[PS]Rendering Pictures

Hello thar

to start this section up, i made a small tutorial for those who are starting to learn

There are people already asking me what "rendering" means =__=

ok

renders are pictures of objects or characters that has no background at all, or at least white/black background
usually renders are saved as PNG, because if you save in extentions other than PNG or GIF, the background has to appear and it will look white usually
while in PNG or GIF, it will be transparent
GIF is similar to PNG except that it can also be used to save animated pictures while PNG can't (actually it can using some techniques.. and animation won't appear except for special browsers like firefox)
when saving to GIF, the image quality drops, that's why it is best to save as PNG

enough speaking of renders
now i'll show you few methods i know to render images (removing the background and other unwanted objects from pic)

i brought up an easy wallpaper to work on for this tutorial

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before starting, you need to double click on the layer for lots of reasons, one of them is to make "erasing" actually erases instead of being white brush.

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i'll start with the most basic method, which is the magic wand
this method only works when either the background or the object can be selected easily

first, you have to choose a bit low sensitivity for selection ( i chose 50)

start clicking on the background, don't forget the gaps between the body and hands and helmet...and the shroom ..etc (hint: to add multiple selections, hold "Shift" while clicking)

once you finish clicking for the backgrounds, press the "Del" key to delete the background.

now you'll be left with the characters, but we still have the logo and few unwanted stuff

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simply use the eraser tool to remove them as they are easy to get removed

and we are done

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as i said earlier, this method only works if the background or the object is something easy to be selected, so it does not work most of time.

the second method is Extracting

go to tabs==>filters, and choose extract

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a new window will open

all you have to do is highlightthe object around with the green brushh
for areas that can be easily highlighted, you can choose as small brush as 10
for difficult areas like hair..etc, chose higher brush size like 30-50 (depends on size of the image you're working on)
smart highlighter makes highlighting faster,
if you need more accurace in difficult areas, it's better to zoom in image and carefully highlight.

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once you finish highlighting, choose the "fill" tool and click on the insides of the object then OK

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if the whole picture becomes blue then it means that you didn't highlight around the object correctly. you have to double check your work.

now the pic will be almost rendered.
the problem is sometimes parts of the object gets erased and sometimes part of background remains
depending on how different the pattern and color of object from background

so you have to use the eraser and history brush tools to get it fixed

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fixing edges is too difficult because you have to balance it..

this method is sometimes does not give good results though sometimes it's process does not take a lot of time.

the 3rd method i'll talk about is Magnet Lasso Tool

this method is simple too
all you need to do is click at any edge of the object then hover the mouse around the object with few clicks if necessary, and the tool will automatically try to detect the shape of the object.
if the tool marks a spot you don't want, you can press the "del" key to undo that segment

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once you finish highlighting the object with the magnetic lasso, right click on the object and choose "invert selection"

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then hit the del button to delete everything but the object

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this tool is good but sometimes it is annoying especially when working close to corners and sides of an image, also sometimes it doesn't work well when the pattern and colors are close to each other (bg& object)

Finally, here is the method i use most of time, the polygonal lasso tool
the difference betwen this tool and the previous one is the "auto"..
in magnetic lasso, the lasso moves automatically according to pattern and colors while this one is manual. the lasso moves where YOU click. it only depends on you.

you can find the tool by right clicking on the magnetic lasso tool and choosing the wanted tool

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all you need to do is to work your eye and hand more and highlight with the lasso around carefully
if you needed to zoom in while highlighting, press "Ctrl" and + to zoom in, "Ctrl" and - to zoom out

the more careful when highlighting the better the result comes

after you finish the outer part, you need to not include the inside parts of background like ones between body and hand..
to do so, you'll have to hold"alt" while clicking for polygonal lasso tool.

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once you are done, right click and choose inverse selection then press the del button

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the pic msy appear sharp on edges because of the cutting and highlighting, that is why we need to use the feather tool to make it look smoother.

feather number should be around 2-10 depending on how fading you want the object to be.

here is what it will look like in the end with the feather effect

[url=http://i147.photobucket.com/albums/r310/mamz100/Lasso6.png]link

i don't know if there are ither methods for rendering, but these are the ways know so far
enjoy

hopefully i taught you guys something helpful =P

i'll try to make other tuts if i get time and see people interested Roll Eyes