HELP PLEASE! (any advice appreciated)
Non-Story
BAH! Bah, bah - a thousand times BAH. So, I completely fail at photoshop. COMPLETELY. No lie. I've spent like the last two hours (le sigh) working on a story banner thing for The Finish, but I CANNOT get one. Blahr. X( (Exasperated Hannah is EXASPERATED.) Oh, I've made some really sucky ones, that's for sure, but nothing really ( Read more... )
BAH! Bah, bah - a thousand times BAH. So, I completely fail at photoshop. COMPLETELY. No lie. I've spent like the last two hours (le sigh) working on a story banner thing for The Finish, but I CANNOT get one. Blahr. X( (Exasperated Hannah is EXASPERATED.) Oh, I've made some really sucky ones, that's for sure, but nothing really ( Read more... )
Blending text (and layers in general)
Write you text on a regular text layer and then create a normal new layer beneath it. Then use the "merge down" command (or just press Crtl+E) to merge the text and new layer to create a regular layer for the text (keep in mind this turns the text into a regular image so you can not edit it with the text tool any more). Now, in the top left corner of your layers palette is a scroll-down list that says "blending modes" - this blends your current layer with the ones beneath it without actually merging them. It's kind of complicated to explain how exactly each of these work (you can find it in help anyway), but even if you know how they work, you still have experiment to get good results. So try each mode and combine it by setting the "Opacity" slider (avoid the one that says "fill" - it's trickier to use). Some blending modes depend on the lightness of the layer and some on the hue or saturation, so you can experiment with the blending by changing these: just call up the Hue/Saturation dialogue box (Ctrl+U) and play with the sliders.
Merging layers without the "sharp cut"
The easiest way to do that is to make the top layer slightly bigger than it should be and use a big soft eraser brush with the brush opacity set to 20-30%. It will create a gradient-to-transparent look so that the layers seem like they're softly changing from one to another. You can also use selections with the Select->Feather... option (the feather option softens the edge pixels of a selection) and then just delete the unwanted region. You can easily experiment with feathering (to see how it works) by creating a black layer atop of a white background, and then making a selection, using the Feather option and pressing Delete.
As for scalling-down of pictures, there's not much you can do about the loss of quality (except maybe uing the "Unsharp Mask" filter). You can try opening the Image size... option and entering new pixel size with the Constrain Proportion box checked and Resample set to Bicubic. But I recommend not scaling down text, but rather using a smaller font when the picture has been scaled down - this will make the text more legible.
Again, sorry if I told you things you already know ^^;
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And of course I'll try your other suggestions, as well. Hopefully that'll help; I really know next to nothing about the program. I use it primarily to clean up my own photos, recolor Sim 2 clothing, and make things rainbow colored (oh gradient, how I adore thee). I don't think I'm quite a hopeless case, but maybe close. Heh.
Thank you so very much for taking the time to explain all this to me! You gave specific instructions and I think it'll be just absurdly easy-to-follow. I greatly, greatly appreciate it - I'm such a novice when it comes to graphics; best for me to stick to the words, I think!
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Yeah, PS is a pretty overwhelming program (I own the "PhotoShop bible" - it's about 1500 pages :P), but it's made for professional use so, like many of those, it's not that user friendly :P. I don't think you can be a hopeless case at it, it just takes (plenty) time to "learn the ropes". Well, have fun with the wonderful world of banner-making ;)
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