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THE HOTSHOT LESSON PLAN - Photoskinning:: Page 13!!!
smash1012
Posts: 1,153
WEEK ONE: BACK TO BASICS
This week, we'll be focusing on covering the basics and ensuring that all of our contestants have the same toolbox to start from. Some of these tutorials might seem like child's play for some of you, but everyone has to start somewhere. Even Jimi Hendrix just didn't pick up a guitar and start strumming Voodoo Child the first day!
PS: Just because these tutorials were designed for my competition: Hotshot's Next Top Model, doesn't mean that these tutorials aren't for EVERYONE. Even if you're not a contestant, FEEL FREE to ask for questions or clarifications or post what you've learned from any of these tutorials! :]
BLUE MEANS THEY'VE BEEN POSTED!
Bonus Tip-torial
How To Pick The Perfect Background
tips on stock photos, websites, and sizes you should aim for.
Tutorial One:
How to get rid of those pesky green strands of hair quickly and easily once you've removed your sim from the background.
[PHOTOSHOP: PAGE 1]
[GIMP: PAGE 1]
[PAINTSHOP PRO: PAGE 1]
[ELEMENTS: PAGE 2]
Tutorial Two:
How to use the Burn & Dodge Tools to effectively add lighting effects your sim - and make their lighting match the background lighting.
[PHOTOSHOP: PAGE 1]
[GIMP: PAGE 1]
[PAINTSHOP PRO: PAGE 1]
[ELEMENTS: PAGE 2]
Tutorial Three
An in depth look at creating and manipulating shadows to make your sim look as if they are REALLY a part of their environment, with a focus on light sources.
[PHOTOSHOP: PAGE 1]
[GIMP: PAGE 1]
[PAINTSHOP PRO: PAGE 1]
[ELEMENTS: PAGE 2]
WEEK TWO: PHOTOSKINNING
Using real life photos to add realism and interest to your sims.
UNIVERSAL - Page 13
WEEK THREE: REALISTIC BLOOD/GORE/BRUISES/CUTS
0
Comments
The first thing I do, always - is pull up google. Google is ALWAYS my first stop (IF, and only IF, I know exactly what I'm looking for). I do a lot of outdoor background - so I'll seach landscape, fantasy landscape, sunset, fall forest, etc. Be descriptive. And make sure you have your search filter set on 'LARGE.'
I also like to search for HDR backgrounds - they're usually extremly colorful, and have a surreal quality to them that really meshes well with a sim. I prefer to use an HDR shot if at all possible.
What you're looking for in a background (in my opinion) is something huge. If it's smaller than 1024x768 pixels - I won't even attempt to use it. You can always scale something DOWN - but you can NEVER make anything - whether it's a sim or a background - larger. Its leads to pixel distorion and is NEVER a good thing. It can ruin an otherwise perfectly nice edit.
If I don't know what I'm looking for - or can't find what I need on google - my next stop is always DeviantArt. To get more than 20 pagesof results, you need anaccount, but it's worth it - and not just for backgrounds. Go into Resources and search the stock photos, 9 times out of 10 - i find something perfect there.
DeviantArt
If not - to wallpaper sites (wallpaper sites are amazing - every single picture is already a huge resolution, so you don't have to worry about finding something that's too small).
wallpaperstock.net
www.wallpapertimes.com
sxc.hu * You have to sign up - but this one's the best for finding indoor stock photos, besides DeviantArt.
thundafunda.com
For this week's assignment all you'll need is a nice outdoor background.
(I'm also compiling a photobucket for all of you where I'm uploading all of the backgrounds I keep on a flash drive).
How To Quickly & Easily Remove The Green From Your Sim's Hair:
Alright - I won't be going over "How To Remove Your sim From The Background" In the Photoshp tutorial, because Rexy's already covered how to do that in photoshop & it would be rude of me to re-write it with no extra info to add. So we're going to start with our beautiful sim already extracted from her background (by the way, thank you SO much to Rose who went into her game and got me a green-screened sim while my game is being a lame-o).
This tutorial (since this is so much easier in photoshop) is going to be pretty short and sweet and right to the point.
(Since this hair barely has any outside strands with green - I decided to add a white background layer underneath & zoom in to 200% so you can see the green).
