Snap Shot: Jason Castro as Bacchus

When Jason Castro became the Vote For The Worst pick during Idol’s Top 4, owner Dave decided to temporarily rename the site Vote For The Stoned in honor of the pick.

So one night he asked me to modify the existing logo into the new name. Not only will the logo be changed but if anybody decided to go to VoteForTheStoned.com they will be redirected to the reworked site.

The response was overwhelming. People posted in the threads and in the front page story. Next thing you know everyone’s making weed jokes and chops.

As usual a classic chop is a must. Caravaggio’s masterpiece ‘Bacchus’ (c.1595) immediately came to my mind. Once I got a decent sized image online everything else just made sense. Bacchus’ leafy headress will be replaced with weed; the glass of wine being offered will be a big joint; etc.

This chop took a lot of planning and searching for images online before I started work on it. It came out amazing, I think.

Taming The Pen Tool – Part 4

THE PATH PALETTE

This tutorial explains the Path Palette and how to use it.

Open the practice document from the previous tutorials.

Open the PATH PALETTE by going to the menu WINDOWS>PATHS.

It will show us our existing unnamed path. Double click on it.

1. Type the name ‘Practice Path’.

2. Click OK.

We are not working with images yet but most of the chopping involves turning our paths into selections.

TO TURN PATHS INTO A SELECTION:

1. Press/hold CTRL(win)/CMD(mac) key
2. Click on our path in the Path Palette.

WHAT WE’VE LEARNED:

1. Renaming/Saving a Path.

2. Turning a Path into a selection.

Taming The Pen Tool – Part 3

NOTE: Open our previous document.

Select the Pen Tool (Press P).

ANATOMY OF A PATH

1. Path
2. Point

Make the white arrow appear and drag it over a path. Hit DELETE.

Drag the white arrow over a point then hit DELETE.

Drag the white arrow over all the remaining path then hit DELETE.

YOU’VE LEARNED TWO MORE THINGS:

1. How to select a path or a point.

2. How to delete parts of or the whole path.

Taming The Pen Tool – Part 2

NOTE: Open our previous document.

Select the Pen Tool (Press P).

Press/Hold CTRL (mac:CMD) key. The Pen becomes a White Arrow.

Go way up the upper left corner of the document and drag the white arrow down to enclose and select our path. We just selected not only the path but its points.

CTRL still on hold, click anywhere in the document. That deselects a path.

Press/Hold CTRL and drag the white arrow to select a point (any point).

Selected points appear dark, by the way. We can drag the selected point using the white arrow.

TWO MORE THINGS LEARNED:

1. Select and Deselect a path.

2. Select entire points or particular points on a path.

Taming The Pen Tool – Part 1

I have seen tutorials on the Photoshop Pen Tool online and a lot of people gets discouraged by it because it comes off more as a cumbersome tool. What is lacking is a good foundation to mastering the Pen Tool that isn’t 20 lessons long. So I present a short introduction to the Pen Tool and creating Paths that speeds up the learning curve.

To Start: Create a new document in Photoshop (preferably 600px by 600px) that is a nice enough area to practice on.

WHAT THE SHIFT KEY DOES TO PATHS

Select the Pen Tool (Press P).

1. Click somewhere by the left side to create a point.

2. With the SHIFT key on hold the whole time, click somewhere a little bit higher over on the right side then click another point below but slightly left of the 2nd point you created.

3. The shift key still on hold, try making a 45 degree path by clicking a bit higher than point #3.

4. Let’s close the path. Release holding the shift key. Move the pen over to the first point we created.

Notice a little O appears. Click on the point. Closed.

WE’VE LEARNED TWO THINGS:

1. What the SHIFT key does to a path.

2. How to close a path.

NOTE: Save the document for the next tutorial.

Snap Shot: Amanda Overmyer at the Whisky-A-Go-Go

Any latest news regarding Idol contestants gets all of our creative juices flowing at Vote For The Worst. So when news of Amanda’s show at the Whisky-A-Go-Go in Los Angeles became official before the American idol Finale, people either made plans to go or added shit to the Chop thread.

I checked out Amanda’s myspace and there is a banner announcing the show but I felt she really needed something to capture what she was about and the music for that night.

FILLMORE posters came to mind. The use of unexpected color combinations and wobbly texts is its signature. Pinks and Greens. Blue and Reds. These artwork though distinctly Sixties were inspired by Art Nouveau paintings like Alphonse Mucha’s.

I created one in Adobe illustrator by getting inspiration from samples online.

