tutorial | about… photography III

Posted on August 8, 2008 by Ana Lutetia | 9 Comments

It is extremely important that you have select the High Rez Snapshots in your SL™ and it is also important that you have your monitor calibrated. To do it, you must turn off all the light in the room where your computer is and calibrate your monitor in the dark.
You also need a good facelight and a WindLight presets that works with your photography.

With the Magic is where the hard work begins… and I am not going to guide through all the process or else I will be here all night. You select the tolerance (I am using 11), click on the backdrop and then inverse the selection.
I take my pics at 3200×2400 in a white backdrop (or black, depending on the outfit, or green) inside the Photoshpere. I made my own backdrops and upload them in Second Life®. In PhotoShop, I use the magic wand to past them to a white background and remove all the white (or black) in them – also with the magic wand. And this is the really tricky part. To see all the tiny pixels, you will have to zoom in. This is the main reason why I spend soooooo much time in PhotoShop: killing pixels.
While composing the pic, I use as backdrop a gradient or a pattern (which can be found in Google).
After flatten layers, I duplicated the layers, use Gaussian Blur and then overlay (or soft light). Another method to lighten the pics is using the exposure in the adjustment layers.
I try not to change (too much in) the original picture. I want people to see the outfits exactly how they are.

:: Magic Wand ::

This is my method. There are hundreds of other ways to do it. Feel free to help out with more tips.
It’s great to see pictures inspired in my tips but what makes a blogger unique is for everyone to find their own layout. These methods I am sharing are a result of almost two years of discovering PhotoShop. I am not an expert, I am curious.

The bloggers that made an impression on me and made me want to do better pics are Willis and Queenie. Their pics are always stunning.

This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.5 Portugal License

Category: MV-SL-Tutorials, tutorial / tips and tricks

Comments

9 Responses to “tutorial | about… photography III”

Saku Koltai
August 8th, 2008 @ 02:41

Really great tutorials Ana, comgrats !
If I may say, instead using the magic wand (that need lots of time to achieve), I personnaly use the background eraser (tools shift E, my CS3 is in French so I hope the English translation for PS command is correct) to extract the model I “snapshot” from SL. The best is to take the snapshot in SL in high resolution with a color background that will not interfer with the clothes or the models you want to have. So for a red outfit, I will choose a blue background. Then when all open in PS, I use the background eraser (with options set “sample one time” and “discontigue”; you can adjust the percentage high, also you can set a lower percentage if a color in the model is similar on the background (light blue vs dark blue). Then click the first time on your background (on the blue in the example) and while still clicking erase all the background even on the model (who is not blue, so will be not erased) and that’s all …
I think that method will save you a lot of time !
Ana Lutetia
August 8th, 2008 @ 02:52

Soooooo… I was doing the complicated way. HAHA

I am going to try your method! THANK YOU!!
Shir Dryke
August 8th, 2008 @ 10:11

Hehe I think I’ll add another touch to this:) There’s wonderfully many ways of doing anything in Photoshop and since magic wand and background eraser have been mentioned, I’ll also note you can use select color range. Again, use a background that is of a color that doesn’t appear on the picture. Then select menu->select color range. Play with the feather until you get all of that color out and pixels that must stay, stay. It greatly depends on what you’re shooting and what color the background how big you need the feather.
Another really useful thing is Liquify. That can take care of odd mesh bends and twists. Like avatars noses always seem to have weird issues that is quickest and easiest to get rid of with Liquify. You can find that tool in Filters. Since I’m trying to make this short here, just play around with it. You can do lots of good things with it:)
Thanks for doing something like this, tutorials are always great to have. There’s never enough of them, specially in SL™ where everyone wants to learn so much:)
achariya
August 8th, 2008 @ 14:08

woooo! thanks to you for the hints and also the hints in comments <3333

you rock, Ana.
Ana Lutetia
August 8th, 2008 @ 17:18

Weee! So many methods…

I never manage to do the green screen removal. I feel silly! Ryker makes it look so easy and I can’t do it. That was the reason why I started doing it with the Magic Wand even if it takes me a lot more time to remove all the pixels in the background. I must be missing a step or doing something wrong.

Never tried Liquify…
Strawberry Singh
August 9th, 2008 @ 22:19

Wonderful post and greatly needed! I love your pictures, always clear and sharp. And thank you so much for telling us about the awesome and free facelight.
Malkavyn Eldritch
August 12th, 2008 @ 15:11

If I’m going to do background removal I use the same tactics as Saku by choosing the color background. You choose a background color not used by on any piece of the model. I then use the select drop down and choose color range. You can use lights/darks and move the fuzziness slider to add/remove pixels around the surrounding color. You also can either use Selection or a preview of the image to click on the color you’d like to select. Good Luck!

Malkavyn Eldritch
Treasured Visions & MalWear
Ana Lutetia
August 12th, 2008 @ 17:21

The background removal is great but I have a problem with that. I use lots of colors in every outfit I put together. It is easier, for me, to take my pics in a white background and remove pixels with the magic wand. With the WindLight presets, if I recolor a background the color doesn’t stay uniform and instead of having a background with one single color I have a background with different shades of a color. That is a problem.

With the Magic Wand, the hardest part is always the hair and its’ prim count. For example, I love Cake’s hair but I know how tricky it is to remove all the white (or black) pixels in it and that is one of the main reason I don’t use it more. I know it’s a silly reason…

But I promise I will try to use the background eraser. Maybe instead of one/two hours of PhotoShop per post I will spend half an hour.

Again, THANK YOU for all the tips.
Ana Lutetia
December 28th, 2008 @ 20:27

Now, I am using a new tool which makes everything easier.