Photoshop

Second Life: Photo Backlighting

by

If you have a Flickr account, you know how popular photography is in Second Life. So, photo-how-to’s are popular too. Then there are the peeps with a bit of exhibitionist in their blood posting in, How does your avatar look today?

Hamlet just posted an article with a couple of video tutorials on backlighting in Second Life. See Cassie’s Clips: How To Use Backlighting & Projectors.

Hamlet is featuring videos by Cassie Middles (Flickr URL). The video shows how to use Cynefin’s Projection Lighting Kit (L$650) (Video below). Mixed in is how to use your Windlight settings and adjust the sun to get the lighting you want.

Cassie also made a video showing how to use the resulting image and improve it. Below.

Read more

Photoshop CC 2019

by

A new version of Photoshop is out. Here is a video explaining 20 of the more interesting new features. They include mention of a couple of performance improvements, which I don’t think much of… but, I will pay attention when I try the tasks next.

Some basic key operation has changed. Undo (Ctrl-Z) is one. I think the new behaviors are more logical. But, I will have to unlearn the old ways now committed to muscle memory. The changes affect a number of things. So, I’ll be bumping into them.

And there are sort of small changes that will make using PS much nicer.

Read more

Photoshop: Masking Impossible Hair?

by

Even in SL I run into this problem. The tutorials I usually see are elementary typically masking only high contrast images. This one is an exception. The basics and easy stuff is shown. But, the painful, tedious stuff is too.

Along the way there are some neat shortcuts he uses. I had to back up a couple of time for ‘How did he do that?’ things.

If you like his video, give him a thumb up on YouTube.

Photoshop Luminosity Masks – The easy way

by

We often spend considerable time selecting parts of images we want to change. Quite often we want to enhance the sky and clouds. Tress and other finely detailed objects in the image can make that a real time-consuming pain.

An example:

Complex Selections – Tedious and detailed

In early 2017 I was working on this image. I have since learned several ways to accomplish the selection task. All easier than what I was doing.

Following is a tutorial where Nemanja Sekulic is teaching the ‘standard’ way of creating luminosity masks. He explains what a luminosity mask is too. Nemanja assumes you know the PS basics. He is also showing you the classic method of making luminosity masks shown in most videos on YouTube. The second video her, PiXimperfect’s, shows an alternate method, which I prefer.

Read more

Photoshop Version: 19.1.0 20180116.r.238 2018/01/16

by

This is the newest version of Photoshop as of today. A few days ago I pointed you to the video showing the new Select Subject feature. That makes selecting some things WAY easier. That is nice but the surprising part is the apparent improvement in Decontaminate Colors.

The Select Subject tool drops you into the Select and Mask… tool, where you find Decontaminate Colors. I use the feature often when clipping out part of an image. (example) I don’t know that it has changed, but it certainly seems to work better.

New Select Subject Tool January 2018

Clipping me out of the green screen in the above image was very quick and easy. May a couple of minutes.

Notice the hair along the left side and where it overlaps the right arm. I would usually have to spend some time working on those areas. Not this time.

If you have the new Photoshop, check it out.

New Select Subject in Photoshop

by

Adobe has a new feature out that will make my life a bit easier. For none PS peeps I decided to use
PiXimperfect’s video. At times he is exasperatingly tedious. But, for the novice, that is probably a good thing.

It will be some time before I decide how useful this feature will be. I have ‘Select and Mask’ working pretty well. So, I’m not sure how much this will speed up my work.