You should have your layer dock open by default, but if it's not open go to Window>Layers and you should see this:
Now, I'm going to Add a new layer, by clicking THIs button on my layer dock:
A window should pop up after you click create new layer. It will look like this:
01PS04
Be sure to check the "Us Previous Layer to Create clipping mask."
Your layer dock should now look like this:
Take your eyedropper tool and select a mid-tone hair color, not too light, not too dark... basically the most used color in her hair. Make sure you are still on your clipping mask layer and NOT on your sim layer, grab your brush tool, and brush over all of the parts of her hair where you can still see the green. You'll notice than when you are painting with your brush, magically, you'll only be painting where your sim layer is visible.
Now go over to your layer dock, and you should see this:
Click on the drop down arrow & select 'Color.' Sometimes you may need to use 'Hue' instead - it depends on the hair color/tone/saturation. But it will always be either 'hue' or 'color.' You'll get a feel for it.
Right click on your clipping layer and select 'Merge down."
All done - Perfect hair and no green in sight!
NOTE: THIS CAN ALSO BE USED TO TAKE GREEN EDGES OFF SKIN/CLOTHING. Just change the color you used to paint over the green to a skin color or the color of your clothing. :]
How To Quickly & Easily Remove The Green From Your Sim's Hair:
One of the hardest things about removing your sim from a green screen background is the green that's ALWAYS left around the edges and the smaller hair stands. There are several ways to get rid of this: smudging, using the lasso tool to cut parts out, etc ... but what if we could just magically turn the green to match the color of our hair? We could take the guess-work and time out of it,and be left with beautiful, perfect hair edges.
GIMP:
Go ahead and navigate to your photo, and open it. For the GIMP section, my model will be my new Berry Girl, Tangerine Dream.
Thanks to Rexy, we all know how to remove our sims from a green background, but I'm going to recap it anyway for those of you using GIMP and Paintshop Pro, because the technique is a little different for each program.
STEP ONE:
Find your Layer Dock. If it isn't open already on start-up, click 'Windows> Recently Closed docks> Layers, Channels, Paths, Undo.'
You should now be looking at this window:
In your layer dock, right click on your background layer. You should get this menu:
Click New From visible.
You should now have TWO layers in your Layer dock: Background and Visible. Delete the Background layer. You can either, right click on the layer and select delete, or highlight the layer by clicking on it and drag it to the trashcan on the lower right-hand side of your layer dock.
This leaves us with a floating layer - meaning when we remove the green, we're left with a transparent area rather than a flat white area.
Now up at the top of your workspace, click 'Select' and choose 'By Color.' And click on the green background. You might have to play with the 'Threshold' slider over on the left in your toolbox .. if you didn't select enough green the first time, hit 'Select>None' adjust your 'Threshold' slider
and try 'Select>By Color' again. You might have to try it two or three times, but eventually, you'll get a number that selects all the green you need.
I set my threshold to 58.0;
Now that my green is selected:
I'm going to cut out my background. You can either click 'Edit>Delete' or hit CTRL+X (Windows - if anyone knows the MAC shortcut, let me know & I'll post it), and then I'm left with this:
UH-OH! We Messed up!!!! The lighting in our picture must have tinted the shadows on her body green, so our color select tool took out some of the shadows. But never fear! This has a very easy fix.
Take your lasso selection tool (its the third tool from the left on the first row of your toolbox, and select the areas that you can see our checkboard behind).
I'm going to need to select these areas:
PS: DID YOU KNOW THAT YOU CAN ADD TO AN EXISTING SELECTION BY HOLDING DOWN SHIFT WHILE MAKING THE SECOND SELECTION? YOU CAN ALSO SUBTRACT FROM A SELECTION BY HOLDING DOWN CTRL.
Now I'm going to hit CTRL+C (You can also use Edit>Copy), and hit CTRL+V Twice (You can also go to Edit>Paste, Twice).
And her face is no longer transparent.
But we still have green around the hair strands. That's what the next step is for.
Right now, our layer dock should look like this:
Three separate working layers. Right click on a layer. Any layer. You should get the pop out menu and your going to want to choose 'MERGE VISIBLE LAYERS.' Do not flatten the image. When the pop up asks you about settings, I always choose 'clipped to image.'
