. I'd say you should use the pentool. I don't think you want the arm of your character or object with soft edges and the body with hard edges. You can always blur the edges after.
I guess if you wanna do it quick you should use the pentool and stay inside your character a bit.

I don't really wanna bash you. It's not bad and it does the job. The 3 backgrounds is a good idea.

[Sayara]

Well, again, with game graphics where everything is hard edged then Pencils are go.

The reason this is a handy tool is because you can fix your mistakes without having to UNDO every thing every so often.