unperfectstorm

The Layers Panel will play a vital role in your photo editing. In these two pictures, watch how I move the green star in the layers panel, first so its in front of the heart, then behind it.

In the picture above, star is below the heart. Look it the layers panel and see that the star layer (Layer 3) is below the heart layer (Layer 2) as well. Now look at this one.

In this picture, the star is in front of the heart, and it's the same in the layers panel, the star is above the heart.

Layers play a huge role in photoshop, and it's important to understand them to fully take advantage of the program.

Here are some basic diagrams to help you learn about the Adobe Photoshop interface. Find your tools, icons etc.

As you can see, I've numbered all the tools on the main toolbar and corresponded them to what the tool it called. Hopefully, you find what you're looking for!

Please Notice that many of these buttons have arrows in the lower right hand corner. This means that there are more than one tool with in the tool itself. For example, the eraser tool. Click and hold the icon to get a list of different type of erasers. Take a look.

Note that there are three tools here. The basic Eraser tool, the Background Eraser Tool, and the Magic Eraser tool. Another icon with two tools is the Paint Bucket which is also the Gradient Tool.

In this tutorial I will be showing you how to enhance your avatar after you've taken a picture of it. I am assuming that you have basic knowledge of the Adobe Photoshop Tools and are aware of basic Adobe Photoshop terminology.

I will be using Adobe Photoshop CS3. Those of you using an earlier version should be able to follow along. I promise!

 Lets Begin. Open your picture in Adobe Photoshop. Make sure that you make the background layer a regular layer. Do not remove the background just yet. Take a look at mine. Look at the shadows that the green room has made. This is very important for later on.

Now its time to remove the background, and here's a tip for those who don't know. Go to SELECT->Color Range. Then use the dropper it provides and click on the green. Set the Fuzziness to about 100 or so and say OK, which will result in the computer selecting all the green (including those tiny spaces). The just delete the selection! Anyways continuing on.

Make a new layer and fill it with a dark color or a gray. Don't worry ou can do whatever background you want when we're done.

Now. Duplicate the avatar layer and change the Blending Mode to Overlay. At this point your avatar should look something like this. 

Looks a bit weird right? Well don't worry. From this point on we'll be working to make the picture look more normal and of course, more realistic.

Select the avatar laer set to Overlay from your layers pallete. Do Ctrl + U (or do Image->Adjustments->Hue/Saturation) and set it to these settings. Note how the settings even out the avatars skin tone and the contrast. At this point your avatar will look something like this. It also bringing out shadows which will come in handy later!

Now we are going to start using the Burn Tool. Now is the time to really look at the shadows. Use the burn tool with a soft round brush and enhance the shadows a bit. Take a look at what I did here. I went and I enhanced almost all the shadows on my avatar.

Now we're going to enhance the highlights of your avatar as well using the Dogde Tool. Instead of looking at the shadows on your avatar look at the highlights. For me, one of the main things I'm going to do is try to make the hair not look so blended in with my top. Go in with the Dodge Tool and try and go over the lighter parts of your avatar. Look at what I did here. I managed to make the hair a bit more disiguished from the top and i made some of the lines on her clothes smoother as well.

 This tutorial was only the basics of what you can do with the dodge and burn tool. Experiment and see what you come up with!

This applys to both Photoshop and GIMP. The only thing that differs are the use interfaces.

In this tutorial we will be examining the settings known as the Opacity setting. Both come in very useful and can give your picture the effect of looking like one thing is almost melting into the other.

I am going to be using this picture here (the circled part is what to pay attention to). The first thing I'll play with is the Opacity. I'm going to set it to about 75%. Take a look. Notice how how the circled avatar is now more transparent than before. Try toggling with your own picture and see what you can come up with. Remember, 100% means totally solid and 0% means you won't be able to see the layer at all.

I have had in the past, a freewebs site dedicated to IMVU tutorials. Unfortunately I no longer have the time or patience to upload my tutorials on to freewebs. Maintaining a whole website regardless of its user-friendly interface it simply isn't a good way to post my tutorials. So from now on I will be posting all my tutorials here.

All of the IMVU related post will be posted with the icon on this entry.

I will slowly upload my previous tutorials and resources here. Please understand that this will take time. Thanks for your cooperation!

Storm aka Leah

Woo! I made a Live Journal :D
I figured I might as well. Anyways, it looks pretty cool. I'll probably end up posting my IMVU & Photoshop tutorials here as well. But..I'm lazy. So we'll see about the Photoshop ones. I will definitely be posting my IMVU tutorials here though. I'll also post my own original Graphic Art projects I do in my spare time :P

Looking forward to it all!