Now, Grab your Magic Wand Select Tool - it's the magic wand looking tool right next to your lasso, and set the threshold slider as high as it will go, and click on the middle of your model's face (or anywhere that's opaque - if we're getting technical)... your model should be the only thing selected.
On your layer dock, right click on 'Visible,' and choose Add New Layer.
Take your eyedropper tool and select a mid-tone hair color, not too light, not too dark... basically the most used color in her hair. While your model is still selected, grab your brush tool, and brush over all of the parts of her hair where you can still see the green. MAKE SURE YOU ARE PAINTING ON 'NEW LAYER' AND NOT ON VISIBLE.
This is what I ended up with:
Looks pretty funny doesn't it? My stuff always looks cracked-out before it looks pretty, doesn't it?
Go to your layer dock. Above the layers list, you should see this:
Click on the Drop Down arrow, and select 'Hue' or 'Color.' (Try both, one will always look better than the other, but it depends on the hair color). For Tangerine's hair, I chose hue. now we have this:
Now right click on 'New Layer' and select 'Merge Down.'
TA-DAHHHH!!! No more green AND perfect strands of hair! :] :]
How To Quickly & Easily Remove The Green From Your Sim's Hair:
Okay, we're going to start with a not-so-hot picture of Elle wilde.
We're going to go over to our layer dock:
(it should be visible by default, but if not, go to View>Palettes>Layers)
Now we're going tgo right click on our background layer, and select Duplicate. now we should have Background and Copy of Background in our layer dock. Delete 'Background."
Selecting by color is more difficult in PSP than Gimp or Photoshop (Just an observation), but once you get the hang of it - you'll be doing it in seconds.
First things first, at the top of your screen, you're going to want to hit Selections>Select All.
Now, once your entire screen in selected, go to selections>Modify>Select color Range.
Here are the seetings I used:
Do not Hit "CUT" yet! :] I did. And my sim dissappeared instead of my background. Before we hit cut, we need to go to Selections > Invert. (Or hit CTRL+SHIFT+I)
NOW we can hit cut! :]
Now to get rid of the green hair!
I'm gonna be honest with you - this one stumped me for a good ten minutes, but I finally figured it out.
Go to your magic wand tool
And at the top, make sure your settings match mine:
^this is where my problem was, I had my tolerance set at 200, thinking it would select only what was opaque.. but 200 in PSP selects everything. So i dropped it down to 195 and it worked perfectly.
Now that your sim is the only thing selected, head to your layer dock, and right click on your layer. From the drop down menu, select 'New RASTER Layer.' Always stick to rasters .. unless you're vexeling. but we're not vexeling.
So make sure your new 'Raster 1' layer is highlighted, and grab your brush tool:
My brush settings:
I'm going to grab a nice midtone hair color - not too light - not too dark, and cover up the green spots like this:
Now go back over into your layer dock & click on the drop down arrow:
and select 'HUE (Legacy)' or 'COLOR (Legacy)' (it will always vary depending on your hairs color/tone/saturation). for this picture I'm using "Color (Legacy)." If you're using a version of PSP prior to 5, you're going to be using 'Hue' or 'COLOR,' version 5 or higher, stick to the legacy modes.
Go ahead and hit Selections>Select None (Or CTRL+D), and right click on your 'Raster 1' Layer and click Merge>Merge visible.
And you're done!
How to use the Burn & Dodge Tools to effectively add lighting effects your sim.
Okay, We're switching Models :] Meet Avery McIllioch:
ve chosen a background, and keeping in line with "How To Choose The Perfect Background," I've googled with my image filter set on large, and chosen another fallbackground - just because I LOVE fall - seeing the trees changing color - I can almost picture they way the air smells in this picture. The image dimensions were a little smaller with this picture - It was 1024x768; the minimum size image i'll work with. Therefore, we don't have to resize.
BUT if you NEEDED to resize the background you chose, go to Edit>Free Transform. Make sure you hold down the shift key while your resizing so you maintain the image contraints... you dont want to stretch it out long-ways and deform the picture. Since I already have Avery open in a 1024x768 document after extracting her from her background, I'm just going to past my background in behind her by hitting CTRL+V (or going to Edit>Paste), then dragging my background layer nehing her. You can do this by clicking and holding your mouse button down as you move the background layer below the sim layer in your layer dock.
