Normally, Im a painter, however now and then I do some graphic design and have to do some photo-manipulation. One of the things that separates a good photo manip from a bad one is how cleanly the image was extracted from the original photo before being inserted into the new one. In Photoshop there are several ways to do this. You can select things painstakingly with the lasso tool. You can carefully erase or mask around the image. Or, if youre aware of it, you can let Photoshop do most of the work for you.
So here I have a really lovely image from the incomparable Elandria. The pose is great, the lighting is good, costume and props are spot on. The photo resolution could be a little better, but were going to downsize it a little so that wont matter so much. The only bad thing about this: the background. Shes standing on a picnic table, which would be wonderful if we wanted her to be pointing the way toward lunch, but not so good for a dramatic piece. However, since this is a stock image, were going to be cutting her out of there anyway and giving her a much more suitable backdrop to pose so dramatically in. In this case, a beautiful cloudy Scottish countryside from Patronus_Stock.
The first thing you want to do, with the image already open in Photoshop, is find the Extract Filter. Im not sure why this is classified with the filters, but it is. Simply click on Filters>Extract, which will open up a new and probably unfamiliar window. Now, before we continue, I need to give you some bad news: Your computer is blind. Its okay, it was born that way, and has come up with a rather complicated system to be able to see color. What our eyes perceive as varying shades of red or blue or green, the computer sees as sets of numbers. While we might be able to say thats light blue or thats dark blue the computer has to try to distinguish how similar the numbers are. This can sometimes cause difficulties when selecting things with the magnetic lasso, and it can also cause problems here, too, so its better to be aware of it.
On the left hand side of this window are our tools. The first button is your edge highlighter, the second is a fill paintcan. You wont need the eyedropper tool much, so I tend to ignore it, but you will need the one beneath it later. The bottom two are your magnifying glass and move tools, which youll want to use quite a bit as we go.On the right hand side youve got your settings. Make sure youve got the Highlight and the Fill colors set to different colors (blue and green here). Theyre not actually going to be coloring your image, so you can set them to whatever colors you like. If your image has a lot of well defined areas (like this one), youll want to check the box next to smart highlighting. This tells the computer to automatically follow defined edges of color.
Once youve outlined everything you want to keep (make sure to get those weird little holes and gaps, too, like the spaces between the flag and the pole, or the hole between her arm and her body), use the fill tool to color in the part you want to keep. Basically, what youre telling the computer with the green highlighter is: This is the edge of the image, keep any pixels that match the colors closest to the fill and get rid of the rest. With the fill tool youre telling it I want to keep this.
Stand Before the Banner used with permission from Elandria/Caustic-Stock at DeviantArt.com
St. Abbs Head used with permission from Patronus_Stock at DeviantArt.comTutorials are copyrighted as well. Please do not repost or reprint without my permission. Contact me at mercuralis@bynkii.com for information.
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