Mellon Baller
Member Photoshop TutorialsPhotoshop Mellon Baller in the forums; Yeah, I couldn't understand all that about painting in quickly with black, or white, or whatever. I just kinda ...
Yeah, I couldn't understand all that about painting in quickly with black, or white, or whatever. I just kinda muddled through the last of it the hard way, like I always do.
I took your apple and baseball pics and assembled them as follows:
Here is the baseball photo placed on a layer above the apple. I size the baseball by reducing the layer transparency while using the transform tool to resize. This is after the transparency is restored to 100% and it is sitting over the apple and rotated where I wanted the laces to appear.
This picture shows what happens when you select the baseball layer and change the blend mode from Normal to Multiply. That is all I have done, no masking, not other work.
Here if you look at the layer mask appearing the Layer Menu for the baseball, you can see that I roughly masked the areas around the baseball to eliminate the background shading and some along the edge of the perimeter to hide differences between the object shapes. Very easy fast masking. I did mask out some laces near the stem.
Here is the last step. I duplicated the baseball layer and I changed the blend mode of this new top layer back to normal. Things look screwed up till I fill the mask with black to hide everything on this layer. Now pick a white small brush and hit some of the red laces on this layer to reveal the solid normal layer just at the laces. Go back over any areas of white baseball leather you inadvertently reveal and only do the laces you thing need some touch-up. You're done!
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"Mounting a photograph is a misdemeanor in Arkansas."
Thanx again, Tx! Reps for your patience, but for some reason, I can't get this to come out right. I placed the ball on top, but like before, when I change the layer blend mode to "multiply", it darkens the pumkin, as you see in the pic. I then duplicated the ball layer, as you said, changed the blend mode back to "normal", & had what you see in the 3rd pic. Then I painted it black, like you said, then white.
What a mess. I know I'm doing something wrong, or missing something, but I can't figure out what, for the life of me!
Two Things:
Before you duplicate the baseball layer - Take the mask of the baseball image (multiply blend mode layer) and on the layer mask, paint out the areas around the baseball that are making your image dark. Use a soft brush and vary the opacity of the brush as you move inward on the baseball to feather the mask and you will have less work to perform. Play with your brush sizes and you can use black and white to adjust the mask till the image apears to blend smoothly. Look at the mask in image 3 of my post above. It's only purpose is to remove the dark tint around the image. Play with adding and subtracting black and white using soft large brushes till you are satisfied with the look before you duplicate the layer for the next step.
On the duplicated image of the baseball (Normal Blend Mode), you are filling the mask with black, don't fill the image with black. This hides all of the image and you do not see anything, till you use a small brush to paint white on the mask to reveal the red laces only. Paint black to correct where you have revealed areas other than the red laces.
Does this help?
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"Mounting a photograph is a misdemeanor in Arkansas."
Oh well, I guess this is just a little over my head. I do have a couple of questions before I give up on it, though. For one, why does mine make the fruit so much darker when I switch the layer blend mode to "multiply"? Yours doesn't do that. Yours looks like it's practically finished already!
Secondly, when you're talking about masking this & that, you basically mean "erasing", right? The top layer of a 2 layer image is the mask for the bottom layer, right?
Finally, if in the end, I still have to go back & erase around all of the baseball laces, why not just start with the 2 layers, reduce the opacity of the baseball, erase the unwanted bits, restore the opacity, & it's done? Thanx!
It has been a long time since I worked with PS7 and I am currently on CS3. They have improved a lot of the layer blending modes but yours looks pretty similar to my version before masking.
Masking - (Don't remember if this was in PS7 or later) A mask is a non-destructive filter that you can apply to a layer that will allow you to hide portions of the image from view. The picture blow has a red arrow pointing at the Layer Mask icon at the bottom of the Layer menu. You make a layer active and pick this button and you create the small box to the right of the layer photo. You can change back and forth between the layer mask and the image by picking on either and the white box will appear around the active area you are working. Painting on the layer mask will hide or reveal the image without erasing the original image. A powerful tool to help editing and changes.
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"Mounting a photograph is a misdemeanor in Arkansas."
A mask is a non-destructive filter that you can apply to a layer that will allow you to hide portions of the image from view. The picture blow has a red arrow pointing at the Layer Mask icon at the bottom of the Layer menu. You make a layer active and pick this button and you create the small box to the right of the layer photo. You can change back and forth between the layer mask and the image by picking on either and the white box will appear around the active area you are working. Painting on the layer mask will hide or reveal the image without erasing the original image.
Okay, thanx Tx. Good explanation, that helped quite a bit. My version has the same mask icon you're showing there. I went back to the beginning of the tut, & tried it all again. It still comes out darker than yours in the beginning, but I think it's just a symptom of this older version of PS.
It's still confusing as crap, but at least I think I understand the purpose of it, anyway. I'll keep experimenting, & maybe I'll eventually get some kind of a handle on it. Thanx again for hangin' with me on this!