Tutorial: Don’t get tangled up with hair.
The poll said you wanted more tutorials, so here you go. Clipping hair has been the most annoying and disappointing project for many designers. You either spend way to much time getting each strand of hair, or your photo ends up looking like they have rubber hair. Well I have a very simple way to clip the most frizzy hair and have it look very natural. Below is a step by step guide to clip hair like a pro.
Step One: Set up your image
This style of clipping works best with a well contrasted image. If doing a photo shoot try and use a white background. Or if you are purchasing art find some with models against a white background. Once you have your image open it up in photoshop, and then duplicate the layer. You want to make sure you have an original layer, and a layer to extract the hair.
Step Two: Extract time
This is the fun part. Go to the main menu, choose “Filter” then “Extract”. This will open up a new window with the extract tools. Choose the Marker icon in the upper left hand corner. On the right hand side you will see the brush size option. You want to choose a size that will cover half of the image edge and half of the white space.
Step Three: Start tracing
Once you have the brush size chosen start tracing. You want to trace over the edge of the image. You will see that the brush size gets much larger on my image over the hair than it is on the skin. For the hair make sure your brush covers all of the hair, so that the white splits are covered too.
Step Four: Fill and preview
Once the image is fully traced, choose the paint bucket icon in the upper left hand side. With the paint bucket click inside the green traced image, this will mask out the desired area. Once that has been filled click on the “Preview” button on the right hand side. This will let you preview and edit the image to make sure there are no blemishes.
Step Five: Clean up
Zoom in on your image and use the “Clean Up Tool” and “Edge Touch Up Tool” on the left hand side as needed. Make sure there are no gaps or funky breaks in the image. These tools should fix any problems. Once you are done press the “OK” button on the right hand side.
Step Six: Clip the body
Your top layer will now have the extracted head and hair, but you will need to rock the body. On the original layer make a clipping path with the pen tool, and then mask out that layer. This will give you a top layer of the hair, and a lower layer of the body.
Step Seven: Add your background
Now you are free to add any background you desire. You will see that the hair looks natural and flows with whatever is behind it. This might take some practice, but will be well worth it for the final piece.
Tutorial: Repeat With Style
There is not much to this design, but by adding a simple repeat it now becomes a modern piece of art. I will show you the most simple way to do it. It is as easy as hitting one button.
Step 1: Open Illustrator
This only works for Illustrator, so all you Freehand people will have to chill. Open up a new document, and choose what shape you would like to use. For this design I used the circle.
Step 2: The Magic Button
Here is all you have to do boys and girls, when you draw your shape hold down the “~” key. If you don’t know where it is look next to your “1″ on the top number bar. That is it. It will repeat the shape at the speed you move your cursor. You can also hold down shift like I did for the CD cover above to keep the shapes in a straight line.
Step 3: Time To Experiment
This really is a fun element to play with. You can make some amazing shapes, and some cool patterns. I have included some samples that I did in about 30 seconds. Have fun!
Web type for dummies.
I am in no way a programmer. In fact, I can be a royal pain in the butt to programmers. My background is in print design, and when I started working heavily in web design I found out it is a whole new world. After about a year of frustrating my programmer he gave me this nifty site for web type, it is called CSS Type Set.
CSS Type Set allows you to pick your front, choose a size, a color, ajust your kerning, leading, and space between words, and it lets you see this all in real time. And if that is not enough it gives you the CSS for your programmer. Check it out, use it, and make a programmers day better.
Filed under Tutorials, design | Comments (2)Not Your Grandma’s Drop Shadow
Photoshop is an amazing tool! It allows us to simulate effects that once took hours to produce. It also makes us really lazy—relying on the built in filters and effects to produce overplayed visual trickery that everyone’s seen a thousand times… especially the drop shadow.
Here’s a simple techniques to make your drop shadows stand out from the static!
Step One—Prep Work
First you need to create the element you will be applying the custom drop shadow to (rectangular elements will work the best, but feel free and modify for more organic shapes). For this example I’m using a cropped photo with a white border around it. The white border is created by selecting the “Rectangle Tool” and drawing a shape layer that extends past the photo evenly on all four sides. It’s key that you use a shape layer and not pixels, as you’ll see in step three.
