Tutorial for Challenge 14 - Fill It Up
I’ve posted this tutorial on our team comm, but I didn’t have the feeling it was particularly helpful as I noticed that there are many people who don’t work with masks, which is the main tool I’m using here (and my favourite tool too).
But Jenni asked if I wanted to post it here too among other tutorials for other ways to do it and I'm good with that, as I still think this is quite an easy and most of all very quick way of doing it. Just be aware that it's not the only way to do it. :)
I’m using Photoshop Elements 10, so this tutorial is for that, but I’ve been told CS5 is not all that different. Not sure about other graphics programs though, sorry, but as long as they have the layer mask and the clipping mask functions it should work similar enough (and you can google how to do the steps I'm describing here).
So, let’s do this!
I’m using Brittana, because I have the most leftover piccies for them and because Jenni already made one of them as example so I don’t have to worry about stealing anybody’s idea. :)
I start by opening a new image in Photoshop. I’ve used the specified dimensions, 800x315 and filled it in with red, just because I don’t like to work with white images, you can leave it white if you want or use a texture or whatever.
After that I open all the pictures I want to use in the word I’ll write. So the screen should look something like this now:
Now I write my word on the background image, and resize it if necessary so that it has a size I can easily work with.
Now I just drag and drop the images one by one onto the background image, use a clipping mask on them and put them where I want them.
Start by taking the first image and drag and drop it onto the background image. It’ll create a new layer.
The image is obviously too big, so I’ll resize it until it fits into one of the letters. I zoomed in on the background image a bit so you can see it better.
Now I select my new layer and press ctrl+g or go to ‘layers’ and choose ‘create clipping mask’. If you use another program, googling ‘clipping mask’ should tell you if and how you can do this.
As you can see, my new layer now fits into the letter. But there’s something there I don’t want. If you look closely at the R, there’s a little bit of the image on there too, and we obviously can’t have that.
So I’ll select an area around the image that encompasses only the B and create a layer mask.
Now I’ll do what we just did with all the other images we have. You can do that one by one, but I’ve never been very patient, so after doing this with a second image, I just dragged and dropped all images onto the background image, selected all of the new layers I have now by clicking on the first layer, pressing shift and holding it down until I am at the last layer and can click at that too (again, google how to select all layers in your program if you don’t know how to do that).
This way, I can create clipping masks for all of them simultaneously, resize them all at once and ‘store’ them somewhere on the image where they don’t bother me for now.
Now that I have all of the images at my disposal, I simply use trial and error to see which image fits best where.
Note that the layer mask is very important in this, any time when an image overlaps with another one in a bad way, you can create a layer mask by just selecting the area you want to keep and click on ‘create layer mask’ to get rid of the parts you don’t want. You could use the eraser too, but the layer mask is less permanent, you can recover what you erased, so I like that better.
Now we’re pretty much done. YAY! But, the whole thing looks a bit dull and meeh and also, the image I marked on the far right, high up on the A is far brighter than all the other images and it’s distracting.
So now we make the image pretty. Again, you could do this by adjusting all the little images one by one, but that’s not what I’m gonna do (lazy, you know ;)).
But still, there might be images that don’t fit with the tone of your other ones at all like that bright one I got there, and those you obviously have to adjust individually.
So I start by selecting that image and then adjusting the colors, brightness and saturation so that it fits the other images.
Now, when all the images look similar enough, you can get to work on all of them at once. For that, select the top layer and press shift+ctrl+alt+e (again, google the combination for creating a combined layer for other programs). This will create a new layer with all the other layers combined. So now you can work on just one layer without losing all your layers by combining them manually, so if you have to work on one of the individual layers again, you can just delete this combined layer and repeat this step after you’ve done what you wanted to do.
So now you can duplicate the combined layer, brighten the image, color it, whatever you would normally do to pretty up your work. :)
And that’s it! All done!
ETA: Since I noticed that my endresult wasn't as good as it could have been, I took advantage of what I just told you and changed the background and added a text effect. Now the text stands out more and I like it a lot better.