Lets start off by making her look a little more 3D. Grab your Burn Tool:
I'm going to start with a 100px brush at 0% hardness and my exposure at 50%. I like to keep my range on midtones.
Now I'm going to go over these areas with my burn tool:
We're going to burn around her edges first... The Areas outlined in Cyan(Blue). Then set your bush a little smaller, and hit the areas outlined in yellow. NOTE: MAKE SURE YOU'RE USING A FUZZY BRUSH AND NOT A HARD CIRCLE. Make sure to focus around the outer edge of your sim, it's okay if her face is still brightly lit for a headshot like this... it looks as if a camera flash just went off.
Afterward I went back and his the places outlinedin yellow with a smaller brush set to 25% exposure. I also tapped the larger brush a couple of times under her neck, where a shadow would naturally be.
this is where I'm going to use my dodge tool. I'm going to set the size to size to 100px, the hardness to 0% and set my range to highlighs more tapping lightly in these areas.
All done ! :]
How to use the Burn & Dodge Tools to effectively add lighting effects your sim.
Okay, So We're still working with Tangerine Dream.
I've chosen a background, and keeping in line with "How To Choose The Perfect Background," I've googled with my image filter set on large, and chosen a brightly lit, beautiful fall forest (God, I love fall trees) and the image size was 1600x1200.
I opened a new Gimp Document (File>New) and pasted my image into the workspace. The Layer appears as a 'Floating Layer,' so I right clicked on the 'Floating Layer' in my layer dock and chose New Layer from the drop down menu. This will put my fall trees on it's own fully-functioning layer.
Now I'll take Tangerine (from the document I was using from the previous tutorial) and paste her on top of my trees. (Select>All, CTRL+C in the Sim document, then CTRL+V on my background document). Again, she'll be a 'Floating Layer,' so i'll right click on the 'Floating Layer' in my layer dock and chose New Layer from the drop down menu.
I now have something that looks like this:
It's obviously not right - because if we were to takea photo of one of our friends that close-up, the background wouldn't seem quite so ... far away. Trust your gut - if it seems wrong, even if you can't put your finger on WHY, it probably is.
So we're going to Scale our background layer until it "feels" right. Grab your scale tool:
Now make sure the layer with your background is selected, and click on your workspace. you should now have a square box that allows you to resize only the background layer. Make sure you wither hold down CTRL while your doing this, or check "Keep Aspect" at the very botton of your toolbox.
I ended up with this after I resized:
Better ... but she still doesn't look like she belongs in the environment. She's too brightly lit - there aren't enough shadows ... she still looks like she stepped out of CoolWorld (ignore me, because most of you are too young to remember that movie).
Lets start off by making her look a little more 3D. Grab your Dodge/Burn Tool (its the very last tool in your toolbox. It looks like a black blob with a tail).
I set my Scale to 10.00, my opacity to 100%, my type to Burn, and my Range to MidTones. The numbers and brush size will vary from picture to picture, but Burn is always darken and Dodge is always lighten.
We're going to burn around her edges first... The Areas outlined in Cyan(Blue). Then set your bush a little smaller, and hit the areas outlined in yellow. NOTE: MAKE SURE YOU'RE USING A FUZZY BRUSH AND NOT A HARD CIRCLE. Make sure to focus around the outer edge of your sim, it's okay if her face is still brightly lit for a headshot like this... it looks as if a camera flash just went off.
I also tapped my Burn bush on the bridge of her nose * on the very edges of her chin, to cast a shadow on the back layers of hair that her face would naturally be casting a shadow on.
Now, the left side of her hair, where it's darkest (it seems to me like our light source is coming from the right), it wouldn't be as brightly colored, the shadow would wash out he brightness and make it seem less saturated. So we're going to take our lasso tool, and make a selection on her left side, like so:
now, go to Select>Feather, and feather it by .. lets try 30 pixels for a photo this large. Yeah, 30 works. Now go to Colors>Hue-Saturation, and reduce the saturation to -10 and the lightness to -10. Now tap where we just desaturated a couple more times with the burn tool, and you'll have this:
Now switch your type to Dodge.
