layers tutorial for mags...
Ok now i will preemtivly say that 1) i havent touched CS3 in MONTHS.. probably verging on almost a year... truth. 2) this probably ISNT the worlds best exaple but its for educational purposes only! :-) (aka - dont hate me !!)
ok so.. here are the two images i started with:
This will be my "top" image... which means i'll be replacing the background
this will be my background image.. if i can im going to TRY to make the deer visable... otherwise i will clone it out.
First thing im going to do is select the ENTIRE top image and COPY it (ctrl + c).
then i will paste it (ctrl + v) on top of the background image.. giving me an image that looks like this:
when you expand the above image you'll notice the black arrow is pointing to the nav bar. there you will see "layer 1" which is my top image and "background" which will BECOME the true background.
next you'll go to the opacity bar and make the top image almost invisible (see below)
You can see that once you lower the opacity you can clearly tell what you need to erase and if your sizing ratio is accurate (you may find that the top image is visually TOO BIG or TOO SMALL compared to what your puting it up against)
now the fun part... you erase! you should end up with an image that looks something like this:
now you up the opacity back to normal to make sure you have all the BIG background stuff taken care of...
now you can really see what areas need to be erased further (look along the horses topline.. you'll see a vague outline of a fence that wasnt distinguishable when the opacity was set low)
at this point you can leave the image at its current opacity or you can lower it again - purely your choice.
I prefer at this point to click the little eyeball next to the "background" image in the layer bar and focus on the top image only.
here you can REALLY see what i missed (haha)
next you touch up the big missed areas with the eraser go to your brushes and select a smaller brush to get all the persnikity places
I'm going to alternate brushes as i see fit - and it will change depending on the image so just go with whatever works here ;)
I also suggest zooming WAY in on teh image and workign on tiny pieces one at a time.. makes it a little less daunting :)
another suggestion; when you get to the nitty gritty right in next to the image, do one click at a time.. prevents you from making REALLY uneditable mistakes ;)
eventually you end up with something like this:
which you then un-hide the background and you end up with this:
now because i had a blue background and it's now on a green its REALLY obvious where i DIDNT get nit-picky and go back tonight but you get the general idea.
hope that's somewhat helpful..
oh and depending on the background, on occasion it may be better to do the reverse - so put the background on top of the " top" image and erase the parts of the background AROUND the top image (so in this case, erase the green that would be over the fence and horse) and VOILA :)