Photoshop Tutorials

[ChazyChaz]

In this thread you can find tutorials for Photoshop or other photoediting programs. You will find the basic beginning tutorials, but also more difficult ones. Josh (iamlost) is going to help me with this thread so if you have any questions you can ask me or Josh.


Please only post tutorials in this thread, or else its gonna be messy and it will be hard to find the tutorials.


Feel free to make your own tutorials! but try to make only tutorials of things you're good at. Try to be clear by using screenshots and work step by step. At the beginning you can explain about what you're tutorial is going to be, and links to photos you used, and then you can show step by step how you do it. At the end you can show how the result is going to be. It might be a good idea to rate the tutorial by beginner, advanced and expert, so it will be easier for people to see how easy or difficult it is.


Please PM me or Josh if you made a tutorial so i can add them, it might be better to keep this thread closed so it will stay organised, i dont think people will like it to browse though 100 posts to find a tutorial. Hope you dont mind
You can also PM me or Josh if you have any questions.

[ChazyChaz]

Overview of tutorials:



Beginner:
Blending
No Background
Using the Quick Mask
Downloading Brushes and Fonts into Paint Shop Pro
Using gradients in paint shop pro
Making a blend


Advanced:
Avatar Tutorial
Blends with animated brushes


Expert:
Animated Blends

[ChazyChaz]

Blending:
Level: Beginner
Made by: ChazyChaz


A nice way to put picture together, and it looks like theyre in one picture.
Its really easy to do. You just need to know how to do it

I used these pictures:
http://i4.photobucket.com/albums/y13...sessions09.jpg

http://i4.photobucket.com/albums/y13...sessions02.jpg

First you open the pictures you want to blend in Photoshop. (I use Photoshop CS2)
Its better to use pictures with matching background, from the same photoshoot
or one preformence for example.
Then you put the pictures in the same file, as two different layers.



Select the picture on top, that you want to blend and click Add Layer Mask.



Then you have to select the brush tool, and its best to use a soft brush.
Make sure the colour of your brush is black, cause black deletes the picture.
If you deleted to much you can get your images back by using a white brush.
Thats the best thing of blending this way, cause when you make mistakes you can
easily undo them.
You can also play with the opacity of the brush. when its 100% it just erases everything,
if you use a brush with an opacity of 30% you will still see a little of the picture.





And the result:


I you can use this tutorial, and if you got questions you can always PM me

[ChazyChaz]

No Background:
Level: Beginner

Made by: ChazyChaz

This is the photo i used for this tutorial

First you need to make a layer of your picture before you
delete the background.
Just double click on the layer (Background) and it will become a
layer. You can see when its a layer when the lock is gone.
Now you can delete the background.
You can do that many different ways, you can use the lasso tool, or the eraser.
I always use a layer mask (see the blending tutorial)
cause if i make a mistake i can "draw" the picture back,
its really easy to undo mistakes with a layer mask.





Background/Layer





Just erase it with a soft black brush





Make it smaller if you're doing the edges, so you wont erase too much. A small er brush is more accurate.





It should look like this when you're done.

When you deleted the whole background you have to save it as a
.PNG cause if you save it as a .jpeg it will get a white background.
png saves without the background.






And this is the result:


I you can use this tutorial, and if you got questions you can always PM me

[ChazyChaz]

Animated Blends Tutorial
Level: Expert
Made By: iamlost



This is a tutorial showing you how to make blends with animations in them using Photoshop CS2.
Here are a few examples of blends I made:
http://i96.photobucket.com/albums/l1...ikkiDeath2.gif
http://i96.photobucket.com/albums/l1...jb/ILYjate.gif

I’m going to write everything down step by step and try to provide screenshots when I can.

Remember to try and save the file as a .psd as much as you can, or whenever you make some big changes.

BEFORE YOU START!
You must know that this takes lots of time and patients, so if you don’t have that right now, don’t make this animation right now. Or at least don’t go past Step 3.

Step 1 – Screenshots
Step 1 is to open the video file you would like the make the animation from.
Then you should take screenshots of the pictures you want as your background, as if you were making a normal blend.
I’m going to make a blend from Heroes Season 2 Episode 9.
So what I’m going to do first is take the screenshots I want for my blend.
In this case I’m going to use these shots:




When you’re done with that, go back to the video. This part isn’t easy, you have to be quick. This is when you’re going to take the animation out of the video.
Open the file, and go to the very beginning of the scene you want to use. Make sure it isn’t that long. The longer it is, the harder it is.

After you’re all set, you have to take a screenshot of the first frame. Then press play [space] and pause [space] right after each other – without a pause. Then take another screenshot. And keep doing this until you’re reached the end of the scene.