I reduced the opactiy to 30% and just tapped a few places since she was already so brightly lit. I tapped here:
Now It's time to crop our photo and add a border if you want. All done. :]
How to use the Burn & Dodge Tools to effectively add lighting effects your sim.
Okay, we're sticking with Elle Wilde, and again, I'm choosing a fall trees background, and it's 1920 × 1200, colored
well, and absolutely gorgeous. So, Since our background is bigger than our sim, I'm going to open the image up in
it's own document.
So i'm going to pull up my document with Elle, and click Selections>Select all. And hit copy - either Edit>Copy or
CTRL+C.
She's now copied to my clipboard, so i'm going to go back to my fall trees background, and hit either CTRL+L or
Edit>Paste As New Layer.
We now have this:
Which is just plain funny-looking. So we're going to resize and move out background layer.
We're going to select our Pick Tool
And click on our forest background layer and resize it until it feels right. Trust your gut - when something looks
right - you'll know it.
I ended up with this:
Now we're going to work on using shadows to make her a part of her surroundings.
Your burn & dodge tools are very carefully hidden away here:
We're going to start with the Burn tool.
Make sure your Limit is in midtones:
I found it best to set the opacity around 40-50 and set the brush VERY Large, about 200 pixels with a hardness of 0% and slowly add on.. when I raised the opacity up higher, or the brush lower, i found that the tools were choppy and too heavy and didn't work as well. See picture for example.
See? No bueno.
(Also, i found it nescesary to also burn in the highlight range - I'm not sure if it was PaintShop Pro or if it was the lightness of the hairstlye - but i needed to). PS: I'm too lazy to fix the arm I messed up earlier, so just ignore it.
The Cyan-blue color is where I used the burn tool in the midtone range, and yellow is whre I used the burn tool in the highlight range.
Now we move on to the dodge tool.
Since the tools in Paintshop Pro are so sensitive, i set my brush 10 100pixels, again. Hardness to zero. Opacity to 40, and instead of rubbing with the tool, I used it in short clicks here:
(again, ignore the messed up arm).
And you're finished! :]
An in depth look at creating and manipulating shadows.
Okay - I'm just going to using a random sim (she's the only one I have saved as a PSD).
It's time to talk about shadows and light sources - another cornerstone of photo-editing. Having your shadows in the wrong place or, God forbid, not having shadows at all, can really ruin a great piece of work.
But before you can add shadows to your art, you have to know how shadows work:
There are about a billion and one ways you can do this - (including using lamps in game to add the right highlights/shadows, but since I can never get that right, I'm going to teach it my way). In game, i flood my sim with light. I use about 12 Lucid Lights right over her head & all around her so there are NO shadows. Then I go in with the Burn/Dodge tools once I have her pasted in my background image... Once I see her in her environment, I can usually see exactly where the shadows and highlights should go.
Check out the picture above. I would have used the dodge tool where I outlined in cyan, the burn tool where I outlined in yellow, and I would have added her cast shadow (which I'm just about to teach you how to do) where I've pointed to in red.
I'm not going to go over burning & dodging again - but you can re-read it in the last tutorial. (using burn and dodge to add shadows and highlights)
Okay, first, we need to know a little about shadows.
So, the bigger the light source, the fuzzier and more transparent our shadow will be. A small single point source will on the other hand cast a perfectly defined shadow with an hard edge. The shadow is likely to be a good image of the object that casts it.
Big Light Source:
SMALL Light Source
********
Okay, So the first thing you should do when creating a shadow is determine your light source / shadow direction. I'm going to show a sample backgrounds and show you how to determine the light source.
Now - if you're doing an outdoor background, locate the sun. If the sky in cloudless, your shadow should be hard, like the shadow in the second example picture. If your sky is cloudy, the shadow will be softer and more diffuse, like the first example picture.
If there is not an existing shadow clue, make your own decision and be sure to be consistent with your shadow angles.
********
Now, how to "CREATE" a Shadow.
PHOTOSHOP:
(NOTE - IMPORTANT - REXY HAS ALREADY CREATED A PHOTOSHOP SHADOW TUTORIAL. THAT IS WHERE I LEARNED HOW TO DO THIS. I'M ONLY RE-WRITING THE PHOTOSHOP TUTORIAL BECAUSE IT WOULDNT BE FAIR TO THE HOTSHOT PHOTOSHOP CONTESTANTS FOR ME TO WRITE THE OTHER THREE AND NOT INCLUDE THIS ONE - Also note that her tutorial IS better than mine - and if she wants the photoshop tutorial removed, i'll remove it.)
