autocol
01-19-2004, 08:54 AM
okay, here’s my VERY simple post on working with photoshop. i know hatch started another one but i’m keeping it REALLY simple, because that’s all 90% of the people on this board can handle... no offense to hatch or monster (or 90% of the people on this board!) intended.
please note that this tutorial of sorts deals only with PHOTOSHOP. yes, it’s expensive, no i didn’t pay for mine, and nor did 90% of the worlds users. i don’t make any money off it, so i don’t feel bad. this post is not intended to be a debate about the relative criminality of stealing intellectual property as opposed to actual stuff.
bugger me, can i start already!?
this tutorial will cover, very simply, lowering a car in photoshop. it will introduce you to some of the simple, but often used tools in the package.
okay, in figure one (jeez, i’m sounding like someone from street rodder!), i’ve just loaded in an image. i’ve circled two important areas of the program. in the blue area, we have the tools that we’ll use commonly to manipulate the image. we can select colours here, along with tools like move, zoom, paintbrush, eraser, etc... hover over the top of any tool for a second and you’ll get a “tooltip”, telling you what it is, and its shortcut. cool?
edit: image linking should now be working... i got the guy whose site i link off (ltdesign) to allow the HAMb to steal bandwidth... thanks luke
http://www.ltdesign.org/uncletoff/HAMB/screen1.jpg
next up, we have to lower the car. to do that, we need to cut out the car itself, put it on a new layer, and slide that layer down until it looks right. so, in figure two, i’ve started the lasso tool, circled in red. note that i have by far the easiest time using the POLYGONAL lasso tool. if yours isn’t set to this by default, click and HOLD on the lasso tool button, and you will see a “flyout”... as you can see this tool has three options... click the polygonal one.
next, you need to trace the area you want to cut out. you use the tool by click-click-clicking, it will draw straight lines in between. around corners, make your clicks close! theres a blue arrow pointing at my line as i click it. i’m currently going up round the rear wheel arch...
http://www.ltdesign.org/uncletoff/HAMB/screen2.jpg
one thing you’ll need to do to get your images looking good is zoom WAY in, to see right up close what you’re selecting. use the zoom tool, bottom right hand corner of the toolbar i circled in blue at the start. then, once your zoomed right up, you can move around mid-lasso-command by holding down spacebar, which brings up a “panning” hand. give it a try, you’ll get it...
in this third image i’ve gone right the way along the bottom of the car. now, to close off my lasso area, i needed to click once at each of the red dots, OUTSIDE of the image... photoshop allows you to do that. finally, a double click at the blue dot “closes” the lasso, and selects the area enclosed.
http://www.ltdesign.org/uncletoff/HAMB/screen3.jpg
now, we need to copy the selected area, and paste it onto a new layer. too easy. go to the edit menu (blue arrow) and select copy, then edit menu again, and select paste. p-shop automatically adds a new layer with the selected area on it when you paste. you can see it’s been created where the red arrow indicates.
(geeks will be happy to note that all windows shortcuts like CTRL+C and CTRL+V work a charm in p-shop... non-geeks can reserve memory for remembering good things, like the firing order of nailheads...)
http://www.ltdesign.org/uncletoff/HAMB/screen4.jpg
now, the ACTIVE layer (ie, the one that will be affected when you start drawing everywhere!) is lit up in blue in the layer list. always check you’ve got the right layer active or you’ll fuck yourself completely. you can just select the appropriate layer by clicking where i’ve drawn a blue dot in the next figure.
once you’re sure you’ve got the top layer (the one with ONLY the car, not the wheels, n it), select the MOVE tool (circled in red), grab the car and DUMP THE BITCH! or just drag down slightly... http://www.jalopyjournal.com/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/wink.gif
check it out mum! i lowered my car!!
http://www.ltdesign.org/uncletoff/HAMB/screen5.jpg
that pretty much endeth the lesson, but i will add a couple more things that you should do EVERY TIME you want to post to the HAMB. the first is setting the image size.
