Photoshop Tutorials/General Photo Editing links and advice

[summer_wine]

I really need to know how you photoshop one image into another one? Like say I have a picture of a sim and I want take ONLY the sim in the picture and photoshop the sim into say a magazine ad for example... can anyone please tell me if there are any tutorials for this? I dont have photoshop, I have GIMP but im beginning to see that the two programs are somewhat similiar so maybe a tutorial for photoshop may have the same tools if I were to try it in GIMP. Thanks guys!

you mean you wanna take a pic of a sim then paste it into a real or different background?

what i do is i take a pic of the sim in a plain background like white or black, any color that doesn't match your sim in anyway. then open that pic in photoshop. iget the magic wand eraser or magic wand selector, whatever, then select the background. with the eraser, it deletes the whole background leaving the sim. with the selector, it selects the background and then just hit delete. from there you can drag the layer to a real background.

I'll try to do one here with pics just give me about ten minutes. wokie?

here are pics to help you. they were rushed so i apologize. this is the first tut i've done. hope it helps.









I did buffy's warming effect to get this below

[Buffy]

thanks summer, i never knew how to do that. im gonna go try it now...nice pic btw:)

[AlbinoBambi]

Oh and Cinamun, I know at least a few things that work a bit different in GIMP.
So I'll try to give a kind of tutorial with GIMP, only I'll use a random old picture
for it, instead of a Sims 2 pic, because I don't have those on this pc.

---


To be able to get a transparent background, you'll first have to create a new layer, then duplicate your background. Delete the original background, and move your new transparent layer underneath your duplicated background.
(tell me if you need more explanation on creating new layers and duplicating old ones)


Before you continue, double check that you've selected the top layer (your actual picture).


After that, you select the 'Fuzzy Select' and click on the background(color) of your picture. After you've selected that part, press Ctrl+X, that cuts the background out of the picture.
(extra note: You'll have to play around with the threshold to select the parts you want gone)


Then repeat that in other places where you have your background, for example the space between the hair and body.


After removing all that, and having just your sim(s) left, with no original background, you can delete the extra layer.


Open up your new background.
Press Ctrl+C while having your original picture selected, then go to your 'new' picture, press Ctrl+V there. Move your sim(s) around on their new background, untill they're on the correct spot, and save your file.


Tadaa. ^^

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I hope that that's clear enough. I've never tried it with a Sims picture, but I'm positive it'll work.

[summer_wine]

albino, you did it much betetr than mine.

[AlbinoBambi]

Aaw, thank you. ^^
Your example picture is a whole lot better than mine though.

[Cinamun]

GAH!!! THESE ARE GREAT YOU GUYS!!! Thank you SOOOOOOO MUCH! Im going to go practice RIGHT NOW!
 
*hugs my monitor*
 
THANK YOU BOTH!
 
(okay i'll stop screaming now LOL)

[AlbinoBambi]

Haha, no problem. ^^ I'm glad I could help.

The funny thing is, my dad is soo good with computers, but I'm better with GIMP than he is. *proud grin*

[Buffy]

this is a tutorial i found for photoshop for blending images with layer masks, its easy peasy. Im an absolute newb when it comes to image editing, but i found the other tutorials on this site > photoshopcafe pretty easy to follow too, im sure most of them could be converted for gimp or paintshop
http://www.photoshopcafe.com/tutorials/blend/blend.html

[babyblueheart]

GAH!!! THESE ARE GREAT YOU GUYS!!! Thank you SOOOOOOO MUCH! Im going to go practice RIGHT NOW!
 
*hugs my monitor*
 
THANK YOU BOTH!
 
(okay i'll stop screaming now LOL)

That's what I'd been wondering as well!!! THANKS!!!!!
Oh and :oops: how do you create a transparent background? I'm a little slow, if you all haven't noticed...

[summer_wine]

this is a tutorial i found for photoshop for blending images with layer masks, its easy peasy. Im an absolute newb when it comes to image editing, but i found the other tutorials on this site > photoshopcafe pretty easy to follow too, im sure most of them could be converted for gimp or paintshop
http://www.photoshopcafe.com/tutorials/blend/blend.html

buffy i can tell you're getting addicted to photoshop hehe. so am i! i love this new tut you gave and i'm gonna beliving in this site now. thanks!

[spaceyphysicist]

These are great tutorials you guys!  Thank you for taking the time to share them with us.

*jumps on bandwagon*  One of my favorite photo effects is rain animation, like in the picture below, and when a few people asked me how I did it, I wrote a tutorial that can be found here.  It's really image-heavy so I don't want to post it here; it holds your hand every step of the way.  If you can be out in public unsupervised, you can understand this tutorial.  It's for Photoshop CS2 and ImageReady, but if you know how to open another program you can probably figure out how to do it.

[Kielen]

Since I know a lot of us use screenshots rather than the ingame camera, here's a quick little tut on how to keep the proportions when you resize a screenshot with GIMP.

Here's the pic we're working off of...Trillium lent me her parents for this.

With the picture up, select the 'Image' menu from the top menu bar.


In the menu, select the 'Scale Image' option.


This will open a nice friendly box with lots of buttons. Underlined is the length of the longest edge of your picture. The little figure 8 the arrow is pointing to controls how your picture will resize.
If the 8 looks normal, when you adjust one side of the image, it will automatically correct the other so the proportions remain correct. If the 8 is split in half, then each side will resize seperately, often resulting in rather distorted pictures.


In the case of this picture, the width of the picture is greater than the height. I need my picture to fit in the forum rules of 600x600. So I correct the largest side, in this case the width, to 600 pixels, and hit enter. Since the  little 8 is together, it automatically resized my height as well. Now my picture will be changed to 600x507, within the picture rules.


You can fiddle with other quality settings at this point, but they don't make a huge visible difference in the picture itself...After getting everything set to what you need, click the 'Scale' button at the bottom.


Tada!! As you can see, the file has been resized, and I can now save it, or continue fiddling with photoshop effects if I need to.


Hope it helps!!

[Buffy]

im loving this thread, im definetly going to be trying that rain effect, and yes summer, im becoming fast addicted to photoshop. babyblueheart, im not sure how to make a transparent layer, but when you use the layer mask, you can use a paintbrush to choose what you want to show up in your pic, by painting either black or white, you can show more of the background image or more of the foreground image, so this kinda makes it transparent. with this image i used the tut to merge my two images, then used the paintbrush to expose different bits of either picture, then i opened another pic and dragged it onto the pic i had just been playing with, created another layer mask and used paintbrush again to paint in maryanns face, using white caused the foreground image to become more visible, and using black brought out the background image more. hope that kinda makes sense.



open up the 2 images > press "V" > drag image onto other> create layer mask> then use paintbrush to paint in either more forground or more background. play around with the opacity to either make it more blended or solid.

[Charmy]

These aren't mine, and they're not necessarily just for sims, but here:
I've learned to do lots with photoshop, i recommend these sites to try, they have good downloads, and some tutorials.
[Add a Soft Effect to Your Pictures]
[Filters/Diamonds to Text]
[Adding Taped Edges to Your Pictures]
[Downloads/Tutorials]
[More Downloads/Tutorials]
[Painting Tutorial]
[Matte Painting/Manipulating an Image Tutorial]

Deviant Art  is good for tutorials and brushes!

[Buffy]

thanks charmy, i will be saving all of those to my favourites:)