Okay, we all know about our layer dock's from last week, right? Okay, in your layer dock, right click on your sim layer and select Duplicate Layer.
*Note - I'm not actually using the REAL light souce of this picture to create a shadow - I'm pulling it out away from her body to show you how to make a shadow.*
With the COPY layer selected, let's go up to Image>adjustments>Hue/Saturation.
We're going to drag our Lightness Bar all the way down. Like this:
Note:: You could also do this by double clicking on your layer in the dock until the "Layer Style" box pops up and then check "Color Overlay" and set the color to black - but I find that Hue/Saturation is the quickest.
Now, to distort my shadow, I use Free-Transform. You can also use distort, but you wont be able to move/rotate your shadow while distorting it... with Free Transform, you can rotate, move, resize and distort at the same time - if you know the tricks.
Okay. Go to Edit>Free Transform. Your layer should be surrounded in a bounding box.
Now, there are a few key commands you need to know. To distort, you need to hold down CTRL wile dragging one of the corner boxes, like this:
Now, it's time to blur our shadow and reduce the opacity. We can't see our light source, but we can pretty much guess at what type of lightsource we have. We're in a very small room, and I would assume that our light source isn't much more than one lightbulp on a cable, or one light recessed in the ceiling - since we have a SMALL, defined light source - our shadow would be pretty crisp and fairly dark.
So with your "Copy" Layer highlighted, lets go to Filter>Blur>Gaussian Blur
My Settings^^
Now we need to reduce the opacity. Again, with a SMALL light source, your shadow will be darker than if you had a LARGE light source.
And, once I reduced the opacity on my shadow, i decided I didn't like the placement, so I'm going to go to Edit>Free Transform again & change it a little.
And I played around with my shadow a bit - and since the room is SO dim, I decided on an opacity of 25%. If the room were more brightly lit, I would have made the shadow darker.
An in depth look at creating and manipulating shadows.
An in depth look at creating and manipulating shadows.
Okay - I'm just going to using a random sim (she's the only one I have saved as a PSD).
It's time to talk about shadows and light sources - another cornerstone of photo-editing. Having your shadows in the wrong place or, God forbid, not having shadows at all, can really ruin a great piece of work.
But before you can add shadows to your art, you have to know how shadows work:
There are about a billion and one ways you can do this - (including using lamps in game to add the right highlights/shadows, but since I can never get that right, I'm going to teach it my way). In game, i flood my sim with light. I use about 12 Lucid Lights right over her head & all around her so there are NO shadows. Then I go in with the Burn/Dodge tools once I have her pasted in my background image... Once I see her in her environment, I can usually see exactly where the shadows and highlights should go.
Check out the picture above. I would have used the dodge tool where I outlined in cyan, the burn tool where I outlined in yellow, and I would have added her cast shadow (which I'm just about to teach you how to do) where I've pointed to in red.
I'm not going to go over burning & dodging again - but you can re-read it in the last tutorial. (using burn and dodge to add shadows and highlights)
Okay, first, we need to know a little about shadows.
So, the bigger the light source, the fuzzier and more transparent our shadow will be. A small single point source will on the other hand cast a perfectly defined shadow with an hard edge. The shadow is likely to be a good image of the object that casts it.
Big Light Source:
SMALL Light Source
********
Okay, So the first thing you should do when creating a shadow is determine your light source / shadow direction. I'm going to show a sample backgrounds and show you how to determine the light source.
Now - if you're doing an outdoor background, locate the sun. If the sky in cloudless, your shadow should be hard, like the shadow in the second example picture. If your sky is cloudy, the shadow will be softer and more diffuse, like the first example picture.
If there is not an existing shadow clue, make your own decision and be sure to be consistent with your shadow angles.
********
Now, how to "CREATE" a Shadow.
PaintShop Pro
Okay, we all know about our layer dock's from last week, right? Okay, in your layer dock, right click on your sim layer and select Duplicate.
*Note - I'm not actually using the REAL light souce of this picture to create a shadow - I'm pulling it out away from her body to show you how to make a shadow.*
With the COPY layer selected, let's go up to Adjust>Hue and Saturation>Hue/Saturation/Lightness.
