Photoshop Tips & Tricks Thread

my dodge and burns just look like lines instead of folds....lol =(

Hi Heather,

Use the smudge tool to pull the ends of the line out and towards the seams (either up or down depending on what part of the body the wrinkle is on....i.e. on the tummy pull the ends up to follow the curve of the torso).

Then use the blur tool on a low setting, or hit it with a small dose of Gaussian blur. This will all help it fade into the fabric.

You may also try playing with the opacity so they don't stand out too much and scream "I'm a wrinkle!!!!"


Best,
~Ari

Thx Ari, I'll give all that a try!! =)

What do you mean by low settings? Are you referring to reducing the brush level.
Often blur tool when I use it seems to do absolutely nothing. What am I missing?
I can do great folds with the smudge but still haven't acquired the control I would like to have with blur, dodge or burn....and sponge its like blur I don't seem to see what it does.

You're welcome. Let us know if it works



Hi FD!

You're 100% correct! I should have been more specific when I said "low setting". What I mean is set the blur tool on about 15% blur (brush size is totally dependent upon the width of the wrinkle you're working with), and see if you obtain the look you want. Increase or decrease the % depending on the results.

Personally, I use the Gaussian blur more often then not on about a 2.4 or less, then use the blur tool if I want to soften any particular area of the wrinkle I'm not happy with.

I'm a big fan of "what does this do" when I'm working, and I'm always trying new settings/levels/opacity...etc to see if I can improve my overall technique. I'm not sure if that would help you at all with the control you're seeking with these tools though.

I think everyone has their own way of learning, and mine isn't very logical (but it is an adventure!)


~Ari

I am a experimenter too, often I ask what does this tool do when using it and if I can't see what its doing or understand it I put it on the shelf for much later.

I'm new in SL. I have Photoshop v. 5.0 Which version of Photoshop shall I buy in order to create textures for SL?

My main challenge is to create textures of different shapes on a transparent background -- such as round Viking shield textures to place on round prims. I've read instructions but have not yet succeeded.

It goes without saying that I'm neither a Photoshop expert nor an SL texture-creation expert, but I'm willing to learn!

Thank you.

This doesn't answer your question, but...............
You don't need an alpha texture to place a round texture on your wooden shield. You can apply a square texture on the end of a cylinder. The fewer alpha textures you use the better off you will be to avoid the shift that takes place when transparent objects are near to each other. If you want to make a chevron shaped shield, then you will need to use alpha transparencies, in which case version 5 works well.

Ethan, that answer has saved me a lot of work. Thank you!!

I still want to find out about the best version of Photoshop, for alpha channel work, as I progress -- or hope to progress.

Thank yoU!

Hi! Sorry that I haven't been watching this thread the way I should.

FD, hopefully you have figured some of this out during the past month, but just in case.

The Sponge tool reduces the saturation of the image. If you go over an area enough, you'll find that it's reduced to grayscale. So, if something is a little too bright, the sponge tool will fix it.

The freezes and so on that you mention generally happen when you are working too quickly for the program to follow, or when a "background" process demands some of your computer's processing power.

There are a couple of things you can do to help relieve the symptoms. For one thing, if the brush you're using is changing colors, then you are using a very complex brush. The more complex brush, the more processing power PS has to use to follow your brush stroke, and the more likely you'll freeze.

Since you don't want that functionality, you need to turn it off. To do so, you'll need to use the Brushes palette. Open it by going to Window > Brushes, or tapping F5. This is where you can choose all kinds of things about how the brush operates. If your brush is changing colors, you need to disable "Color Dynamics". Just click in the box to uncheck it, and your brush will never swap colors, no matter what you do, and will also work more quickly.

In fact, you can uncheck everything that you aren't using. If you want to explore any part of those attributes more closely, click on the word itself, and you'll get sliders that let you control that part. For instance, if you click on the words "Color Dynamics" you'll see that you can introduce jitters for Hue, Saturation, and Brightness, and you can also jitter between the Foreground and Background colors, or you can leave the jitter off, and move between those two depending on how long the stroke is (Fade) or the pressure, tilt, etc. that you're using on the tablet.