go to the image menu, and down to image size (highlighted in the figure below). it brings up a dialogue (also shown). the top half of the dialogue box shows you how big your image is in PIXELS. now just to give you newbies an idea (and don’t any of you smart arses DARE tell me that not everyone uses these sizes!) your screen is 1024 pixels wide by 768 pixels tall. if you post an image that is 2000 pixels square, not only would ryans server reject it, but it wouldn’t fit on the screen!
all the images in this post are 512 x 384, to give you an idea. i suggest only using widths between 300 and 600. a good balance between resolution and speed.
http://www.ltdesign.org/uncletoff/HAMB/screen8.jpg
now, there’s ANOTHER, much COOLER way to save ryan’s space: save for web. save for web (henceforth: SFW) is the coolest fucking thing since sliced bread, and if you take ANYTHING away from this total waste of time i’m calling a tutorial, take this...
go to the file menu, save for web (highlighted in the image below).
http://www.ltdesign.org/uncletoff/HAMB/screen6.jpg
it brings up the following dialogue. basically what this command does is COMPRESS the image, in terms of FILE SIZE, without making it any smaller in DIMENSIONS, for the viewer... cool, eh? (no, i am not canadian, though i did live there for a while...) the more you compress, the blurrier the image gets, so you’re shooting for a happy medium. luckily, there’s a preview!
in the top of the SFW dialogue, click on the “2-UP” tab. the left hand pane shows your original image, the right hand pane shows the compressed equivalent. where my red arrow is pointing, make sure the top one says “JPEG” (you’ll want this in 99% of cases), and experiment with the setting in the bottom one. generally, you can compress down to “medium” level without the viewer noticing three fifths of fuck-all difference, and often you can get to “low”... i’ve zoomed in on the effect it has on file size... the original is 900 kilobytes. the compressed version is 30. and i can tell you now, the difference to the viewer is basically nil. save ryan a dollar. use save for web.
http://www.ltdesign.org/uncletoff/HAMB/screen7.jpg
next, i might do one with bigger wheels, or maybe grabbing wheels from another image... requests are taken, but bare in mind i’m leaving the complex stuff to hatch and monster, this is supposed to be SIMPLE, i want everyone to have a crack at it...
please note that this tutorial of sorts deals only with PHOTOSHOP. yes, it’s expensive, no i didn’t pay for mine, and nor did 90% of the worlds users. i don’t make any money off it, so i don’t feel bad. this post is not intended to be a debate about the relative criminality of stealing intellectual property as opposed to actual stuff.
bugger me, can i start already!?
this tutorial will cover, very simply, lowering a car in photoshop. it will introduce you to some of the simple, but often used tools in the package.
okay, in figure one (jeez, i’m sounding like someone from street rodder!), i’ve just loaded in an image. i’ve circled two important areas of the program. in the blue area, we have the tools that we’ll use commonly to manipulate the image. we can select colours here, along with tools like move, zoom, paintbrush, eraser, etc... hover over the top of any tool for a second and you’ll get a “tooltip”, telling you what it is, and its shortcut. cool?
edit: image linking should now be working... i got the guy whose site i link off (ltdesign) to allow the HAMb to steal bandwidth... thanks luke
http://www.ltdesign.org/uncletoff/HAMB/screen1.jpg
next up, we have to lower the car. to do that, we need to cut out the car itself, put it on a new layer, and slide that layer down until it looks right. so, in figure two, i’ve started the lasso tool, circled in red. note that i have by far the easiest time using the POLYGONAL lasso tool. if yours isn’t set to this by default, click and HOLD on the lasso tool button, and you will see a “flyout”... as you can see this tool has three options... click the polygonal one.
next, you need to trace the area you want to cut out. you use the tool by click-click-clicking, it will draw straight lines in between. around corners, make your clicks close! theres a blue arrow pointing at my line as i click it. i’m currently going up round the rear wheel arch...
http://www.ltdesign.org/uncletoff/HAMB/screen2.jpg
one thing you’ll need to do to get your images looking good is zoom WAY in, to see right up close what you’re selecting. use the zoom tool, bottom right hand corner of the toolbar i circled in blue at the start. then, once your zoomed right up, you can move around mid-lasso-command by holding down spacebar, which brings up a “panning” hand. give it a try, you’ll get it...