I posted it on both VFTW and on Amanda’s MySpace. Little did I know that she would actually use it for the commemorative shirts at the Whisky show! With permissions, of course!

Truly, a VFTW Victory!

Basic Face Transplant

Here’s a fairly quick and basic way to put somebody’s face on somebody else’s body without using many of the advance tools. We will mainly use the Lasso (L) and the Eraser (E) tools.

Pictures we will use:

Phuong.jpg

TayTay.jpg

Open both images.

1. Select the Lasso Tool (press L). Use the lasso to roughly select Phuong’s face.

2. Drag the selection to the other document. Press/hold CTRL then drag selection to taytay.jpg. (Macs: Press/hold CMD then drag selection). You will now have a new layer on our taytay.jpg.

3. Resizing and repositioning the layer. With our new layer selected, press CTRL+T. This will now allow us to free transform our layer (rotate, resize and distort).

TIP: To better position and resize the face, I would lower the opacity of the layer (about 66%) first so I can better match the new features with the original.

4. Once I’ve positioned and resized the face I select the Eraser (press E).

For the edge to blend well I use a larger brush size and set the hardness to 0%. In this example a 45px and above works well. Choosing a brush size larger than necessary gives us a smoother fade on the edges. You may choose a smaller eraser to fine tune edges.

5. Start erasing the edges away. I usually position the edge of the eraser to the edge of the image and slowly work my way in making sure the edges blends well with the original.

You’ll wind up with this… Both layers on (left) and new layer shown only (right)

Short Cuts: Zoom and Scroll

Zooming in and out of an image is crucial especially when details on a chop is required. So here are some tips that will save you those mouse trips to the tools and menus.

Open an image.
(Win:CTRL Mac:CMD)

Zoom IN: Press hold CTRL+SPACE. A magnifying glass with a + will appear. Click mouse button to zoom in. Clicking again will zoom in closer and so on.

K, now what if it zoomed you in the center of the image when you want it to zoom in the upper left?

Zoom OUT: Press hold ALT + SPACE. A magnifying glass with a – will appear. Click mouse button again as many times necessary to zoom out.

So we want to zoom in on the upper left. Press CTRL+SPACE and click/drag the mouse to an area where you want to zoom.

Scrolling can be combined with zooms. Sometimes you want to scroll up or down. Of course you can zoom out and then zoom back in to wherever you want to go next. But then that’s like 2 extra steps just to to go a few pixels down the current area youre working on.

If you just press the SPACEBAR a little hand will appear and you can drag up or down to scroll.

Let’s say we’re done. You wanna see the whole document now. Press CTRL and 0 (zero).

You can also zoom in and out using CTRL in combination with + (zoom in) or – (zoom out).

By learning these keyboard shortcuts early on means more time for the actual chopping and less time clicking on the toolbar and menus.

Cease and Desist: Stamp out Logos, Watermarks and Text

The stamp tool basically copies a portion on an image and paints it over an area you choose to assign. In this example, we will take out the infamous logo. I will clone the image that is on top of the logo to cover it.

TIP: Always create a new layer above the original image and set the Stamp Option to ‘SAMPLE ALL LAYERS’

1. Select the Stamp Tool (press S)

1a. Select a brush size (for this example a medium size [20 above] one will do) and set the Hardness to 0%
2. Hold the ALT key, crosshairs will appear.

3. Position the crosshairs on the part of the image you want to clone. I always select an area where it would be easier to begin stamping on the new area. In this case, the edge where the wall ends and the sparkly hanging things begin.

4. Once you decided on what to clone. Press the mouse button to select the area.

5. Hold the ALT key and position the crosshairs to a part over the logo that will match the area we selected (edge of the wall and sparkly thingies).

6. Release the ALT key and start painting away.

TIP: It will be better to stamp over an image in one continuous stroke as much as possible. So choose an area wide enough to clone. Keep in mind, these will be on a separate layers so you can undo and delete anything you’re not happy with.

Watch for patterns to clone over in the image that you can use to cover any unwanted element out. Sometimes you might have to repeat the above steps if the area isn’t enough to cover part of the image. If there are a lot of details in the area you’re cloning, a smaller brush size might be best.

Image Test

I will be conducting some test in the next few days just to familiarize myself to this blogging software I am using. A huge part of the entries I will be posting are images. So here’s a test…

*Image was done in Adobe Illustrator.

This is a test…

I just wish – since I’ll be doing tutorials – this software has a built in screencapture in it so I don?t have to pre save any images I will need.

 

ETA: It seems when I use my blogging software the apostrophes (‘) compiles it as ?