Different attributes have different controls, of course. The things "below the line" don't have any controls. They are simply On or Off.

Also, "Brush Tip Shape", at the top, doesn't have a checkbox, but it's where you control the actual shape of the brush tip, so do click on it, by all means, and take a look at what you can do.

About the Burn and Dodge tools; I dislike them, because they are destructive. They actually change the pixels; so if you decide, a few weeks from now, that you overdid it a little, there's nothing you can do about it.

However, if you want to use them, I would suggest working on a copy of the layer, not the layer itself. (That will preserve your original pixels.) To make one, hold down Command/ctrl and click the J key.

Also, when you are using them, don't forget to pay attention to whether you are changing shadows, midtones, or highlights. In CS, you'll find that stuff on the Options bar, at the top of the interface. All of them affect all three, but they have a greater effect on the targeted range. With Highlights targeted, for instance, you can darken white with the Burn tool; while the other two have almost no effect on it. (The same holds true for the Dodge tool and Shadows to lighten pure black, of course.)

About the Pen tool. If you are familiar with Illustrator, this is an old and trusted friend. If you're not, it's still not that hard to use. You just have to remember that you're not drawing lines with it; you're placing control points. The lines draw themselves between the points you place.

If you click once, move your mouse, and click again you'll get a straight line between the points. If you click and drag, move, and click and drag again you'll get a curved line between the points. If you're interested, I have a movie about how to use it, at
http://www.robinwood.com/Catalog/Technical/PhotoshopTuts/PhotoTutPacks/PenTool/PSPenTut.mov

I never put that on a page (it's not connected to anything, which is why the long URL) because I stammer a little while making it, and some of the things I wanted to record didn't really show up. But you might find it helpful anyway.

I'll post some practice sheets in a bit, for people who want more practice with it.

Changing the color profile to sRGB IEC61966-2.1 will help some with the color shift when you upload things to SL. (You can do that with Edit > Convert to Profile on a piece by piece basis, or change the defaults with Edit > Color Settings.) However, since the gamma in SL is independent from the Gamma for the rest of your computer, and everyone has their client set to their own tastes, you can't get really consistent color. Sigh. I'm afraid that's one of those things we just have to learn to live with.

Finally, large textures become more blurry when imported because SL changes the resolution. For clothing, it's all changed to a maximum of 512x512 pixels. For other textures, the max is 1024x1024. Your best bet is to change it yourself, before uploading, and then run the Sharpen Filter or Unsharp Mask, if it's too blurry to suit you.

Hopefully, that's all your questions. Let me know if I missed something, or if something has come up since you posted.

Hi Oso! Any version of PS will allow you to make Alpha Channels. There's really not that much difference between them, for that one specific thing. (Well, okay; PS 7.0 discards your Alpha channel when saving as .tga, embeds the image transparency instead, and makes a file that has real problems with lots of software. But the upgrade to 7.0.1 is free, so that's easily fixed.)

However, there are a gazillion differences between versions of PS for lots of other things, and the more recent the version you have, the more you'll be able to do with it.

For instance, if you are going to be doing Photosourcing, (using photographs to make textures for clothing etc.) the newest version (PS CS3) will allow you to rotate a clone source on the fly, and see it overlaid on the image. No other version will do that.

So, really, the answer is; get the most recent version you can afford.

If you can afford PS CS3 Extended, you'll even be able to preview your clothing textures inside the program, which can be a huge help and timesaver.

But if all you want to do is make Alpha Channels, any version of PS will work.

Hope this helps!

Thank you for that help.

If you can suggest a tutorial or some such thing that explains particularly well the Photoshop (5 or 6) process for creating transparency around an image, please do.

You're very kind.

I've googled and I've searched the forums here, and I may be using the wrong search words, but I have a TON of shape tools in PS 7.0 such that the menu is extremely crowded. A friend loves making custom shapes and she always sends me her stuff (which is totally cool) but I get them 5 and 6 shapes to a .csh file.

