Re: Isaak’s Grand Though Experimental PMV Blog
by Isaak (?) » Tue Oct 04, 2011 10:07 am
Since I live in Europe I try to do my livestreams at a manageable hour for both Americans, Europeans and myself. 11PM in US central is... 4-5 o'clock in the morning here and I draw the line at 11:00 PM for sleeping purposes.
(Good Lord timezones are confusing)
Keying out characters/backgrounds in Photoshop can be done in several ways. One of them is simply erasing everything you don't want with the eraser. Recommended if you want a good way to get diagnosed with insanity.
A far better method is using the Quick Select Tool (shortcut W, it shares its place with the Magic Want) and drag over the area you want. It works much like a brush: dragging over additional areas will add it to the selection, holding down Alt while dragging will remove parts of your selection. The cursor will change from a '+' to a '-' if you hold Alt.
I like using a tablet for this as it's the most practical and intuitive, but a mouse works almost as well.
You can make the brush smaller with '[' and bigger with ']' for different areas.
If you use the mouse you can change the cursor from scrolling to zooming in the Preferences menu, which is really handy. You can also use 'ctrl+' to zoom in and 'ctrl-' to zoom out.
Certain keyboards (some Logitech and Microsoft ones) have a specific switch for zooming in/out which works in Photoshop. Ooh, hold space while dragging and you can pan over the canvas when zoomed in.
After having the selection you like, click 'Refine Edge' near the top left. You can further edit your selection here.
(full size recommended)
This is ultra handy. You can view your selection on a black or white background, as an overlay, in black and white and more.
You can smooth your selection and clear any harsh angles, clamp down or widen the edge using 'Shift Edge' aaaaaand you can output your selection to a new layer with the selection as a layer mask. Which is awesome.
Having your selection on a new layer and masked allows you to fine tune it with the paint brush (B).
Select the layer mask and brush over the areas you don't want with a black brush. Since you're working on the mask Photoshop will interpret the black colour as "No, I don't want this". With white you can tell what parts you do want.
With 'X' you can switch between these two colours on the fly. That's the shortcut for switching between foreground and background colours. You can also switch between them on the bottom of the tools panel with the arrow icon.
Since the mask is on a new layer and the original one is still intact, you can turn toggle its visibility if you think you're missing certain parts.
OOOOOOOORRR...
You can get transparent vectors over at MLP-Vectorclub if you need something quick. But it doesn't have every pose of every pony ever.
(Good Lord timezones are confusing)
Keying out characters/backgrounds in Photoshop can be done in several ways. One of them is simply erasing everything you don't want with the eraser. Recommended if you want a good way to get diagnosed with insanity.
A far better method is using the Quick Select Tool (shortcut W, it shares its place with the Magic Want) and drag over the area you want. It works much like a brush: dragging over additional areas will add it to the selection, holding down Alt while dragging will remove parts of your selection. The cursor will change from a '+' to a '-' if you hold Alt.
I like using a tablet for this as it's the most practical and intuitive, but a mouse works almost as well.
You can make the brush smaller with '[' and bigger with ']' for different areas.
If you use the mouse you can change the cursor from scrolling to zooming in the Preferences menu, which is really handy. You can also use 'ctrl+' to zoom in and 'ctrl-' to zoom out.
Certain keyboards (some Logitech and Microsoft ones) have a specific switch for zooming in/out which works in Photoshop. Ooh, hold space while dragging and you can pan over the canvas when zoomed in.
After having the selection you like, click 'Refine Edge' near the top left. You can further edit your selection here.
(full size recommended)
This is ultra handy. You can view your selection on a black or white background, as an overlay, in black and white and more.
You can smooth your selection and clear any harsh angles, clamp down or widen the edge using 'Shift Edge' aaaaaand you can output your selection to a new layer with the selection as a layer mask. Which is awesome.
Having your selection on a new layer and masked allows you to fine tune it with the paint brush (B).
Select the layer mask and brush over the areas you don't want with a black brush. Since you're working on the mask Photoshop will interpret the black colour as "No, I don't want this". With white you can tell what parts you do want.
With 'X' you can switch between these two colours on the fly. That's the shortcut for switching between foreground and background colours. You can also switch between them on the bottom of the tools panel with the arrow icon.
Since the mask is on a new layer and the original one is still intact, you can turn toggle its visibility if you think you're missing certain parts.
OOOOOOOORRR...
You can get transparent vectors over at MLP-Vectorclub if you need something quick. But it doesn't have every pose of every pony ever.
-
Isaak
Equus Ludens :3 
- Joined: Aug 25, 2011
- Location: Dutchland!
-
