How to Cheat in Photoshop

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Posted on 06/12/03 10:15:15 PM

Carl
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reflection help

I am working on our 2003 X'mas greeting but I am having a tough time judging how to properly place the dogs reflection in the glass ornament.

Also does anyone know how I would create condensation. I think I should consider adding a small amount near where the dogs nose meets the glass ornament.

Any thoughts would be appreciated, here is the image I'm working on.

Posted on 07/12/03 11:23:42 AM

D@vid
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Re: reflection help

Sorry, didn't mean to step on the maestro's toes but I was up early.

This is what I came up with..

Basically, I just drew a loose lasso around the area I wanted condensation, then used quickmask with a large soft brush to get the hazy edges. I then filled the new selection with white and promoted it to a layer. Because heat rises, the more opaque area of the condensation would start around the middle of the dog's nose. I CTRL+Clicked the layer to get its selection back and crerated a mask, then used the gradient tool, set it to Black to White and drew it almost vertically, starting from the bottom of the image. Then played with the opacity of the layer.

The reflection was easy, draw a selection that surrounds the dog from nose to around the eyes, quickmask it and use a large soft brush to fade it out at the right. Exit quickmask, promote to a layer and then flip it horizontally. Then use opacity again. I also used a mask and gradient again to make the reflection less pronounced in the nose area.

Posted on 07/12/03 11:37:39 PM

Carl
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Re: reflection help

Hi David,

Thanks for your efforts. The condesation looks right, so I'll have to try out your suggestions. The only difference will be that it won't be quite that large and I may lower the opacity a bit.

The reflection looks good as well, maybe a bit of distortion in addition to the scaling?

In any case I really appreciate you laying out the steps you did, it always helps.

Thanks,

Carl

Posted on 08/12/03 01:41:08 AM

D@vid
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Re: reflection help

At 11:37:39 PM 07/12/03, Carl wrote:
Hi David,

Thanks for your efforts. The condesation looks right, so I'll have to try out your suggestions. The only difference will be that it won't be quite that large and I may lower the opacity a bit.

The reflection looks good as well, maybe a bit of distortion in addition to the scaling?

In any case I really appreciate you laying out the steps you did, it always helps.

Thanks,

Carl

No problem, this was really just to outline the procedure as it's quite a small image and layerless so it will probably be a little easier for you to work on your image, it's always better when you have the composite full size image.

Glad it helped some!

David

Posted on 08/12/03 03:05:08 AM

Paul
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Re: reflection help

Another suggestion Carl!

The dog looks a little crisp around the edge. It may look better if you feather him a little.

Nice image all the same

Posted on 08/12/03 08:00:30 AM

Steve Caplin
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Posts: 6846

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Re: reflection help

Well, I go away for the weekend and find my board's been hijacked. Excellent! This is exactly what I hoped would happen. Great work, both of you.

Posted on 08/12/03 10:13:03 AM

D@vid
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Re: reflection help

At 08:00:30 AM 08/12/03, Steve Caplin wrote:
Well, I go away for the weekend and find my board's been hijacked. Excellent! This is exactly what I hoped would happen. Great work, both of you.

Lunatics/Asylum

Posted on 10/12/03 2:51:42 PM

Carl
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Re: reflection help

Hey Paul,

I'm going to experiment with that a bit. The 5 x7 I printed, the edges looks pretty good, but it wouldn't hurt to soften the edges a bit more. What is not apparent from the low res image posted is the wisping hair was captured pretty well when I extracted the dog. It looks really good in print.

I'm curious as to what Steve's opinion, and others who have used the program, feel about Knockout 2 masking program? Particularly how you feel it compares to Photoshops extract feature.

Thanks for the suggestion,

Carl

Posted on 10/12/03 3:06:33 PM

Steve Caplin
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Posts: 6846

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Re: reflection help

I really liked Knockout when I first reviewed it. But I've hardly touched it since then - I'm just not sure if the effort is worth it. Personally, I stick to the built-in tools in Photoshop these days - but there's no doubt that Knockout does provide excellent results, if you have the time and patience to use it correctly.

Posted on 10/12/03 3:19:06 PM

Paul
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Posts: 64

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Re: reflection help

At 2:51:42 PM 10/12/03, Carl wrote:
Hey Paul,

I'm going to experiment with that a bit. The 5 x7 I printed, the edges looks pretty good, but it wouldn't hurt to soften the edges a bit more. What is not apparent from the low res image posted is the wisping hair was captured pretty well when I extracted the dog. It looks really good in print.

I'm curious as to what Steve's opinion, and others who have used the program, feel about Knockout 2 masking program? Particularly how you feel it compares to Photoshops extract feature.

Thanks for the suggestion,

Carl

Hi Carl,

I very rarley use the the extract feature in Photoshop, as it normally ( for me anyway ) tends to leave a lot of of work touching up afterwards. I tend to use the pen tool most of the time for making the more comlplex selections.

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