Help with making clothes

Hi everyone..
I have read the tutorials about making clothes with Photoshop and am still not really clear on what to do. I am sort of a novice with Photoshop but do understand the majority of the "basic" talk about it.
What I am having a problem is with this:
I load the template, have a picture of something, like a skirt, that I want to manipulate onto the template... And that's it. That's where I am stuck. I do not understand where to go from there or how to manipulate it lets say if the picture wasn't right on and had a bend or something in it.

I guess what I am after, is not a basic T-shirt tutorial but for a tutorial for someone that uses pictures/textures to create their clothing.

If anyone could help with that, that would be great.
Thanks!

Hysteria, What you are referring to is Photo-Sourcing. Photo-sourcing is when you find a photo of a shirt, blouse, skirt, etc and cut and paste it into SL. I think photo-sourcing is a good way to become familiar with your graphics program and producing some decent clothes in a short period of time.

Even after learning to draw their own clothes, many designers will use photo-sourcing to copy trick items, like belt buckles and, complicated ribbons or lace into their designs. However, has you have found out, it has its limits.

To photo-source something you want to make sure it is as close to the proper size as possible. If you are working in a 512X512 SL template a shirt should be roughly 350 X 200 pixels. Rarely will it fit perfectly. You are trying to put a square peg into a round hole, in SL terms; a 2D picture onto a 3D UV map.

The tools you need to use are the Transform tools. In Photoshop you use CTRL-T or Edit, Free Transform. Select the object you wish to use. Copy it Crtl-C then click on your template file and Paste, Crtl-V. Photoshop will automatically make a new layer for you. Your copied object should appear in your template file.

Use the Move Tool (V) to move the selection into position. Then use Free Transform (Crtl T) to size it to fit the UV Map. By right clicking, you can get options that will allow you to skew, distort, etc. the selection.

Even after twisting, distorting, and skewing you will often find it still doesn’t fit perfectly. You can then use the Clone Tool (S) to fill in the gaps and maybe the Smudge Tools (R) to even it out. Then paste another copy in for the back side and do it all over.

I hope this helps, you will just have to play with it until it looks right. I started out doing this. I found it a good way to get comfortable with Photoshop and learn its capabilities. However, I quickly found that drawing the object gives you a lot more control over the final product and usually it doesn’t take much longer. You will be surprised how quickly you can learn to draw decent clothing.

I hope this helps you,

Jen

Thanks Jennifer I will definitely try this out. Your help in game and on here is greatly appreciated.

Hysteria