We're going to drag our Lightness Bar all the way down. Like this:
Note:: You could also do this by double clicking on your layer in the dock until the "Layer Style" box pops up and then check "Color Overlay" and set the color to black - but I find that Hue/Saturation is the quickest.
Now, to distort our shadow, we're going to use the Pick Tool:
After Selecting the Pick Tool, just click on your shadow image.
Now, there are a few key commands you need to know. To distort, you need to hold down SHIFT wile dragging one of the corner boxes, like this:
When you're done distorting your layer - just click on any of your other toolsand the bounding box will go away.
Now, it's time to blur our shadow and reduce the opacity. We can't see our light source, but we can pretty much guess at what type of lightsource we have. We're in a very small room, and I would assume that our light source isn't much more than one lightbulp on a cable, or one light recessed in the ceiling - since we have a SMALL, defined light source - our shadow would be pretty crisp and fairly dark.
So with your "Copy" Layer highlighted, lets go to Adjust>Blur>Gaussian Blur
My Settings^^
Now we need to reduce the opacity. Again, with a SMALL light source, your shadow will be darker than if you had a LARGE light source.
And, once I reduced the opacity on my shadow, i decided I didn't like the placement, so I'm going to go to Edit>Free Transform again & change it a little.
And I played around with my shadow a bit - and since the room is SO dim, I decided on an opacity of 25%. If the room were more brightly lit, I would have made the shadow darker.
the lasso is in red and the magic wand is in green
Nope, I'm downloading elements right now. We only had one girl using Elelments - but then she got Photoshop; so I thought we were safe with PS, Gimp, and PSP. But since your using Elements, they'll have their own section of tutorials.
How To Quickly & Easily Remove The Green From Your Sim's Hair:
Okay, Meet Leighton Onca:
First things first, go to your Layer Dock:
and right click on the background layer.
From the drop down menu, select 'Duplicate Layer.'
In your layer dock, you should now have 'Background' and 'Background Copy.'
Delete background.
Now, since Elements doesn't have a 'Select by Color' feature, we're going to grab our magic wand:
And use these settings:
[Make sure you UNCHECK contiguous so that it will select ALL of the green, not just the green that's touching the
area you clicked.]
Now all of your gren should be selected, and we're going to hit CTRL+X (or Edit>Cut)
Now go back to your layer dock, and click here:
and from the drop down menu, choose 'New Layer'.
Clcik on your 'Background Copy' layer to highlight it, and grab your magic wand tool again. Clcik anywhere that you see a checkerboard. You should only have to click once for your magic wand to select anything transparent.
Now hit Select>Inverse (or CTRL+SHIFT+I) and your sim will be selected.
Click on your blank layer, 'Layer One,' in your layer dock. Now use your eyedropper tool to select a midtone in the hair color. Not too light, not too dark.
Then grab your brush tool. I used these settings:
To paint in these areas with my midtone color:
Now, go back to your layer dock, and click on the arrow and from the drop down menu:
select either 'HUE' or 'COLOR.' It will vary from picture to picture depending on the hair color/tone/saturation. For this image, I'm using 'COLOR.'
Now Right click on 'Layer One' and select 'Merge down.'
Now hit CTRL+D (or go to Select>None)
and you're all finished! :]
&FROM JAKE, since I suck with elements:
How to use the Burn & Dodge Tools to effectively add lighting effects your sim.
Okay - I'm half asleep while I'm writing this& Elements has crashed my computer like3 times in a row :[ So sorry if
this one's a quickie. I promise the elements tutorial will be first next week :]
Alright, I opened my background in a new document because it was bigger than my sim layer, and I pasted Leigh on to
it:
It didn't look right, everything was out of proportion, so I highlighted my background layer in my layer dock and
went to Image>Transform>Free Transform. (use the bounding box to drag the corners until it's the size you want, then
click the green checkmark to lock the size. Hold down shift while you're dragging to constrain the image
proportions.)
This is what I ened up with:
Now it's time to burn and dodge. Your Burn & Dodge tools can be found here:
Start out with the burn tool.
