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| Tutorial & Tips | |
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| Topic Started: Jun 29 2009, 01:57 PM (225 Views) | |
| Shorty Jr. | Jun 29 2009, 01:57 PM Post #1 |
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God of Wrestling
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I don't know I've been thinking of doing tutorials and stuff in the past few months. I might as well take a swing at it. Tip #1 - Font Can Make or Break You. I've seen a lot of banners. Ranging from the good, the bad, the 'WHO THE FUCK IS THAT? JOAN RIVERS?' type of ugly. You've done it, I've seen it. I can tell whose banner was made by who depending on their style type. I can see the little white piece of the background that you forgot to cut out and it will annoy me every time I look at it. Sucks to be me. But what everyone else can see is something very important - the font. I've thought a lot about fonts and I try to keep within a certain theme. If your guy is crazy you might want to go with a wilder more sketchy kind of font. If your guy has a bit more class, try to go with a modern type of English font (which I do for Junior sometimes and Glacier a lot back in the days). If he's hardcore, try to go with some fonts that are grunge-looking. I also noticed there are some fonts that match the brushes you get (yes look a bit closer you'd be suprised). So try to go with those that match the brushes as well. That's my tip one I guess later on I can give advise on how to cut out pics cleanly and which ones to look for when your looking for a good cut. |
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| Shorty Jr. | Jul 6 2009, 01:27 AM Post #2 |
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God of Wrestling
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Random Thought If you hate what your doing, even if you worked on it all day...delete it. Do a completely new one. Put on music to inspire you. If you hate your work, everyone else will loathe it (but probably won't tell you to not hurt your feelings). Don't like it? Scrap it. Make the best banner you can every time. That's how you improve and make even better banners. |
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| Shorty Jr. | Jul 10 2009, 06:27 PM Post #3 |
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God of Wrestling
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Program: Adobe Photoshop CS3 Extended Playing: Songs About Jane (Album) – Maroon 5 Tutorial #1: Cutting Out a Picture I’m no God at this and not always can I cut out a photo properly but I’ll cut one out that Jay (Cedro/Juan) sent me to cut for him and hopefully it will come out properly. Patience is the key. You will mess up but you will start cutting like a surgeon soon when you get some practice in. I did mention put on some music. I’ll be listening to Songs About Jane album from Maroon 5, listen to whatever soothes you: This is a picture of Cedro Martinez’s picture base, Lauri Ylonen. [align=center] [/align]This picture is of decent quality yet like with most people with hair, this can pose a problem. Also if you notice at the bottom of his feet he has a shadow so cutting out down there can be hard as well. I would say this photo is medium difficulty. So let me give you one prep tip that works well for me: Preparation Open up a new layer with an extremely BRIGHT COLOR as the background. There is many to choose from in the Swatches. There is PURE MAGNETA RED, PURE YELLOW GREEN, PURE YELLOW, even PURE CYAN. These extremely bright colors make it easy to distinguish what you’re cutting from the background itself which you might have a problem with if you’re using the default checkered background. Check the original image’s size (Alt + CTRL + I / Image > Image Size). The original size of that image is 556x1004. Then change the background color (I choose Pure Cyan just because I’m a guy who loves all shades of blue). File > New. Change the width and height size. Background Contents: Background Color. Now move the picture from there and put it on top of the background (click and drag style). My Main Tool: Polygonal Lasso Tool Admittedly Juan has sworn to the Magnetic Lasso Tool with is also good for those who want to use it but I’ve been using the Polygonal one for over six years so it’s the one I feel most comfortable to use and I stick with it. Choose whatever one works best for you. I’m using a laptop but I have a plug-in mouse so for those using the laptop’s built-in mouse (a pad which detects finger’s movements and uses it as a cursor), good luck. You’ll need it if you’re not a pro with that pad. Tips from the Pros: Adz (SCW Account: fullMETAL) Profuse apologies for horning in, but if I may add a tip to the "cutting out a picture" part, the "Layer Mask" option is a great tool that lets you even restore stuff you accidentally cut out just by painting some white back in on the mask. Plus, it's great for adding some kooky whoosh border effects if you use the Smudge