Is anyone here a photoshop whiz?

crackerjazz said:

Hi John/Astro - here is the Crayola 5-ft top view scan I promised - a long time coming - the longer I delayed, the lazier I became, sorry. Where'd the Falcon Streaks thread go, by the way? Anyway, I guess here is as good a place to put it. I hope you can do your magic to (1) to fix the missing edge (which is in the 2nd scan) (2) to fix the sensor dish tear and (3) to fix those little paper tears behind the front left maintenance pit (that look like weathering) and (4) to remove the light spots, if possible. View attachment 666079View attachment 666080

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Thanks CJ,....thats a brilliant scan

John

I had no idea starting a thread like this would reap such rewards! Seriously. you guys are both generous AND magical

Axlotl said:

Not half bad.
But I noticed on your PNG that there's an enormous amount of unused space on the left-hand side of the image,
while the engine glow is chopped on the right.
Not trying to be a jerk, just some constructive criticism for future reference.

View attachment 666120

And I totally just realized that I'm being a jerk.
Sorry. I forget how to talk to people when I'm drunk.
It's clear you spent a good deal of time cutting the X-Wing out from the background -
and you did a splendid job.
It's just that all that empty space on the left while the right is cut short is just wrong, man.
I hope you saved the cut out, and can redo this correctly - because it's really quite good.

Okay - sorry...
Just noticed this:

View attachment 666121

Also, this:

View attachment 666122

Learn to draw paths to create selections.
Don't rely on auto-masks, because they do sloppy stuff like this.
Save your selection on a channel, then use Gaussian Blur to blur the edges ever-so-slightly,
then delete the background.

I hope you don't take offense to this, and instead take it as I mean it:
As constructive criticism.
Keep learning. There's always new stuff to learn.
I'm 44 and I'm still learning.

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One thing I would say as an action photographer is that when your dealing with a fast object , if you plant it dead centre of the image you are stopping it dead and it has nowhere to go, by leaving space ahead of it whether it's a race car , horse or starship , there is somewhere for the object to go and your brain lets the ship move into that space, so while you may be technically correct regarding cutting off the emissions , it's more dynamic to leave leading space , thanks for the photoshop tip

Ah, the joys of working with raster images! It is tough to get clean edges even when working with a 'green screen' (monochromatic) background. If you set the auto mask threshold high enough to get nearly on the edges, it make take a long while to clean up the areas you want to remove. And applying a 'blur' (or 'feather') boundary also makes for the same issues. I found sometimes, especially when working with straight boundaries, a line drawing tool using the background layer tone can help clean up "jaggies" & define the edge better.

I often use a soften filter to 'blend' a transparent drop into the new background. Just finished doing my wife's class' student images where I shot them standing in front of lime green poster board background (holding toy light sabers) and inserted them into Star Wars background images (plus provided a little improvement to the saber "blades".) Took about 50 minutes to do each one especially when 'see through' voids in hair strands were involved... but they turned out well enough for 4x6 prints. Used an old version of PrintShop Pro; probably why it took so long... next time, I will make sure to prevent reflections from the background are on the subject - the green tint messed with the Magic Mask feature.

Anyway, fine job on the image edits (I certainly appreciate the work involved more now!)

Regards, Robert

Vacformedhero said:

...while you may be technically correct regarding cutting off the emissions , it's more dynamic to leave leading space , thanks for the photoshop tip

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And you're correct about leaving space to add motion. Thanks for the photography tip.
But what if I wanted to place that X-Wing on the left side of the frame?
By cutting off the engine glow where he did I can only use that image on the right side.
If the engine glow was complete I could put it anywhere I wanted. As it is now, I can't.
It was advertised as an X-Wing for all my needs, but it only fulfills one.

It may not seem like it, but I'm actually trying to help the guy. I just don't have a teacher's patience.
I get art from supposed professional "graphic artists" every day, and it's almost always wrong.
I don't give them tips on how to do it. They're "pros" - they should know how to do it.
I tell them to give me the art correctly or their job isn't getting done.

I did get what you were saying , if the glow was preserved as a complete layer element it could be positioned anywhere ,