So now I have a bunch of .csh files that could be reduced to 4 or 5, if I knew how. Wish it were as easy as drag-n-drop. My friend keeps telling me she's going to come over and fix it for me but so far nothing. I'm a PS noob but I can get some neat stuff done using shapes as helpers, so please don't turn this into a bash on using the tools that are available instead of doing something silly like starting from scratch.

Anyone know how to combine the shape tools into fewer .csh files?

Thanks tons!

A

Edit: Thanks to the SLer who sent me the link to this tutorial. Easier than I thought and I learned something!.

Betty (or anybody) how did you resolve this? Any input would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks!

When using photoshop cs3 to make alpha textures, all of my clothes appear slightly see through. i have tried changing all the settings i can think of and i made sure that opacity is at 100 percent. i can't figure this one out. any ideas?

Hi! When i upload my clothes into sl, they all have a bit of transparency. I can't figure out what i'm doing wrong. I've checked the opacity, the fill and all that, but i can't figure it out. It looks fine in photoshop but when i upload to sl, it has a slight tansparency.I'm wondering if i'm doing something wrong when i make the alpha channel, or if i've messed up my settings somehow. This has only become a problem recently, so i've changed something somehow without realizing it. I'm using cs3. Thanks in advance for the help.

It's hard to tell without seeing a photo. Do you mean that it has transparent places where it shouldn't, or that everything is translucent (not 100% opaque)? In either case, it's probably your alpha channel image that's messed up. The opacity and fill settings in your layers do not have any effect on transparency in the final uploaded texture.

Open the channels palette and look at the alpha channel alone (click the little eye icon for RGB channels off). The black (transparent) parts should be completely black and the white (opaque) areas should be completely white, not gray. If they aren't, then you will have translucent areas where you don't want them. The fastest way to fix this problem is to select pixels (select inverse if you need to) and replace whatever IS there with black or white.

On the other hand, if the black areas in your alpha channel have little specks and splotches of gray or white in them (or vice versa), you will get odd areas in your final design that are transparent (or opaque) where they aren't supposed to be. You can paint them out with black (or white) and a hard brush.

Depending on how complex your alpha channel image is, these steps may be all you need to do. In the worst case, you may have to remake the alpha channel again.

One final thought ... I assume that you have also checked the Texture settings on the objects you made in SL. The transparency control there will make an entire texture appear translucent if it is anything other than zero.

hi Rolig! Thanks for the thoughts. I am adding the textures to clothes so the transparency box in sl isn't an issue. I checked the alpha channels and they look fine. all that should be white is white and all that should be black is black. When i upload into sl, my whole garment is slightly see through. It isn't just on one item either, it's everything that i make. This is driving me crazy trying to figure it out.

Actually, the transparency box in SL is an issue. It doesn't make any difference what you apply your texture to. If you set the transparency control in your Edit >> Texture window to something other than zero, the texture will not be totally opaque. Apply the texture to a skirt, ... you will have a translucent skirt.

Still, it's hard to understand how you could be consistently setting that one control wrong on every single texture you use in SL, so there must be something else going on. For the moment, you have me stumped.

Hi Deea!

If all of your clothing is suddenly partially transparent, it's bound to be the Alpha Channel. There's really nothing else it can be. (I'm assuming that your clothing is going on the various "clothing layers" that are reached only by entering Appearance, here.)

I know, it looks totally white; but we can't see a single percent or two of black. SL can.

To find out if that's the problem, go to your Channel palette, and click the name "Alpha Channel" to show the Alpha Channel, and hide the other three.

Now, open the Info panel. (Where it is depends on which version of Photoshop you're using. If you can't find it, get it from the Windows menu. That will make it come to the foreground, so you can spot it.)

Now, with that panel showing, move your mouse over the white parts of the Alpha Channel. I'm betting that you'll see the K value showing as 1%, or 2% or higher.

To fix it, open the Levels dialog (Command/Ctrl L) and move the white point arrow, on the far right, to the left just a tiny, tiny bit. Close the dialog, and check the white in the Info panel again. It should be 0%. If it's not, repeat this process until it is.

