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Posted on 22/03/08 4:27:09 PM |
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Mister Jon
* Posts: 25 Reply |
Questions/Complaint about book
Hello all. I'm new here, I'm new to Photoshop, and I just bought "How to Cheat in Photoshop CS3" fourth edition. It seems to be a fascinating book but it confuses the hell out of me sometimes. For starters, I am using CS3 Expanded on a Windows Vista laptop. For instance, in chapter 1, quickmask 2:tips and tricks, after I have the bee body outlined with a brush, I am told to use the magic wand to seslect the middle portion(unfilled) then expand the selection by 4. Expand is not directly under select(as the book suggests) but it's under select/modify. So when I do that I am then told to fill the selection with the foreground color and then it tells me the shortcut for doing it(alt, left arrow key). Well that shortcut does not fill in that selection, it moves the selection. Am I doing something wrong?? Fortunately I have just used the bucket tool to fill in the body. It's not just that but there's other things that do not work as the book suggests. Fortunately for me, I can figure out how to work around SOME of those "mistakes" Overall I do love the book and I can't believe that it can teach me how to do those special effects that I think are so awesome.  |
Posted on 22/03/08 4:53:59 PM |
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jenn62
** Posts: 73 Reply |
Re: Questions/Complaint about book
Hi, it works, your mistake is using the wrong arrow key, that arrow symbol is for the BACKSPACE key. |
Posted on 22/03/08 5:02:23 PM |
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Mister Jon
* Posts: 25 Reply |
Re: Questions/Complaint about book
That's the backspace key?? LOL...thanks Before I read your comment I did sort of complete the project. The bit about painting the wing area a gray color instead of black was a bit confusing. But I got it to work. After I made the bee a new layer, I put it on a different background(it looked pretty good) but the bee itself looked translucent. What did I do wrong there?? The opacity is set to 100% |
Posted on 22/03/08 6:43:35 PM |
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jenn62
** Posts: 73 Reply |
Re: Questions/Complaint about book
yes that's the backspace key - has the longer bigger arrow. Not sure about your other problem (I'm quite a newbie myself) but did you set the brush hardness to a low number for the bee body. It says use a hard brush so try at 100 percent (not opacity but under brush options for Hardness) Someone else would know better if that's not it. |
Posted on 22/03/08 8:38:00 PM |
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Nick Curtain
Model Master Posts: 1768 Reply  |
Re: Questions/Complaint about book
Jon The shortcuts for fill are: ALT Backspace for the foreground colour and CTRL Backspace for the background colour. These are very useful for the application you mention, or for filling layer masks / selections. Regarding the percentage you mention, if you are painting with a brush opacity of 100% in Quick Mask, then this should select everything and the bee should not appear translucent. Wings, which you wish to appear see through, are painted with a grey at 100% brush opacity to ensure an even distribution. If you were to paint with black at say 50%, this will result in uneven coverage as you pass over areas several times and therefore different levels of opacity will result when the insect is copied to a new layer. My guess is that the mask colour for Quick Mask is set to 100%, but your brush is not, or you have the airbrush switched on? Nick |
Posted on 25/03/08 6:12:21 PM |
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Mister Jon
* Posts: 25 Reply |
Re: Questions/Complaint about book
Hello All.... Thanks for your help. I really appreciate it. Over the weekend, I figured out what I did wrong. Instead of using black to mask the body of the bee, I must've used a medium gray. I read about that in the chapter. Anyway when I did that exercise again and I was sure black was the color I used, transparency wasn't an issue. |