in this third image i’ve gone right the way along the bottom of the car. now, to close off my lasso area, i needed to click once at each of the red dots, OUTSIDE of the image... photoshop allows you to do that. finally, a double click at the blue dot “closes” the lasso, and selects the area enclosed.
http://www.ltdesign.org/uncletoff/HAMB/screen3.jpg
now, we need to copy the selected area, and paste it onto a new layer. too easy. go to the edit menu (blue arrow) and select copy, then edit menu again, and select paste. p-shop automatically adds a new layer with the selected area on it when you paste. you can see it’s been created where the red arrow indicates.
(geeks will be happy to note that all windows shortcuts like CTRL+C and CTRL+V work a charm in p-shop... non-geeks can reserve memory for remembering good things, like the firing order of nailheads...)
http://www.ltdesign.org/uncletoff/HAMB/screen4.jpg
now, the ACTIVE layer (ie, the one that will be affected when you start drawing everywhere!) is lit up in blue in the layer list. always check you’ve got the right layer active or you’ll fuck yourself completely. you can just select the appropriate layer by clicking where i’ve drawn a blue dot in the next figure.
once you’re sure you’ve got the top layer (the one with ONLY the car, not the wheels, n it), select the MOVE tool (circled in red), grab the car and DUMP THE BITCH! or just drag down slightly... http://www.jalopyjournal.com/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/wink.gif
check it out mum! i lowered my car!!
http://www.ltdesign.org/uncletoff/HAMB/screen5.jpg
that pretty much endeth the lesson, but i will add a couple more things that you should do EVERY TIME you want to post to the HAMB. the first is setting the image size.
go to the image menu, and down to image size (highlighted in the figure below). it brings up a dialogue (also shown). the top half of the dialogue box shows you how big your image is in PIXELS. now just to give you newbies an idea (and don’t any of you smart arses DARE tell me that not everyone uses these sizes!) your screen is 1024 pixels wide by 768 pixels tall. if you post an image that is 2000 pixels square, not only would ryans server reject it, but it wouldn’t fit on the screen!
all the images in this post are 512 x 384, to give you an idea. i suggest only using widths between 300 and 600. a good balance between resolution and speed.
http://www.ltdesign.org/uncletoff/HAMB/screen8.jpg
now, there’s ANOTHER, much COOLER way to save ryan’s space: save for web. save for web (henceforth: SFW) is the coolest fucking thing since sliced bread, and if you take ANYTHING away from this total waste of time i’m calling a tutorial, take this...
go to the file menu, save for web (highlighted in the image below).
http://www.ltdesign.org/uncletoff/HAMB/screen6.jpg
it brings up the following dialogue. basically what this command does is COMPRESS the image, in terms of FILE SIZE, without making it any smaller in DIMENSIONS, for the viewer... cool, eh? (no, i am not canadian, though i did live there for a while...) the more you compress, the blurrier the image gets, so you’re shooting for a happy medium. luckily, there’s a preview!
in the top of the SFW dialogue, click on the “2-UP” tab. the left hand pane shows your original image, the right hand pane shows the compressed equivalent. where my red arrow is pointing, make sure the top one says “JPEG” (you’ll want this in 99% of cases), and experiment with the setting in the bottom one. generally, you can compress down to “medium” level without the viewer noticing three fifths of fuck-all difference, and often you can get to “low”... i’ve zoomed in on the effect it has on file size... the original is 900 kilobytes. the compressed version is 30. and i can tell you now, the difference to the viewer is basically nil. save ryan a dollar. use save for web.
http://www.ltdesign.org/uncletoff/HAMB/screen7.jpg
next, i might do one with bigger wheels, or maybe grabbing wheels from another image... requests are taken, but bare in mind i’m leaving the complex stuff to hatch and monster, this is supposed to be SIMPLE, i want everyone to have a crack at it...