Thanks for reading and I hope I could be of some help. :D
((I've tagged this to the best of my abilities, this is my first post here, so if I made any mistake please holler and I'll correct it))
But Jenni asked if I wanted to post it here too among other tutorials for other ways to do it and I'm good with that, as I still think this is quite an easy and most of all very quick way of doing it. Just be aware that it's not the only way to do it. :)
I’m using Photoshop Elements 10, so this tutorial is for that, but I’ve been told CS5 is not all that different. Not sure about other graphics programs though, sorry, but as long as they have the layer mask and the clipping mask functions it should work similar enough (and you can google how to do the steps I'm describing here).
So, let’s do this!
I’m using Brittana, because I have the most leftover piccies for them and because Jenni already made one of them as example so I don’t have to worry about stealing anybody’s idea. :)
I start by opening a new image in Photoshop. I’ve used the specified dimensions, 800x315 and filled it in with red, just because I don’t like to work with white images, you can leave it white if you want or use a texture or whatever.
After that I open all the pictures I want to use in the word I’ll write. So the screen should look something like this now:
Now I write my word on the background image, and resize it if necessary so that it has a size I can easily work with.
Now I just drag and drop the images one by one onto the background image, use a clipping mask on them and put them where I want them.
Start by taking the first image and drag and drop it onto the background image. It’ll create a new layer.
The image is obviously too big, so I’ll resize it until it fits into one of the letters. I zoomed in on the background image a bit so you can see it better.
Now I select my new layer and press ctrl+g or go to ‘layers’ and choose ‘create clipping mask’. If you use another program, googling ‘clipping mask’ should tell you if and how you can do this.
As you can see, my new layer now fits into the letter. But there’s something there I don’t want. If you look closely at the R, there’s a little bit of the image on there too, and we obviously can’t have that.
So I’ll select an area around the image that encompasses only the B and create a layer mask.
Now I’ll do what we just did with all the other images we have. You can do that one by one, but I’ve never been very patient, so after doing this with a second image, I just dragged and dropped all images onto the background image, selected all of the new layers I have now by clicking on the first layer, pressing shift and holding it down until I am at the last layer and can click at that too (again, google how to select all layers in your program if you don’t know how to do that).
This way, I can create clipping masks for all of them simultaneously, resize them all at once and ‘store’ them somewhere on the image where they don’t bother me for now.
Now that I have all of the images at my disposal, I simply use trial and error to see which image fits best where.
Note that the layer mask is very important in this, any time when an image overlaps with another one in a bad way, you can create a layer mask by just selecting the area you want to keep and click on ‘create layer mask’ to get rid of the parts you don’t want. You could use the eraser too, but the layer mask is less permanent, you can recover what you erased, so I like that better.
Now we’re pretty much done. YAY! But, the whole thing looks a bit dull and meeh and also, the image I marked on the far right, high up on the A is far brighter than all the other images and it’s distracting.
So now we make the image pretty. Again, you could do this by adjusting all the little images one by one, but that’s not what I’m gonna do (lazy, you know ;)).
But still, there might be images that don’t fit with the tone of your other ones at all like that bright one I got there, and those you obviously have to adjust individually.
So I start by selecting that image and then adjusting the colors, brightness and saturation so that it fits the other images.
Now, when all the images look similar enough, you can get to work on all of them at once. For that, select the top layer and press shift+ctrl+alt+e (again, google the combination for creating a combined layer for other programs). This will create a new layer with all the other layers combined. So now you can work on just one layer without losing all your layers by combining them manually, so if you have to work on one of the individual layers again, you can just delete this combined layer and repeat this step after you’ve done what you wanted to do.
So now you can duplicate the combined layer, brighten the image, color it, whatever you would normally do to pretty up your work. :)
And that’s it! All done!
ETA: Since I noticed that my endresult wasn't as good as it could have been, I took advantage of what I just told you and changed the background and added a text effect. Now the text stands out more and I like it a lot better.
Thanks for reading and I hope I could be of some help. :D
((I've tagged this to the best of my abilities, this is my first post here, so if I made any mistake please holler and I'll correct it))