Step Two—Duplicate & Hide
Now that our prep work is complete we can move on to creating our killer drop shadow. Duplicate the rectangle shape layer that you created as the border to the photo, and change the fill color to black. Rename this layer “Shadow”, and make sure it is behind the border layer. Once this is completed I recommend hiding the photo & border layers, leaving only the shadow layer visible.
Step Three—Add New Anchor Point
With the “Shadow” shape layer selected switch to the “Direct Selection Tool” (the white cursor arrow—keyboard shortcut “A”). Click one of the corners of the shape layer to reveal the path’s anchor points. Now, switch the the “Pen Tool” and add a new anchor point right smack in the middle of the bottom path.
Step Four—Adjust The Curve
Now that we’ve added the new anchor point we can use the up and down arrows on the keyboard to adjust the curve of the bottom path. I moved my new point up about 25 pixels. Tip: If you hold down the shift key while using the keyboard arrows to move an element it will move it 10px per button push as opposed to just 1px.
Step Five—Move Into Position
At this point we can turn the photo and border layers back on. Once they are visible move the shadow layer down do that the curved portion begins to show below them. While you’re at it, change the layer mode to multiply, and the layer opacity to somewhere around 75%.
Step Six—Let There Be Blur
Make sure the shadow layer is selected and go to Filter » Blur » Gaussian Blur. You’ll get a warning that “the shape layer must be rasterized before proceeding…” click “OK” to continue. Adjust the blur radius to whatever looks best to you. In this case I’m using 1.7px.
Step Seven—Finishing Touches
Almost done! Here’s where you can make any last adjustments that you see fit to make. Typically, I will reduce the width of the shadow layer a bit to hide the shadow protruding from the photo sides. I’ll also take this opportunity to adjust the shadow opacity.
The Final Product
You should end up with something like this. It’s a great way to break away from everyone-can-do-it dropshadows that currently oversaturate the world of design. For some more fun try using different shaped paths. Awesome results can be had with using a oval instead of a rectangle! Go nuts!
Filed under Tutorials, design, other | Comment (0)5 Printing Rules for the Common Man
Before I worked at this firm I had the glorious job as pre-production at a print shop. I can remember it like it was yesterday, endless business cards to typeset, making blueline proofs in the early morning, and fixing every digital file that lazy designers gave me. Now I have moved up in my career, but I have never forgotten my printing brothers.
Here is a simple list of ways you can make their lives easier, and your jobs better.
- 300dpi. Remember that, no web files.
- CMYK. I know RGB is brighter on screen, but come on, make the change.
- Font, Fonts, Fonts. Don’t forget to include fonts.
- Bleeds. You need at least .125″ on all sides.
- Press PDFs. No screen pdfs folks, they look bad.
Now I know this is a very elementary list, but you would be suprised how many people don’t even do these. If you want to start getting fancy, add them in the comments.
Filed under Tutorials, other | Comments (6)Tutorial: Working with Old Paper
I have seen a lot of designs that are made to look like they are printed on old wrinkled paper. But the problem is that typically they do not match the paper. It looks like perfect clean text and art on old beat up paper. So here is a simple way to make you art match the paper.
Step One: Find your paper.
iStock is the easiest place to find a high volume of art for this. But you can always to the DIY method and scan it in yourself. Once you have the art, bring it into Photoshop.
Step Two: Add you art.
Once you have your paper as a background you can add in your artwork. Lay it out how you want the final to be.
Step Three: Get you multiply on.
Use the blending mode “multiply” to make the art look like it has been printed on the paper. Multiply takes out all the white from the image or text.
Step Four: Copy a layer.
This part is pretty easy, here it goes. Copy the paper layer, and move to the top. That’s it.
Step Five: Let’s all select.
This step is the key to making your art look real. Zoom in on your art, and find the darkest place that represent the folds or creases in the paper. Go to your top menu, click on Select, then choose Color Range. With the eye dropper tool select your darkest place on the paper. You can adjust the Fuzziness to get the desired effect.
Here is how it should look when you are done.
Step Six: Text work.
Your text will not match the art so you will need to work on that now. First you need to make sure you rasterize your type, or merge your type groups. Once you do that add a Gaussian Blur to the type to match the blur of the paper and other art. Make sure you do not overdue it though, it can look too blurry.
Step Seven: Nothing, you are done.
That’s it, you are done. One thing you might want to do is save your file.
I hope this helps you. Taking the time in your art will make all the difference. It is the details that can make something that is good become great.
Filed under Tutorials, design | Comments (3)
