kiddo
Member
Here is some info on using Photoshop to make nice clean background for photos. I am not good at this sort of thing so be warned.
This may sound a bit complicated, but it rather quick once you get the hang of it.
First here is original pic of pen. I did crop it a bit:
Next select the "pen" tool. It looks like a little fountain pen nib. Then blow up the picture to about 400 to 500%. Hold down the SPACEBAR and the CTRL key and the cursor will change to a magnifying glass with a little plus sign in it. While holding down those two keys, click on the image and it will zoom in.
At this magnification, the edge of your pen will be a bit fuzzy. With your pen tool, click just inside this fuzzy edge. You will get a single dot. (DO NOT DRAG THE PEN TOOL!!!). Now move down the edge a bit and click with the pen tool again. You will get another little dot and a line connecting them. Continue clicking carefully around the edge of the pen until you get all the way around. When you get back to where you started, click on your first dot to close the loop. All the dots should disappear and there should be a solid line surounding your pen pic.
Once you have clicked your way around the pen, it should look like this:
Hint: As you move along, press the SPACEBAR and the cursor will turn into a little hand. While holding that key down, click on the image and "drag" it along to view parts that are off the screen.
What you have done is draw a "path" around your pen.
Now we duplicate the picture by pressing CTRL J (control key and jetter j).
Over in the layers palate you will see a duplicate of your image.
Now click the little icon at the very bottom of the layers palate that looks like a little square with the corner folded over. This will create a new empty layer.
You can click on the layers and drag them up and down. Do so until your layers palate looks like below.
Click on the eyeball to turn off the bottom layer. Your palate should look like this:
Now lets turn that path into a selection...
A selection is just what it sounds like. It means you are going to take that path you drew around your pen and tell Photoshop to turn it into a selection.
("But I'm confused... isn't a path the same as a selection?", no. it is not)
Click on the "Path" tab and Right-Click on the item that is called "Work Path". From the little dropdown box, choose "make selection".
A little option box will pop up. Set the values in the option box to look like this: And click on OK. That solid line around your pen should turn into the "Marching Ants" outline that shows you have created a selection.
Now click on the Layers tab to go back to your list of layers and click on the top layer. Now press CTRL-SHIFT-I to invert the selection. This is necessary to select the pen instead of everything BUT the pen! Now press CTRL C (control c) to "copy" the selection.
Click that little icon to create a new layer and then press CTRL-V to paste your selection into it. Click the little eyeball(s) to turn off layers until your image looks like below. That checkerboard pattern is Photoshop telling you that that part of the image is transparent!
Now create a new layer and drag it to just below the transparent pen layer and use the "Paint Bucket" tool to fill it with white. The paint bucket tool is in the tool box and looks just like a little paint bucket with stuff pouring out of it. When you have done this you should have something like this:
Here I have repeated the above steps to clean up the little bit of original background under the pocket clip.
After using the pen tool to outline the area, I converted the path to a selection, pressed CTRL-SHIFT-I to invert the selection, and pressed the delete key to erase the bit of background.
Now lets add a bit of a drop shadow. From the Layer toolbar, select Style>Dropshadow
Play with the controls in this box until you get a shadow you like:
Now make the image a reasonable size:
Set the width to 640 (the height will auto adjust itself), Set resample to Bicubic-smoother and click OK.
The last thing I do here is adjust the color a bit. I know this pen is not really greenish, so I do some color adjustments (another tutorial perhaps) and the image is ready!
To finish off select File>Save For Web and adjust your compression settings to something reasonable and save your new image!
Last word: This may at first seem complicated, but is really not. It takes me about three min to do this start to finish and here I hurry so was a bit sloppy.
You spend lots of time learning to turn, lots of time perfecting your finish, spend lots of time learning to use your camera and lights... Don't chicken out when it comes to making the best of your photos.
Kiddo
This may sound a bit complicated, but it rather quick once you get the hang of it.
First here is original pic of pen. I did crop it a bit:
Next select the "pen" tool. It looks like a little fountain pen nib. Then blow up the picture to about 400 to 500%. Hold down the SPACEBAR and the CTRL key and the cursor will change to a magnifying glass with a little plus sign in it. While holding down those two keys, click on the image and it will zoom in.
At this magnification, the edge of your pen will be a bit fuzzy. With your pen tool, click just inside this fuzzy edge. You will get a single dot. (DO NOT DRAG THE PEN TOOL!!!). Now move down the edge a bit and click with the pen tool again. You will get another little dot and a line connecting them. Continue clicking carefully around the edge of the pen until you get all the way around. When you get back to where you started, click on your first dot to close the loop. All the dots should disappear and there should be a solid line surounding your pen pic.
Once you have clicked your way around the pen, it should look like this:
Hint: As you move along, press the SPACEBAR and the cursor will turn into a little hand. While holding that key down, click on the image and "drag" it along to view parts that are off the screen.
What you have done is draw a "path" around your pen.
Now we duplicate the picture by pressing CTRL J (control key and jetter j).
Over in the layers palate you will see a duplicate of your image.
Now click the little icon at the very bottom of the layers palate that looks like a little square with the corner folded over. This will create a new empty layer.
You can click on the layers and drag them up and down. Do so until your layers palate looks like below.
Click on the eyeball to turn off the bottom layer. Your palate should look like this:
Now lets turn that path into a selection...
A selection is just what it sounds like. It means you are going to take that path you drew around your pen and tell Photoshop to turn it into a selection.
("But I'm confused... isn't a path the same as a selection?", no. it is not)
Click on the "Path" tab and Right-Click on the item that is called "Work Path". From the little dropdown box, choose "make selection".
A little option box will pop up. Set the values in the option box to look like this: And click on OK. That solid line around your pen should turn into the "Marching Ants" outline that shows you have created a selection.
Now click on the Layers tab to go back to your list of layers and click on the top layer. Now press CTRL-SHIFT-I to invert the selection. This is necessary to select the pen instead of everything BUT the pen! Now press CTRL C (control c) to "copy" the selection.
Click that little icon to create a new layer and then press CTRL-V to paste your selection into it. Click the little eyeball(s) to turn off layers until your image looks like below. That checkerboard pattern is Photoshop telling you that that part of the image is transparent!
Now create a new layer and drag it to just below the transparent pen layer and use the "Paint Bucket" tool to fill it with white. The paint bucket tool is in the tool box and looks just like a little paint bucket with stuff pouring out of it. When you have done this you should have something like this:
Here I have repeated the above steps to clean up the little bit of original background under the pocket clip.
After using the pen tool to outline the area, I converted the path to a selection, pressed CTRL-SHIFT-I to invert the selection, and pressed the delete key to erase the bit of background.
Now lets add a bit of a drop shadow. From the Layer toolbar, select Style>Dropshadow
Play with the controls in this box until you get a shadow you like:
Now make the image a reasonable size:
Set the width to 640 (the height will auto adjust itself), Set resample to Bicubic-smoother and click OK.
The last thing I do here is adjust the color a bit. I know this pen is not really greenish, so I do some color adjustments (another tutorial perhaps) and the image is ready!
To finish off select File>Save For Web and adjust your compression settings to something reasonable and save your new image!
Last word: This may at first seem complicated, but is really not. It takes me about three min to do this start to finish and here I hurry so was a bit sloppy.
You spend lots of time learning to turn, lots of time perfecting your finish, spend lots of time learning to use your camera and lights... Don't chicken out when it comes to making the best of your photos.
Kiddo
]) All my images/thumbnails are done this way. I'll save posting a bunch of pictures. You can see some of the graphics I've done this way at http://www.ohlemeier.com/webstore
