White shadow around tattoos

How come when making a tattoo there is a small white shadow around the edge? sometimes more noticeable with certain tattoos ive made so far. is there any way to fix this? i'm using psp 9.0 if that helps.

Ok, this happens sometimes but basically, what you want to do is this:

Work on your transparent layer making the tattoo... set up your alpha channel just like you normally do - when you have DONE all this, JUST before you save the file, flood fill the background the SAME color as the edges of your image.

The reason you want to do this is, when PSP makes your mask to make the alpha out of - PSP tries to make the lines nice and smooth.. so it antialiases the selection. If you do not set the background around whatever you are working with to the same color as the edges of your work of art, when PSP automatically "flattens" the image, it will generate a WHITE background. This is where you get that white shadow.

Hope that helps!

You can also turn this into an advantage, using the antialiased border to make a neon sort of glow.

tysm! i will give this a try.

ok i tried this and i must be doing something wrong cuz im still getting a white shadow. here is what i did:

I made my tattoo like i normally do
create my alpha etc.
just before i got to save the file as a .tga i flood fill the background (i used black since the tattoo is just plain black) it doesnt change anything on my screen when i do this then i save it and upload it to SL. On Sl it still has a white shadow around the edges of it.

I know I must be doing something wrong can anyone point out to me what lol

Hi Gina, I don't use PSP but... I once used it so I know you have the function I'm going to describe. PSP has a problem sometimes turning that anti aliased edge transparent because of the levels of grey, so.. a handy trick that can work is select the tattoo layer... not the whole layer, make sure the tattoo is surrounded by the marching ants.. Then you want to find modify, select (I think it's the same in PSP) and contract... Contract the edge of the selection a pixel or 2.. invert your selection and hit delete. This will sometimes get rid of that edge. If it doesn't work or makes the edge to ragged... use that undo button! Hope it works for you!

In photoshop, layers that are partially transparent have a thin matte added around them by a too helpful program. The reason pshop does this is it usually helps when compositing images together by smoothing the transition from my cut out to the layer behind. The only problem is that matte gets stretched out by the SL skin baking and white fringes. You can manipulate the mattes with the well hidden Layer->Matte... menu.

I don't know if PSP has a similar feature; Adobe also uses the word "defringe" if you are digging through help. Before I learned this, I'd blur the Alpha channel which lessens the effect, but that's a cheat.

hmmm interesting... are you creating your alpha channel by using Mask Layer (source opacity) and then saving the mask to alpha?

when you are flooding the background with black, are you doing this on a layer that you put below the layer that holds the tattoo?

yes im making the alpha doing Mask layer/ source opacity then saving to alpha channel. when i did the flood fill i did it on the Mask layer i assumed this is where the previous poster meant cuz she said right before i save it tga, do i need to add a whole new layer or something?

create your alpha channel from your mask. at this point you can delete the mask or hide it -- it's not necessary.

try filling a new raster layer with the color (in this case black) and put this behind the layer(s) that hold your clothing/tattoo/whatever.

now save it as a 24-bit uncompressed tga and see if that works

if this still doesn't work, you can try the "modify selection" and contract by 1 pixel technique, but i don't know if this will create as smooth edges

what i have described works for me in PSP 9

that worked Foresti! ty sooo much i really appreciated your help

awesome

OOPS! Forseti, thanks for clearing that up! I forgot to mention that part!

Just wanted to add my thanks for the Q/A session as I encountered the same problem with my first upload, and it was a little baffling since it wasn't apparent that PSP was being a little "over helpful." Foresti's instructions solved the issue.

This will work every time based on the color of your design. Use the antialias to your advantage instead of a disatvantage..

Shadow

ARGGH I'm having a problem again with this, i keep getting the white shadow again I'm going to post here what i do step by step and hopefully someone can pinpoint what im doing wrong, please keep in mind im very new to PSP 9.0 and if you have any suggestions that can help me i'd really appreciate it

this is what i'm doing in making a tattoo:

1. Open the image file I have that I would like to use for a tattoo (in this case it is a plain all black tribal art image)
2. I resize it or whatever needs to be done to it and select Edit/Copy
3. Open my template from SL for upperbody
4. In the template I select Edit/Paste/Paste as New Selection and place it on the template where I want it, at this point the image gets the floating dots around it and it says "Floating Selection" in the Layer Menu to my right.
5. I hide the UV layer and Overlay if i had them visible at this point.
6. Now I click Image/Delete Alpha Channel (i do this because of a previous problem i was having with transparent images someone had suggested to do this and it worked in solving my previous problem)
7. Now I click Layers/New Mask Layer/From Image - when the prompt menu comes up I choose Source Opacity and click Ok
8. Now I click Layers/Load/SaveMask/Save Mask to Alphachannel and another prompt menu appears and click OK.

*All is fine up to this point, I now try to do this as what I took the above suggestions (again i can be doing this wrong since im very new to PSP)

9. I create a new raster layer and go to flood fill it with black and nothing happens, it does not flood fill my template at all (this only seemed to work when i was just making a tattoo with just typing a word across the template in black but not when im using any images)
10. I would then go and save it as a .tga and upload in SL and it has the white shadow

I hope someone can give me a step by step on how to exactly get rid of the white shadow cuz im goin nuts here lol

Gina, you might want to try pasting your tattoo as a new layer instead of as a new selection. You want to be sure it's above anything else in your template file.

Also when you try to flood fill be sure that the tattoo outline isn't still selected... otherwise you're just flood filling the area underneath the tattoo

It's a little unclear from your post but I -think- those are the steps you're doing differently. If not, sorry for misreading, it's pretty late where I am.

when i paste it as a new layer it puts the image in the center of the template to move my image to wherever i want it do i use that magic wand thing and select the image and move it? sorry just really kind of new at psp so unsure of alot of things thanks again i will try what you just suggested as well

If your image is on a layer of its own, you don't have to use the magic wand tool to select it and move it. Just use the move tool (looks like four arrows) and click and drag. In fact, if you do select it first, before you move it, your selection will be "floated" and then you'll leave stray pixels behind when you move it.

If it's all by itself on a layer, no selection necessary.

yes, i completely agree with nikki and meilian-- my guess is your "fill" wasn't working because you still had something selected.

for example... if you randomly select a little square on an image, try drawing a line OUTSIDE of that square-- nothing will happen -- PSP will only let you work within the selected area.

if you ever find PSP not doing anything you think it should... not erasing when you are trying to erase, not drawing... etc... always check to make sure you don't have something selected...

I've found that the best approach for me uses 2 programs, (theoreticly only need one but I don't like how gimp handles layers).

First I do all my layouts in photoshop. I take the image, erase around it enough so I can see where I'm placeing it, then save it as a psd file.

Then I open the PSD in The GIMP and perform a color to alpha filter on it. This totally removes the white antialiased edges. It will also remove any color background, not just white. You just have to select the color with the dropper tool, then right click on the color in the filter window and choose foreground color.

I save the file from The GIMP as a tga, leaving both options ticked (sorry I'm at work here). It may ask you if you want to export the image because Targa cannot handle layers. This is fine..

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