I used a 200px soft brush with my Range set to Midtones and my exposure set to 50%
The Cyan-Blue is where I used the Burn tool in the Midtones range, and the Yellow is where I used the Burn tool in
the highlights range.
And this is what I ended up with:
Now we switch to the dodge tool:
Use the same settings as your burn tool, but switch it to Range: Highlights.
I used the dodge tool here:
and ended up with this:
An in depth look at creating and manipulating shadows.
Okay - I'm just going to using a random sim (she's the only one I have saved as a PSD).
It's time to talk about shadows and light sources - another cornerstone of photo-editing. Having your shadows in the wrong place or, God forbid, not having shadows at all, can really ruin a great piece of work.
But before you can add shadows to your art, you have to know how shadows work:
There are about a billion and one ways you can do this - (including using lamps in game to add the right highlights/shadows, but since I can never get that right, I'm going to teach it my way). In game, i flood my sim with light. I use about 12 Lucid Lights right over her head & all around her so there are NO shadows. Then I go in with the Burn/Dodge tools once I have her pasted in my background image... Once I see her in her environment, I can usually see exactly where the shadows and highlights should go.
Check out the picture above. I would have used the dodge tool where I outlined in cyan, the burn tool where I outlined in yellow, and I would have added her cast shadow (which I'm just about to teach you how to do) where I've pointed to in red.
I'm not going to go over burning & dodging again - but you can re-read it in the last tutorial. (using burn and dodge to add shadows and highlights)
Okay, first, we need to know a little about shadows.
So, the bigger the light source, the fuzzier and more transparent our shadow will be. A small single point source will on the other hand cast a perfectly defined shadow with an hard edge. The shadow is likely to be a good image of the object that casts it.
Big Light Source:
SMALL Light Source
********
Okay, So the first thing you should do when creating a shadow is determine your light source / shadow direction. I'm going to show a sample backgrounds and show you how to determine the light source.
Now - if you're doing an outdoor background, locate the sun. If the sky in cloudless, your shadow should be hard, like the shadow in the second example picture. If your sky is cloudy, the shadow will be softer and more diffuse, like the first example picture.
If there is not an existing shadow clue, make your own decision and be sure to be consistent with your shadow angles.
********
Now, how to "CREATE" a Shadow.
Okay, we all know about our layer dock's from last week, right? Okay, in your layer dock, right click on your sim layer and select Duplicate Layer.
*Note - I'm not actually using the REAL light souce of this picture to create a shadow - I'm pulling it out away from her body to show you how to make a shadow.*
With the COPY layer selected, let's go up to Enhance>Adjust Color>Enhance Hue/Saturation.
We're going to drag our Lightness Bar all the way down. Like this:
Now, to distort my shadow, I use Free-Transform. You can also use distort, but you wont be able to move/rotate your shadow while distorting it... with Free Transform, you can rotate, move, resize and distort at the same time - if you know the tricks.
Okay. Go to Image>Transform>Free Transform. Your layer should be surrounded in a bounding box.
Now, there are a few key commands you need to know. To distort, you need to hold down CTRL wile dragging one of the corner boxes, like this:
Now, it's time to blur our shadow and reduce the opacity. We can't see our light source, but we can pretty much guess at what type of lightsource we have. We're in a very small room, and I would assume that our light source isn't much more than one lightbulp on a cable, or one light recessed in the ceiling - since we have a SMALL, defined light source - our shadow would be pretty crisp and fairly dark.
So with your "Copy" Layer highlighted, lets go to Filter>Blur>Gaussian Blur
My Settings^^
Now we need to reduce the opacity. Again, with a SMALL light source, your shadow will be darker than if you had a LARGE light source.
And, once I reduced the opacity on my shadow, i decided I didn't like the placement, so I'm going to go to Edit>Free Transform again & change it a little.
And I played around with my shadow a bit - and since the room is SO dim, I decided on an opacity of 25%. If the room were more brightly lit, I would have made the shadow darker.
i thought that would make you happy Mr. Grumperson. :]
Lol, I'm already pretty proficient in it anyways though :P
I hope it's okay that I am sharing my first photo with your method :oops: *This is not my model-photo!* I know, it's really bad with the dodge/burn tool
Comments/suggestions?
I think you might want to add more light to improve. And maybe you should fix her arms a bit, b/c they are a bit grainy :?