Archive for tutorial

Image Crop

{ July 15, 2008 @ 6:17 pm } · { tutorial }
{ Tags: , , } · { Leave a Comment }

Pasting inside.

Ever wonder how you take a photo, or other object and cut it so it’s only visible in a box or other shape?
I’m going to do this for Illustrator, cause I always forget how to do this in Illustrator, and in Freehand you just go up to Paste Inside.

Step One
Open your file.

Step Two
Place your image or design or whatever onto the page.

Step Three
Take your shape (box, circle, etc.) and put it on top of the image.

tep Four
Select both objects (making sure the shape is above the object needing to be cropped) and go to OBJECT > CLIPPING PATH > MAKE

Step Five
Realize you wanted to crop a different area? Don’t panic. Just click on the object you cropped with your DIRECT SELECT TOOL

And move the outlined, but not entirely visible object around until it’s just right.

Step Six
Realize your box or other shape is not quite right? Use your DIRECT SELECT TOOL and ever so carefully select one of the ANCHOR POINTS so that it is filled in. I have found no easy way to do this (unlike with Freehand) other than guessing exactly where the point must be and clicking. (the mouse also changes slightly when it’s over an anchor point, but it can still be finicky) Now, you’ll probably want to SHIFT+CLICK another corner so that you can expand the object or shrink it or whatever.

Step Seven
Finish the design, cause you’re done of your cropping!

Of course, you can also make your image cropped and the proper size in Photoshop (which is highly recommended) but remember, in Illustrator, you’re not limited to boxes. Have fun!

White Background

{ July 11, 2008 @ 5:04 pm } · { tutorial }
{ Tags: , , } · { Leave a Comment }

How do you get rid of that ugly background on a picture so it’s just white?

Well this one is a toughy that I am by no way an expert at. I’ve read many different techniques to getting rid of backgrounds, and many of them are much more precise than this one, but I find this technique fairly quick and painless.

First open up your photo in PHOTOSHOP.

Next make sure the image is not the background layer. The easiest way to do this is go over to your layers and Double Click on the background layer. A new window will open to make a new layer. You can rename it or just leave it as is and click OK.

Once you’ve unlocked the layer, select the MAGNETIC LASSO TOOL from the toolbar. It’s hidden behind the LASSO TOOL. Now click somewhere on the edge of the image that you want to cut out, and follow along the outline. You do not have to click again after the initial click, it will find its own way to the outline.

Upon circling the item you’re cropping out, you have to click your mouse on the same spot where you started the trace. A tiny empty circle will show up beside your mouse icon to tell you that you linking the finish dot with the start dot.

Beneath the colour buttons on the Tool Bar, you will see two boxes with dotted circles inside them. The one that is usually active is the EDIT IN STANDARD MODE. You want to click EDIT IN QUICK MASK MODE. There should now be a redish colour over all of the background, while the rest looks the same as usual.

Now select your PAINTBRUSH tool and paint in any part of the image you want to be white that isn’t currently red. I used a hard edge sized 50 brush for this.

Now select your eraser and erase any area of red that may be cutting into the photo. Again I used a hard edge sized 50 for the erasing. Remember if you go to far either way, you can just refill or erase that area.

Now return to EDIT IN STANDARD MODE. Go up to EDIT – COPY.

OPEN a new document. This should automatically choose the appropriate size for your copied image. Now PASTE the images into the new document. Tada! You have your image with no background.

There are tricks to making the edges smoother, one of which is to change the feather radius before you COPY and PASTE. Another is to go around the edge with a SOFT ROUND BRUSH. But unless you have a lot of time or need professional quality, this is not really necessary.

Just so you know, I probably wont have any post this weekend, and this will probably be the norm. I hope I’m not dissapointing anyone. Have a good weekend!

More on blobby pictures

{ July 9, 2008 @ 11:51 am } · { tutorial }
{ Tags: } · { Leave a Comment }

A quick note on yesterday’s post. I was curious if photoshop had some short cut for the blobby picture effect, and it seems that it does. You don’t get much control over the outcome so it may not look exactly like you want it to, and it may not be exactly the same in CS3 or any of the newer versions of Photoshop, but it exists in 9. It’s called CUTOUT and you can find it under Filter – Artistic. You would probably want to cut out any background and have the image be at a high resolution before doing this, but otherwise, not a bad result.

Vector drawings

{ July 8, 2008 @ 12:00 pm } · { tutorial }
{ Tags: , , , , } · { Comments (2) }

This seems to be very popular lately. I nearly chose a template that included a vectored person in the design. Anyway, let’s get started on how you can make a photo look like it’s a graphic image.

First you start with a photo. This can be of anything you want, but for this tutorial I’ll use a woman. (By the way, this is a stock image I borrowed and I’m not sure who to credit)

Next import the image into Illustrator or Freehand or other vector program. I wont bother doing separate tutorials for both cause they are more or less the same.

Once imported, it’s best if you make a new layer so that you can lock the image in place and not accidentally move it while you’re tracing it. (New Layer – WINDOW – SHOW LAYERS – click the arrow/triangle on the upper right hand corner of the new window – NEW LAYER. Now make sure you do your tracing on the new layer or all that was useless. The little circle to the right of the layers name ((Layer 1)) shows you which layer you are on)

Photobucket

Now, here is where is starts to get a little annoying and very tricky. You need to use either the PEN tool or the PENCIL tool and start tracing out each section of the image that you want to be a different colour. To make it look right, you’ll have to overlap layers. However, this can get difficult the more layers you have, as some layers may have to be above one layer and below others. How do you make this easier? Start with the biggest part of the image, this will probably go on the bottom layer and work your way up.

