Stump Bert

[kowgod]

I just sent Bert an e-mail with some ideas. So, I thought I'd share them.

I'm not artistic in the least. I can't even draw stick figures. So, I tried to come up with a couple ideas that I imagine would be quite hard. These are probably lame to photoshop masters, but my ideas were: fire and human hair.

:)

Anyone else send in any ideas? Let's hope he picks some for upcoming shows!

[casework]

Not too hard on a small scale, but definitely on a large scale and to do it quick and efficiently would be pretty hard to create those effects. I've been trying to think of something for him to do but I'm just out of ideas. I don't think I've worked in Photoshop for 2 or 3 weeks now.

[crumbles]

Anyone else send in any ideas? Let's hope he picks some for upcoming shows!Yea, I emailed him asking to display some advanced techniques of removing complicated backgrounds from an image.

[sevver]

You trace what you want using the pen tool and select the inverse and erase it. That is the way to do it.

[kowgod]

You trace what you want using the pen tool and select the inverse and erase it. That is the way to do it.

I could see there being occasions where that would be a lot of trouble. But then again, I've never used photoshop, so :D

[sevver]

Sometimes it is alot of trouble, especially with hair. Gamerrender (http://www.gamerenders.com/forum/) has some good tutorials on doing that.

[kowgod]

I just realized... I knew what you meant when you said "pen tool" because of Bert! Huzzah!

[sevver]

Bert is awesome, I am watching his shows whenever I have time, photoshop is just amazing, I cannot believe what it is capable of.

[nikz]

Yea, I emailed him asking to display some advanced techniques of removing complicated backgrounds from an image.

The Magic Wand tool (and some fine tuning of its 'Tolerance' parameter) is great for selecting complicated backgrounds. With practice you can even retain fine edge detail, such as hair or leaves. The higher the contrast you have between your 2 subjects, the better. A picture of a person on a clear blue sky background, for example, is very easy to separate using the Magic Wand. However, the more colors your main subject & background share, the trickier it gets. This technique is very similar to how green/blue screens in special effects work. The Magic Wand will attempt to make a selection of pixels that are the same or similar color to the area you click with it (ie: click a blue sky, and the Magic Wand will select as much blue as it can find in the document, depending on your Tolerance level and contiguous setting).

When performing such a task, I'll start with the Magic Wand to select specific areas by shift-clicking all the areas of the background I want to remove. Then I'll switch to Quick Mask mode to see the resulting selection as 'red paint', and from there I'll clean up by hand, by either painting in any detail work with a brush, or erase any areas where the Magic Wand has 'bled' into that I don't want selected.

Then, I simply switch back to Normal Mode to view the selection marquee, again and either delete, or inverse and delete to remove your background (or copy/paste your selection to a new layer).

I personally find this to be much more effective & quicker than outlining with a pen tool, although the pen tool is certainly good for simple shapes (and I'm sure there are even better ways).

The Magic Wand would be a neat tool for Bert to showcase. I'm sure he could demonstrate its capabilities much better than I could ever explain in text. ;)

(PS: I just finished watching all the PixelPerfect episodes [in a row] for the first time... great podcast, lovin' it & learning a lot!)

[whoisscott]

I sent some questions on: The Pen tool and help getting past the glossy, CGI colors. I would like the image to look more real. I hope people understand what I mean.

[wastern]

There are some PS plugins that make some nice fire. Can't think of them off the top of my head though

[wolf68k]

There's a number of tutorials on making fire text which I would think you could apply to a shape as well.

I used to use one that had you change the mode to Indexed Color then use the Color Table set to Black Body.
Then I recently found another that has you using Adjustments->Color Balance and using the following settings to start with
Midtones: Red= +70. Yellow = -70
Shadows: Red= +70. Yellow = -70
Highlights: Red=+70. Yellow = -20
http://www.tutorialwiz.com/fire_text/ they have a lot of great tutorials

[originx]

When you guys talk about the pen tool are you saying the pen tool in Photoshop or his Stylus pen tool?

[wolf68k]

Photoshop's pen tool