tool. Beginning to Cut I always cut from the bottom then make my way up by cutting out the sides. Then I do the most arduous task of the top. Even short crop can be difficult if the person’s hair is fuzzy and even worse if they are bald because if you don’t cut away properly the head can look deformed. The zoom function is your best friend. It helps you become more precise with your cutting. I go up to 200 or 300% on pictures that don’t have good quality. With good quality I can go up to 500 or 600% if need be. I’m writing this while I’m cutting. I noticed you might run into problems with the shadow effects in this photo. Try to use some common sense on how you think his shoes would be placed. It’s against the wall and you might have to cut out the black so it looks like his foot against the wall because it won’t show as clear. As I begin to cut this I begin to regret choosing this as my tutorial. Once again it’s more of a guessing game when cutting out the black. The Bottom So you get an idea, I’m cutting out the dark parts and trying to take a stab in the dark as to what it should be shaped like if it had proper lighting. I hope these visual cues will help you because this guessing thing is not the easiest thing to do. So I have practically done the bottom, cutting away the dark parts. We will get into the easier part which is the sides. [align=center] [/align]The Sides As I was cutting, I had a little issue because you zoom in things can begin to blur in terms of color. It doesn’t make it any good that to the left and right of Ylonen's green jeans are men wearing blue. So I had to take a few double takes before I finished cutting. Be careful at the right arm area you will want to leave the dark part of it there. So I started doing the left side and noticed the darkness on the pants, take another guess and make it look good. I don’t know what I was thinking about when I choose this as a tutorial. You will be having problems with the top because unbeknownst to my Ray Charles eyes, the top is a “millennium-black-and-white-and-silver-Puff Daddy-and-Mase-with-the-shiny-suits” type of background. This is the point where you get up and grab something to eat before you receive a massive headaches of clicking “step backwards” or “undo”. Maybe not. Let’s see. [align=center] [/align]The Top Back? Ate a hardy meal? Good. You’ll need it. You will find out (especially if you cut out pictures of females or males with non-generic hairstyles) that hair will be a huge problem. Not cutting it out but cutting in between it. Sometimes with curly hair there will be small loops that shows the background. With this picture here, I’m guessing he has about 12 loops (if you’re counting the little one). But I have to either cut them out of cut the inner parts of them. Zoom to 400 to 500% if you see little white pieces and cut them out. I can’t help you at this point; you have to try your best. This is what I came up with: [align=center] [/align]The hair looks horrible but I’m hoping Jay can use his hair brushes and make a miracle out of this hair disaster not to mention the guy did have the most unconventional hairstyle I have ever seen in my life. Even if Jay doesn’t use this, let this tutorial help you somewhat in your cutting ways. That’s all for now, muchachos. Adios. [align=center] ![]() “Fuck it.” – Lauri Ylonen's Hairstylist[/align] |
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| Shorty Jr. | Jul 24 2009, 07:05 PM Post #4 |
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God of Wrestling
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Tip #2 - What Color is Your Background? Sometimes when you make a banner it looks great until you put it on the forum then you have to scramble to edit it. I've been the victim of this when I just joined SCW (if you notice the member profile background and the actual forum background are two different colors). What I suggest is use transparency if you can. If your problem isn't that but rather how the brushes or the psd looks then I suggest when you do your banner make the bottom layer the color of the forum, once finished creating the banner - delete it, merge visible the layers, and save. Just another tip from your friendly neighborhood graphics artist. Transparency - Delete the bottom layer (which should reveal a checkered black and white background). Merge visible, not merge all. Save it as a .png. |
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| fullMETAL | Jul 24 2009, 11:51 PM Post #5 |
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Belt Designer and IWC's GFX Tranny
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Profuse apologies for horning in, but if I may add a tip to the "cutting out a picture" part, the "Layer Mask" option is a great tool that lets you even restore stuff you accidentally cut out just by painting some white back in on the mask. Plus, it's great for adding some kooky whoosh border effects if you use the Smudge tool. |
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9:51 AM Jul 11