Alright, I’m starting a personal art project due to a sudden art crave. I would love to use actual paint and create a painting but that would take me to long to learn, as well as drawing… I’m sure paintings are more appreciated but maybe in the future. I’m well skilled with the mouse and keyboard and always wanted to do something with Photoshop so here I am.
I am using Adobe Photoshop CS5, I just got it yesterday and have never used it so I would be considered an absolute beginner. I understand tutorials are great and I’m well aware that the internet already has all the information I would need. My problem with tutorials is the information will not sink in for me unless I’m actually using it at that point of time. As for search engines, I’m not too good with searching for Photoshop information due to not wording/describing it correctly. I need a hands on approach if that makes sense. I will try to use Google before I ask though.
I have the main idea in my head but not a complete image and I just want to get a whole bunch of rough drafts going until it all clicks for me. Well, if we can skip ahead to the first question, let me try to describe it.
Say I copy an image from Google images and it has a background on it, say black. So I paste it into my first layer, I have the image size adjusted to what I want but I need to fill the rest of the white background with that same color black background.
While I’m thinking about it, also, how would I remove the object from the black background cleanly? I thought that was what the Lasso tool was for but I can’t figure out how to use it.
Thanks in advance, more questions will most certainly arise
You’d want to google for Photoshop Tutorials Selections. Selections are complicated. I mean, using the lasso or polygonal tool isn’t a big deal, but there are entire books written about selections, especially when it comes to things like hair or places where edges aren’t well defined.
Personally, I use the polygonal tool, zoom in and just start clicking. It’s tedious, but it get’s the job done.
You can also, just use the eraser and different sized brushes to erase the background (zoom waaay in to see what you’re doing). Also, when it comes to selections, the quickmask can be helpful, but it takes some learning.
I had really good luck with Adobe Photoshop Classroom in a Book. It was broken up into 15 or so ‘lessons’ each covering a different topic. The nice thing was that it came with a CD with a starting image for each lesson. That way instead of just telling you how to do something, and you figuring out how to apply it to your image, you got to follow along step by step, click by click. Everything from selections to adjusting curves.
If you look around on the internet for “photoshop tutorials” there are tens of thousands of tutorials for free online and almost all of them come with a starter image that you can use to play with.
is really easy. There’s a tool called the color picker. Click it, and then click the black background. Then find the fill tool, and click on all the white spots.
The problem you will run into is if the background is not uniform. I don’t know if CS5’s new content aware fill will help or not, since I haven’t yet used that version yet.
As for number two: there are many ways to do it. I usually use the Magic select tool or color select tools and highlight the background and delete it. If there’s any leftover background, I just use the eraser before the defringing. Then I invert the selection and defringe to remove the glow.
I’ve never found the masking tools that helpful for stuff like this.