Photoshop help please

[Keith Nilsen]

John,

Your best option would be to do a search online for that particular scenario (masking is what you are trying to do) and find a nice and easy-to-follow tutorial to follow. There are a huge amount of free sites to pick from, and it would be a lot easier than trying to explain on these boards!!

I would love to try and explain but as I said it would be easier to follow an online tutorial. If you have a look and decide you can’t do it then let me know and perhaps I can help.

Best of luck…

[Keith Nilsen]

Is that the same John from the HWLC College sign course with Bruce Barber??? It looks like it may be….

[Bill Dewison]

As KN has said, it is a very difficult one to explain. There is software to make the job easier, but few are absolutely perfect. The method I use is by drawing round the outline of the bit I want to keep with the lasso tool, then reversing the selected area and cutting it away. See what I mean, it sounds aweful when you put it in text form 😮

Andrew at VectorWise would probably be your best bet as there is little he can’t do with pixels that can be done (well, apart from them making coffee, but thats a whole other ball game 😉 ) Seriously though, it may cost a few quid to do it, but the hassle and time saved is well worth it for having that image ready to use on your desk tomorrow 😀

Hope this helps a little, but if I can find the online photoshop tutorials for masking I’ll post the link here, it may help but its a tricky one to do even with experience.

Cheers, Dewi

[Andy Gorman]

I suppose the easiest method would be to use the eraser tool to remove the background. Use a big brush at first and then a smaller one zoomed in to get any small detail. Then add a new layer behind the original and apply your glow effect to this layer. A simple way to achieve this would be to use a large, soft edged brush with low opacity and just draw where you want the glow.

Not the method I would use, but probably the easiest to explain quickly, and should give the desired result.

[Keith Nilsen]

I agree Big G… not the best but certainly the easiest to explain!

[John Harding]

thanks everyone

and a big high to Keith – yes its me, hope your well nice to see you on the boards!

John

[Debbie Astle]

Hi John,

Using Photoshop I would create a clipping path around the subject.

Here is a tutorial on how to do that, I’m sure it explains better than I could:

http://www.eyewire.com/tips/photoshop/c … tep01.html

I would then select the path and cut and paste the cropped image into a new window with a transparent background. Then go to the styles menu and add an outer glow.

It may take a little longer than using the lasso tool, but sometimes doing it that way can take out bits you don’t want it to…I think that makes sense!

I am using a newer version of Photoshop but think these features are available in 5.5 providing it’s not the lite version.

Hope this helps,

Debbie

[John Harding]

cheers Debbee