Avatar Photochop

[Fordrevhead 29]

OK so I finally used Photoshop CS4! As a simple first project I chopped out the background on my Avatar! I did a print screen of the forum and pasted it into a new file. Then I used the eydropper to steal the background color. Then I opened my avatar in a second file, zoomed in and painted by hand with various sized paint brush tips. Quite simple, I didnt use any help files or forums or anything.

 

Now on to some Mustangs!

[Legion 10]

Sweet. Plenty of tutorials on the web as well for the times you can't figure things out.

 

I've been teaching myself Cinema 4D and just started building a '69 Fastback shell. I want to make body modifications and see what they look like on a 3D model...before I actually attempt them on real metal :).

[Pakrat 1,043]

You'll be surprised just how simple PS is too use once you get the hang of it, I'm self taught too and learn new tricks all the time. Just a simple tip if you'd like and can make your avatar useable on any other site or background color. Start with your original photo, use the lasso tool to copy the entire outline of the snake and then copy it. Now open a new file to the size you want your avatar to be, select transparent background instead of white and then paste in the copy of the snake. Save it as a GIF instead of a JPG to maintain the transparancy. It will look the same exact as yours does now on this forum but will automatically have the background color of any forum you place it on since the background is transparent.

 

Also, to just simplify the method you used too, instead of painstakingly painting around the image with different brushes at zoom you can use the paint bucket to fill the entire background in one click, just use the levels window and make sure you have a level for everything like the background and the snake. The lasso tool and specifically the magic wand when possible is your best friend, essentially this works like masking tape to isolate one image from another so you don't have to worry about painting or changing the wrong thing. If you save your original files in PSD form then all your individual layers will always remain for easier future editing since once you save as a JPG or GIF the layers flatten to one image.