(While you're in there, you might want to check the black, too, and make sure it's 100% black.)

When you're done, click the little black and white swatch in the top left corner of the Color Swatches at the bottom of the tool bar. That will reset your black and white, so it's 100% and 0% black, respectively.

That will fix the problem if you've been making alpha channels manually.

If you've been making them by "saving selection", then how you wound up with partial transparency will depend on how you've been making your texture to start with. Are you using fills? Paintbrush? Patterns? Copy/Paste? If you could let me know, I can help more.

Hope this helps!

Oh robin, I love you! that was it. That k value thing was at 1 %. Thank you so much.I have just learned photoshop and obviously don't know enough to troubleshoot problems. thanks again! I'm a happy girl.

Hi,
Is there any advantage of using alpha channel for transparency?
I have been making transparent clothes for SL and have never used alpha channels.
I just save as .png file, seems to do the trick
They upload fine and have no problems, also cuts down on using extra layers.
I can also preview the transparency in photoshop, so am I missing out by not using alpha channel?

Puzzled

Sorry for the delay, Milla. I haven't checked this thread in awhile. The reason is that the overlay blending mode won't have an effect on a base colour of black, white, or pure RGB values. What I do to solve this is to use a very dark grey instead.

Thanks, Deea! I'm glad that worked.

Arama, I'll answer your question; but first, please don't post the same thing in two different threads. It just wastes time, and makes it harder to Search for a post that you might remember, later on.

That being said, if you're more comfortable using .png, by all means use it. You might not be aware that it wasn't a choice that we always had; it's a fairly recent addition to the file formats that were possible to upload to SL.

That's why you won't see it mentioned in any of the older posts. The choice simply didn't exist.

Are you missing something? I don't know.

Personally, I've never understood why some people seem to find the whole concept of Alpha Channels, or channels at all, confusing. They are pretty straightforward, from my POV, and it's much, much easier to tell what's going on when you can directly check the amount of Black using the Info Tool.

But then, if I'm having problems with a layer, I tend to Select Pixels > Save Selection (the Command/ctrl + click on the thumbnail trick), and check with the Info tool to make sure that the part that I had thought was transparent really is. You'd be surprised how many times it's not quite there, especially when I've extracted the image from a background.

I also use the RGB Channels to do some of those extractions, though, so yeah. I guess I'm more comfortable with Channels in general than some users.

But they are so very handy that I do suggest that you make the effort, and become comfortable with them.

If you have an Alpha Channel, you can use the Levels to easily and quickly make adjustments to the transparency that you see in SL. It's just a lot quicker than going in and adjusting half a hundred different layers. You can also remove errant bits of transparency or opacity with a single stroke, without worrying about which of the layers it's hiding in.

But perhaps I'm also using a lot more layers than you do. ("Half a hundred" is not an exaggeration. Even a simple piece is likely to have 10 or 20 layers, the way I work. I save things on hidden layers, like the colors that I'm using, or a custom brush I've made for this piece, or a single tile of the patterns I'm using, or quick notes about how I got an effect. That way, that stuff is always with the file, which makes things much easier months or years later, when I go back to it for whatever reason. And then, of course, there are the "grandfather" bits, for layers that I've heavily manipulated with things like the Liquify filter, blur, sharpen, etc. in case I need the old layer for something else latter. Not to mention the layers and layers with actual work on them. But all this is probably more than you wanted to know.)

What it comes down to is this; .png might be more familiar, and might shave a couple of seconds off your workflow, if that.

.tga with an Alpha Channel is more flexible, and allows you to edit much more easily if you don't get exactly what you want when you upload.

Use whichever one you like. The end result in SL will be indistinguishable, for all practical purposes, since they are both saved internally as JPG2000, so the file size difference doesn't matter.

Hope this helps!

Can you email me at [email]Silhouette101@yahoo.com[/email]
i need to know how and where to get photoshop so i can make clothes on SL, i've been trying to design my own clothing for a very long time now. please please help

[email]Silhouette101@yahoo.com[/email]