Quake3World

I'm getting pretty good at editing photos for quality, but I still can't seem to get the hang of things like complex selecting and stuff for fun pics.

For instance, I've got a pic of me and my gf on St. John, all red and suntanned, and I wanted to select just us out of the pic, and paste it in a pic of Antarctica. Just having a little email fun with some friends.

What's the best way to select things to crop out like that - like people do with head swaps and such?

I've tried the lasso, magnetic lasso and magic wand, and I just can't get it right with any precision. The wand works well, except a lot of times it grabs chunks that I don't want selected, and even lowering the Tolerance doesn't seem to help.
The lasso is just frustrating as hell to me, because I will get halfway around what I'm trying to select, and I'll drag the mouse the wrong direction and it will jump off and wrap around something else I don't want. With the wand you can just remove the piece from the selection, but I don't know how to do this with the lasso.

Anyway what it comes down to is that I don't know how to use the tools very well at all.

Can anybody give me a few tips on this? I'd really appreciate it, because as it is I'm struggling here.

Try a combination of those selecting things you mentioned with quick maskp basically press Q once you've selected stuff.

With quickmask you literally paint over the bits you want to keep / discard. I can't think which way around it is, but you paint say pure white to select more or black to deselect an area. Then just press Q again to go back to the updated selection.

I use the eraser, and just carefully erase around what I want to select. The just click the magic wand in the erased area, and then inverse the selection.

Doesn't that basically just set the opacity of what you've already selected? Like painting it white makes it transparent, black makes it opaque/vice-versa?

I'm just pecking away at the pic with the magic wand, and eventually it comes down to dot-by-dot clicking, trying to get all the little jaggies to disappear so it's all selected.

It just seems like there has to be a faster, less tedious way than I'm doing it. I've been sitting here for 15 minutes just selecting all the parts of my shirt, face and arms.

The eraser man, the eraser. Just erase the part of the picture away that you dont want. You should see grey, and white blocks when you erase it away. You can quickly, and easily erase away around you body with a round brush, and just adjust the size to get into tighter areas. Then after you get the fine tuning around your body. Make the brush HUGE, and erase the rest of the picture away, magic wand in the dead area, inverse the selection, and copy paste it.

Here is a pic I edited. We took seperate pics of each other, and then I took my friend on the left out of his pic, and added him in the pic with me, and added some shadowing with the same technique I just talked about.

Before:
[lvlshot]http://img106.imageshack.us/img106/6554/picture0365xx.jpg[/lvlshot]
After:
[lvlshot]http://img106.imageshack.us/img106/2236/kenpaul9zz.jpg[/lvlshot]

your bikes? :icon28:

Yeah, mines the one of the right. I cant wait for spring/summer to come back. Im dying to go on another nice ride like it was that day.

Make a Quick Mask selection.

1) Click the "Edit in Quick Mask Mode" button on the toolbar (near the bottom).

2) Paint over what you want selected using the Brush Tool; it should appear to be a semitransparent red brush stroke. Play with the brush's diameter/softness in order to cover more area or get a faded selection (similar to feathering a selection).

3) Click the "Edit in Standard Mode" button to the left of the Quick Mask button and everything you didn't want selected will be selected, thus invert your selection. I just find it easier to cover what you WANT selected rather than everything else, then invert the selection. Saves me time.

4) CTRL-X, CTRL-V

Alternatively you can press Q to swap between Quick Mask and Standard Mode.

Hope that helps!

Cool thanks for the tips guys, looks like I've been approaching it the wrong way. :icon32:

PhoeniX wrote:Try a combination of those selecting things you mentioned with quick maskp basically press Q once you've selected stuff.

With quickmask you literally paint over the bits you want to keep / discard. I can't think which way around it is, but you paint say pure white to select more or black to deselect an area. Then just press Q again to go back to the updated selection.

I guess I just didn't understand what you were saying. I've seen some tutorials that used the quick mask, but I've never really played with it.

This is pretty tedious too, getting everything that you don't want out.

Do you guys really spend this much time doing head swaps and other PS jobs for the forums?

There are different methods but each one takes time and precision, there isn't a shortcut in photoshop.

However there was a program that I once saw that extracted images with great accuracy and with little user intervention. I forget what it was, damn.

-SKID- wrote:Here is a pic I edited.

Very nice, very hard to tell if it was photoshoped.

Yea that's a good job, I wouldn't be able to tell without opening it and blowing it up.

Okay guys, keep in mind this is my first attempt at chopping.

edit: And I know the lighting/saturation, etc. are obvious - it's supposed to be funny anyway. hehe

Those dark edges from the original are hard to get rid of.

Nice try but I can tell that's the original image.

Where is this at anyways?

-SKID- wrote:
[lvlshot]http://img106.imageshack.us/img106/6554/picture0365xx.jpg[/lvlshot]

BlueGene wrote:Nice try but I can tell that's the original image.

Where is this at anyways?

It's just a picture of Antarctica I found on Google.

And yes, they're baby orcas.

edit: This is the original:

[lvlshot]http://www.perfunction.com/rook/Woodys.jpg[/lvlshot]

Very nice work. If it wasn’t for the fact that you are wearing a t-shirt I could of never guessed it was photoshoped.

I’m not sure if this is inappropriate but your mother looks very young, how old was she when she had you?

Sorry Rook, but I couldn't resist.

Who is that guy, I've seen him in many pictures before. I know he's from that movie and he plays a jew with piano abilities.

Dear god

BlueGene wrote: Who is that guy, I've seen him in many pictures before. I know he's from that movie and he plays a jew with piano abilities.

Nosir, that's our very own modernator Drum.