I use BSPlayer. It’s very easy to use, all you have to do is press P to make a screenshot and it saves it automatically. So if you use BSPlayer you’d do it like this:

Go to the very first frame of the scene you want à press P à Press Space twice as fast as you can à Press P à Press Space twice as fast as you can à Press P etc…
And keep doing this until you’re gotten the whole scene.

Step 2 – Make Your Blend
Now it’s time to work with photoshop.

First you should open the pictures you want to use as the base / background of your blend. And blend them together until you have a normal blend. But don’t add any text / brushes etc… yet, only pictures.
Make the new file as big as you want [I’m using 500x200px] but make sure the background is set to transparent.
Try to make sure there’s a part on your picture that you don’t need showing. That’s where the animation will be.
(if you used BSPlayer to make the screenshots, they will be saved in wherever you installed the player. In my case C:\ --> Program Files --> Webteh --> BSPlayer)

This is how my blend looks so far (I made it 500x200):




I spent lots of time making that, because I had to get the stripes perfectly aligned, I even removed the shadow from them. I also rotated the whole blend after merging the layers. But obviously you can do whatever you want. It can even be just a colored background with a face on the side. Anything you want.

Step 3 – The Base
In Step 3, we’ll prepare your blend for your animation.

First of all, you need to make space for your animation within your blend.
That’s the reason I left out so much room to the left of Kristen Bell’s head.

You should erase the part you want the animation to be. Or you can just simply put a rectangle around it and delete. It all depends on what shape you want it to be.
To make it easier, I’m just going to make a rectangle. Try and make a rectangle that will fit your frames nicely when you resize them so they aren’t stretched.
Like this:

A) Select the rectangle with the Rectangular Marquee Tool.
I made the rectangle 184x105px. (I opened the first frame from the soon-to-be animation and I resized it to 184x105 and left “constrain proportions” on and it stayed that size which means it didn’t stretch it.)



B) Press delete.



C) Format the image. E.g. Add a stroke, text, or a brush etc…
I’m doing to add a stroke (blue, 3px, outside) and some text.





Step 4 – Preparing Your Animation
In this step we will prepare your animation frames so we can add them to the blend.

You can minimize your blend, because you won’t need it right now.

Click File --> Open And open all of your animation frames from the folder you saved the screenshots to. (in my case C:/ --> Program Files --> Webteh --> BSPlayer)

Once their all open, what you’ll need to do is resize them to fit your little rectangle in your blend. My rectangle is 184x105 so I need to resize all the frames to that size as well.
But because I added the 3px stroke I should extract 6 from each (3 on all for sides). So I should resize the frames to roughly 178x100px. It’s ok if there’s a 1px difference because you most likely won’t notice it, especially with the stroke.
While I’m resizing them I’m also removing the tags at the bottom right corners with the Clone Stamp Tool.

Here are all the resized frames. There are very many in this animation, but I’ve made some before with no more than 10 frames. As I said before, the shorter the scene is, the easier it will be to make this animation.



This was only one of the hardest steps so take a deep breath before you continue to the last few ones.

Continued...

[ChazyChaz]

Step 5 – How to Set the Position
First what you need to do is make the animation window viewable by clicking Window (on the taskbar) --> Animation.

When you’re done with that, restore your base image.
Select the first frame and copy it/drag it into the main image so it fits perfectly in the rectangle. Make sure that that frame (layer 2) is behind your main image (layer 1).



To know exactly where your image is placed on the screen you need to click the Move Tool in the Tool window and then click Show Transform Controls in the Options bar.



Your blend will now look like this – if layer 2 (the frame you just copied) is selected.



After that, move the cursor right around the edge of the selected image and click. The lines bordering the image should now be one straight line instead of dotted lines.



When you click not only do the lines change, but if you look at the Options bar at the top, it changed as well.



I circled the two numbers that show exactly what position the image is in. The first number is 380.0 px and the second one is 104.0 px.
From now on, this is how we’re going to set each frame instead of dragging it to the right place. We will do the click next to each of them and set them to 380px and 104px.

Continued...

[ChazyChaz]

Step 6 – Adding Frames
Now that you have the very first frame ready from your animation, let’s get started on doing the rest of them.
To put frame two in do the following.

A) Select your second frame image.

B) Click the small arrow on the right side of the Animation window --> click “Copy Frame”





C) Select your base image again, and click the little arrow on the animation window, then click “Paste Frame”.
Remember: When you paste your frames always have the newest frame selected in the animation window. E.g. If you’re pasting Frame 10, have Frame 9 selected.



Make sure to select “Paste After Selection” in case it’s not already.



You now have two frames in your animation window. It should look like this:



This is how your whole blend should look if you have the second frame selected. (as shown in the animation box)



And your layer Window should look like this. (if for some reason it’s not open just go to Window --> Layer)



Keep doing this until you have all your frames in one animation window.

Continued...