I need a hug

POSTED BY: PhoenixRose
UPDATED: Tuesday, July 25, 2006 08:50
VIEWED: 4999
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PHOENIXROSE

Monday, July 24, 2006 9:32 AM

kermit/smiley lovechild!

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EMMARIGBY

Monday, July 24, 2006 9:36 AM

And to think that I was proud of my llamas on stonehenge image (plus the llama in chocolate!). But this, this is just genius! Now if you could just get the eyes to revolve it would outclass the hypnotoad!

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Hissssssssss!

PHOENIXROSE

Monday, July 24, 2006 9:37 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by citizen:

Practice makes perfect, maybe some shadowing, low alpha black on a seperate layer? Also some antialiasing to remove the digital artifacts.

Can't... move... laughing... too... hard... *gasp* *gasp* *gasp*

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6IXSTRINGJACK

Monday, July 24, 2006 9:41 AM

Thank you for all of your wonderful advice my fellow browncoats. I will get to work on this and one day you will see the sexiest mutant kermit/smiley lovechild come to life.

BTW... his name is Tim.

"A government is a body of people, usually notably ungoverned." myspace.com/6ixstringjack

CITIZEN

Monday, July 24, 2006 9:50 AM

The source images aren't great but the general idea is there.

I cut the dolphin out using the magnetic lasso, and then cleaned her up with just a small brush eraser. I created a clipping mask and manually alpha'd the water droplets (it would have probably been better to remove them though).

I brought all that in on a separate layer over the top of the background with just normal 100% blending.

I duplicated the background layer and put it above the dolphin layer with a Hard Light 100% blending. That kind of washed the Dolphin out a bit too much so I duplicated the dolphin and placed in at the very top with a soft light blending.

This is near identical but with an overlay blending on the second aurora image layer. Brings out the Dolphin better but makes the water droplets look nasty (but ideally I'd remove those anyway so meh). This one would probably also look better minus the second Dolphin layer.

With a bit more time I'd probably do some manual alpha on the second image layer, making it more prominent in places where it's brightest and less prominent where it's darkest.

More insane ramblings by the people who brought you beeeer milkshakes!
No one can see their reflection in running water. It is only in still water that we can see.

6IXSTRINGJACK

Monday, July 24, 2006 9:59 AM

Wow man... you just did that right now? What can you do with Tim?

"A government is a body of people, usually notably ungoverned." myspace.com/6ixstringjack

PHOENIXROSE

Monday, July 24, 2006 10:05 AM

Lord and Lady, citizen, you know way more about this than I do.
Could you translate these phrases into Captain dummy-talk?
"I created a clipping mask and manually alpha'd the water droplets"
"a Hard Light 100% blending."
"soft light blending"
"overlay blending" (is this transparency we're talking about?)
"manual alpha"
The rest I'm pretty sure I knew what you meant.
It is a gorgeous image! I like the first one best.

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CITIZEN

Monday, July 24, 2006 11:08 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by PhoenixRose:
"I created a clipping mask and manually alpha'd the water droplets"

With the layer selected go to Layer->Layer Mask->Reveal All.

Next to the thumbnail of the layer another thumbnail should appear, this is an 8 bit gray scale layer which is an alpha channel for the image that allows you to manually define how much transparency there is. Alpha transparency works from White (100% opaque) to black (0% opaque).

What I did was use the magic wand selector to select everything except the dolphin after the dolphin had been cut out, then selected the alpha channel thumbnail and filled the selection with black. Then I got a brush set at around 30% transparency and black and painted in the alpha channel where the water droplets were until they were transparent enough.

Finally I created a new blank layer and merged the dolphin layer with it which 'fixes' the transparency to the image.

Quote:
"a Hard Light 100% blending."
"soft light blending"
"overlay blending" (is this transparency we're talking about?)

On the layer list toolbox at the very top there are two drop down list boxes, one is labeled opacity and ussually has the value "100%" the other should have the value "normal".

You've probably used the 100% one before to vary the transparency, the other one is the blending mode. There's various different blending modes overlay, hard light and soft light are just some of them. Play

.

There's some difference between straight forward Alpha transparency and blending modes, Alpha transparency merely takes each pixel, breaks it into its Red Green and Blue values and mixes them together under the control of an alpha value the equation is something like this:
result = source + ((destination - source) * alpha) This is done for each channel (Red Green and Blue) and then the result is combined.

This link has information on what each blending mode does if you are interested:
http://www.digitalretouch.org/3edition/downloads/ch_04/ch4_image_calcu
lations.pdf

Quote:
"manual alpha"

Same as above, creating a clipping mask and playing with the transparency manually.

I should also mention that the second image layer is clipped to the dolphins transparency so that it doesn't 'bleed through' to the background layer. This is done by:
layer->create clipping mask.

This will make the layer use the alpha channel of the layer directly below it.

More insane ramblings by the people who brought you beeeer milkshakes!
No one can see their reflection in running water. It is only in still water that we can see.

PHOENIXROSE

Monday, July 24, 2006 11:20 AM

I remember a box that says "opacity" and box that says "fill". I must have totally not even noticed the mode one. Sounds like fun
I cannot wait to get home and play with this!

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PHOENIXROSE

Monday, July 24, 2006 2:51 PM

Um, the thumbnail that appears when I do a reveal all layer mask is a blank white square that doesn't seem to do anything. I don't understand.
This is exactly why I've never used layer masks. I've never seen them do anything. Even when I'm told how to use them they don't do anything.

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