I decided to make a series of short tutorials about making banners and other gfx for your PL LR threads. There are many ppl in TL, who are way better than me in Photoshop, but the point of these tutorials wont be to show you some incredibly hard stunts. The point is rather to show how to make some really basic tricks, which are really a part of the ABC of the image editing. Even if you are totally new to Photoshop you should be able to do what I described here and hopefully, I will help you improve your gfx attempts.
I use Photoshop 6.0, which is really old but what is shown here could be applied in the new version as well. I doubt there are vast differences in the interface. If you have any suggestions or questions pls share your feedback.
So lets begin !
1. Choosing the image you will work with
This part is really important. There are a couple of things you should consider. First is the quality and the size of the picture, the larger the better. Second is the frame - avoid pictures with only half of the players head or smth like that. Here is a simple example :
THIS IS WRONG!
Yeah the pose is cool, but part of bisu's head is missing, there is a watermark and his hand is blurred. Always think first how you are going to "cut" out the player. Blurred object dont work. So:
THIS IS RIGHT !
Studio pictures are always the best - the light source makes the image very friendly for editing. You can find HQ pictures in NeverGG's site or the website of the proteams.
2. Cutting the player out The best way to cut any shape or object out of an image is the Polygonal Lasso Tool. The work with it is really easy, I dont need to get into that. The main thing is to be really patient, dont rush it, you dont want to make it twice.
Once you selected what you want, Select Inverse and delete the background...
If your work with the lasso wasnt good enough you can smooth the edges with the Eraser tool. Once again be careful and dont rush it :
It should be smth like this... Dont forget about the other body parts, even if the edges are good, you still might left some pixels from the background : And thats about it!
3. Editing Brightness, Contrast, Color Saturation and Hue This is the most important part. What makes the good image good are not the filters and the effects ppl randomly throw around. Brightness, Contrast and Colors are the foundations of any image, manipulating them is key of achieving your goal. But the most important thing is really to keep the balance and not make it too over. Lets try the Brightness/ Contrast settings...
THIS IS WRONG! My tip is never to change the brightness or the contrast with more than 20 points, either in positive or in negative direction.
To "wash out" the colors use the Color Saturation... Like this: Experiment with the scale to see the results for yourself
Another option is to make the image black and white from here: Black and white images leave options for playing around with the brightness and the contrast. As I will show below.
If you want to make a stroke for the image I recommend double stroke for black and white. You do it like from here For the inner stroke pick 3 pixels, it should be a bit wider. Click on "outside" to set where the stroke should be placed. You can ofc pick whatever color you want, generally I never use 100% white, cant really explain why thou... To make the outer black stroke repeat the same operation but set the stroke to be 1 pixel wide. And thats about it! 4. Putting color on black and white images You can selectively put colors on some parts of your black and white image to create the "sincity" effect. Its really easy to pull it out. First, make a new layer above the one with the player image and set the blending option of the layer to "multiply": After that pick a simple brush with 100% hardness, select a color and start painting whatever areas you want: You can pick whatever brush size you want, if you step outside the area you wanted to color, just use the eraser tool to fix it. The end result should be smth like this: The Multiply blending option of the layers creates a really intensive and a bit darker color. If you want to change it to more "realistic" and washed out color, which wont stand out as much, change the blending option to Soft Light, like this: Once you colored the area its really easy to change the color, you dont have to use the brush again. Just go again to the Hue/Saturation settings and play around with the Hue scale: This is useful if you want to make all blue or all green theme to your banner, no need to keep colors as they are in real life
Here are variations of the Bisu picture with different contrast brightness etc settings: 5. Composing the PL banner Once you are done with editing the player image there isnt much work left to be done. First make a new image: about 400 pixels high and 590 pixels wide. It should be exactly this wide to fill up the forum layout of TL. To make the banner blend with the forum layout, you should fill it with the same color. Here are the settings for the color Another way is just to make a screen shot of the forum layout and use the color selection tool to automatically find the right color. You can use transparent background as well. Once you are done with this, just drag the picture of the player from the other image into the banner. Remember to lock the layers of the player or just merge them with each other. See the small icon just near the eye icon of the Bisu's layers? That means the layers are connected to each other and whenever you move one of them the other will move with it as well In this case Bisu's picture is too big for our banner so we have to shrink it down. To do so go to the Free Transform settings: To keep the proportions of the image hold shift while dragging the spots in the edges diagonally. Like this: Once you are satisfied with the size of your guy, move him where you want him to be, like this To make Bisu blend into to the forum layout you must remove the edge at the bottom. There are many ways to do it in this case but generally if you want to make the whole edge of the image to "disappear" its best to use gradient with the same color as the forum layout. You must set the gradient like this: To apply the gradient, drag you mouse from the bottom of the image to the center like this: If the edge is still there you can use a brush with no hardness to fix that: smth like this:
Now, to put some logos and lettering. You can take the white PL logo I'm using from here For the Shinhan Bank lettering you can use whatever font you want, I used Trajan
I thought what will be the best theme to present in this first tutorial so I decided to be the bubbles, cause they are really basic and easy to make. To make the babbles choose random size brushes with hardness 100% and put some spots on the banner, note that the layer of the dots should be below the lettering and the player image Add another color, red goes well for our theme here... Finally add some team logos and thats about it !!
I was lurking in the internets when I came across this http://jvpenguin.deviantart.com/art/GUEMCHI-FOR-BONJWA-138367069 . Realpenguin, you are so much fun, man. With this blog post, I declare my deepest respect to you and your contributions to the community.
Thank you for being the best Stars fanboy in TL, thank you for your wonderful OPs and great sense of humor. Keep it up!
Poll: Do you like the new PL OPs? (Vote): Yes (Vote): No (Vote): Dont care
First of all I'm really glad that the new concept get used in the OPs so far. Major props for Realpenguin and Atrioc who did some awesome gfx for their own threads. If you want the new OPs to be used for the entire seasons or you want to make a OP on your own, I can supply you with gfx. I dont feel like posting all the OP myself.
So if you want to make a LR thread and you need gfx, send me a PM, requesting main and the bottom banners. Players, colors, I will try to make everything you want. With that being said I have prepared gfx for Samsung vs WeMade. PM me if you need
Its 2 am, in Germany, I went to the kitchen for a snack, left my cell phone there, went back to my room, to see what that chick was talking about in skype. I was in my room for 2 minutes, no more, went back to the kitchen again and my cell wasnt there. I woke up all my floormates, called up, but my cell was turned off. So yeah, by that time I'm thinking how the fuck is that even possible, since I was running around I didnt hear a thing. Anyway I called the police, explained whats all about "it must be someone from the campus" ARE YOU FOR FUCKING RELA !?!?!? ofc its someone from the fucking campus, you cant even flush the toilet if you dont have a key from the campus. So the guy from the police wants me to tell him the IMEI of my cell phone, basically to track it down. Where is that number? "it should be under the battery" I'm freaking out, telling the police guy he is fucking moron, but he is like "what do you expect me to?" I dont know call the fucking INTERPOL, geez.
I'm usually the calmest and kind person ever to step his foot in Germany. Now there will be blood. Because that 81 lvl rogue must be from the campus, I will find him. And I will rape him
yes it is, as we all know. but if there is one, like the worst video in youtube, this one smashes the competition. I would post it in the YT thread but I think it deserves its special place. try not to pay attention on the retarded song and check out the keyboard guy - he is the worst attention whore ever
I apologize for the awful video contend but I was stunned
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