To use your PEN tool to trace an image, choose a starting point and click, there will be an anchor there. Next, follow the outer line of the image and anywhere there is a bend, you will need to click and make another anchor. One thing I have come to notice that in Freehand, it is easy to go back and pull and move and adjust each anchor, but with Illustrator, this just isn’t as easy. So, to save yourself a lot of grief, each time you are making an anchor, hold down the mouse button for a second and pull, this will create little sub anchors (I’m sure they have another name, but I can’t think of it right now) that you can use to make the line rounded.

As I do each section, I make sure that it’s filled in so I can find it again, but I put the transparency down to 40% so that it doesn’t cover the image allowing me to be able to see where I may need to do more tracing.

Once I have the entire image traced, I add colour to each section I’ve done. Once I have the main colour filled in, I can add blobs of shading to make it look a bit better.

With more practice and a lot of patience, you can come up with some interesting looking graphic images.

Mini Comics

{ July 7, 2008 @ 2:53 pm } · { tutorial }
{ Tags: } · { Leave a Comment }

How to make a simple comic book

Now there are plenty of sites and books out there that tell you how to write and illustrate a comic book ready to send out to publishers. It involves a lot of work, a lot of planning, and a lot of moments where you just want to give up all together. Instead of going over those grueling steps I’ll tell you how I entertain myself and practice my basic page layouts and drawing all at the same time.

First I start with two pieces of paper. Usually I steal this out of the printer, so I’m really not talking about anything fancy here. Next I fold the paper in half, than fold it in half again.

Now I have a tiny booklet perfect for playing around with. Next I start to draw. Usually I can’t be bothered to actually plan out the pages or even story, but sometimes I do. If I have a ruler handy, than I will use it to box out my panels first so that I can work around those. When choosing where to place your boxes and what shapes to use, I sometime pick a page out of a comic book I have laying around and just steal a layout they have used.

If I really just want to be simple (which is often best for first timers or even for pros) I just make a series of similar sized boxes to fill the page.

Than I just start drawing. Easier said than done I know, but what I suggest, is just draw stick people. Even if you are serious about drawing, this size will not allow for very much detail, so keep it basic and if you like where you are headed with it, than you can take it to a bigger format. If not, than you have a cute little comic for your own enjoyment

One thing that I didn’t mention before, I don’t draw on the back of any of the paper. If I draw on one side, I don’t want to draw on the back as this can cause ripping and ghosting (when you can see the image from the back come through onto the front) when photocopying. This means that if you go with two sheets of paper and follow my fold and cut method, you will have 8 pages to draw on. Not too many that you might never finish, and not to few that you can’t do an interesting story.

Good luck and happy drawing!

How to arc type

{ July 5, 2008 @ 4:02 am } · { tutorial }
{ Tags: , , , , } · { Leave a Comment }

Yesterday I told you why you should never use arched type, now today, I’m going to show you how to do it in a couple of the more popular programs.

This is one of the easiest things that I had no idea how to do for a very long time. We’ll start with illustrator since it’s probably the most popular vector design programs right now. Oh and if you’re wondering, I am currently using Adobe Illustrator 9, so this could be slightly different for CS3, but I think that it’s similar enough that this should be able to help.

First you start off with a circle or squiggly line (mine was created using the PEN tool, from the tool bar, though you could use the PAINTBRUSH tool or PENCIL tool just as easily)

Next, under the TYPE tool(on the tool bar) there are several options you can bring up by holding the button down for a few seconds. From this menu, choose the PATH TYPE tool. Now click on the area of the circle or line you want the type to start at and start typing.

Photobucket

And there you go, arched or squiggly type made in Illustrator.

 

 

 

Now for Freehand. This program is pretty much dead now that Adobe bought it, but it’s what I learned on, so I will show it anyway.

 

 

 

Photobucket

Again, start with your circle or squiggly line or whatever you want. This time type out what you want to arc somewhere on the page, it doesn’t matter where.

Photobucket

Then SHIFT SELECT both the type and the circle and go up to the TEXT menu, select ATTACH TO PATH, and tada! You have your arched text.

Photobucket

Photobucket

Now a little tip when attaching to a squiggly line; where ever you start the line will be where you’re text will start once you attach it. So, this means if you start on the left and the line go to the right, then the text will look normal. If you start the line to the right and have it go left, the text will attach upside down and backwards. Handy if that’s what you want, a pain if it’s not.

 

 

Finally I’ll discuss Photoshop. Now I have never done this before today in this program, so I will be learning as much as you. (All of my type I do in Illustrator as I was trained to use Photoshop only for photo manipulation). Also I currently have Photoshop 6 so this is quite possibly different with newer versions.

 

 

 

Photobucket

Start with your text.

Go up to LAYER, TYPE and WARP TEXT. This should bring up some nice style options and you should be able to adjust the bend and distortion. Adjust to desired.

 

 

 

Now that you know how to arc text, remember to never use that knowledge. Or I will hunt you down. I swear! I know where you live!*

 

 

 

*Christina will not hunt down any readers of the blog and does not know where anyone lives, including herself. Seriously. She gets lost on the way home from work.