Selection, a mini guide using PSPx. This guide has two guides.
At RSC there is some very good info for painting. In particular a guide for alpha editing. Alpha's are for transparency of windows. See here
http://forum.rscnet.org/showthread.php?t=203190First there is a Budweiser .eps file from here
http://www.brandsoftheworld.com/search/?query_id=5564146&page=1&mtype=&brand_id=988 ...the great thing about .eps is that is that the resolution can be changed. The higher the resolution, the higher the detail when making selections. PSP8 tends to change the colouring of the .eps though so it's better to open .eps files with photoshop and then save it to .psd for working in PSP8.
So open a .eps file in photoshop and increase the resolution until the image size is around 10mb. The image size changes as different numbers are used for resolution, about 50 to 60 for resolution is around 10mb.
Now save that to .psd and open with PSPx.
Select magic wand.
Now select 'Add' in the modes box. These are very useful options, Replace means you can replace a selection i.e move it anywhere or it also means it will delete the previous selection once you make a new one. And remove obviously removes what ever you want removing. Add is needed for this because you need to make multiple selections.
Tolerence is just like flood fill. Got to experiment with these things to get the desired affect but 0% is best for this job. And also the 'Inside' 'Outside' option is important because if you choose outside it will select a little of the white background which you don't want. Inside will make sure none of white is selected!!
Then you simply click the words. The 'B' is separate from the rest. The rest of word 'udweiser' is joined up so it will select all in one go.
Now simply copy [ctrl +C] and paste [ctrl +V]. It is now pasted to a new pspimage file which you can alter in any way you like i.e resize, rotate, soften ect. The grey and white background is transparent. This is the beauty of pspimage files..
Then resize [shift +S], copy [ctrl +C] and then open the .psd template and paste as a new selection [ctrl +E] to a layer. This method saves huge amounts of time and once you've mastered it you can do extremly accurate things, very quickly and in the highest possible detail. There's nothing worse than having a low resolution image, increasing it in size and then pasting it to layer. The quality then becomes very poor. If you have a high resolution .eps image - select, copy, paste and then resize it to fit part of a layer, you can be sure that that selection has the highest possible detail to fit the 2000x1000 template. It's always better to resize from large to small. Also, to keep high detail resize the newly created .psp file and make sure in 'Resample
using' that Weighted Average is selected. It gives the smoothest resize
With this selection tool you can also select areas using the standard 'Selection'. The same 'Add' 'Replace' 'Remove' apply except you select in shapes i.e rectangle, circle, ellipse ect. You can make a selection with these tools and then flood fill that area too. It's possible too to do freehand selections i.e point to point and edge seekers.
Here's another guide this time to do with making smooth patterns and shapes. It is using the same selection methods seen earlier but using flood fill to create the shape or pattern.
Once you're familiar with selection options you will be able to do free hand selections either as point to point or completely freehand or edge seekers. But here I will explain how to make a perfect curve pattern.
Pic 1 A basic black and blue pattern, also showing where I choose 'Selection Tools/Selection'.
Pic 2 In Selection Type choose Ellipse, this is very good for getting a specific type of curve. The mode here is on 'Add' but it would also work on 'Replace'.
Pic 3 The arrow shows where the Ellipse shape is started from, and there is the first selection made in dotted lines.
Pic 4 Showing mode being switched to 'Remove'
Pic 5 Shows the removed area. The Ellipse tool was used to remove that area, starting from exact same place as previous Ellipse [i.e grey arrow], means removed area is parallel to first Ellipse selection.
Pic 6 Now changed selection type to 'Rectangle' and have selected an area to be removed. Note, selection mode is on 'Remove'.
Pic 7 Shows the selection area we are now left with.
Pic 8 In 'Overview/Layer' there are now two layers. In order to edit the original pattern, the selected Layer must be Background.
Pic 9 Selected area is flood filled with yellow.
Pic 10 Press 'ctrl D' to unselect all selections and now there is a perfect curved shape.
Obviously this has been done 'by eye' as it is not perfectly parallel [the top and bottom of the curve is slightly wider than the middle]. But it is possible to be very precise using the X.Y coordinates and setting markers i.e a size 6 paintbrush square as a marker. This method is great for many things and there's an unlimited number of variations but it sure beats trying to do it freehand.
Please use this thread if you encounter any problems or would like more information.
