Week 8

dx- The Selection Process

The Holy Grail of Photoshop. As with the Pen Tool in Illustrator, you MUST MASTER this to be a power professional user of Photoshop.

Follow each of these tutorials, save/export each as a .jpg with the name of the lesson. Note each one has the exercise files you will need to download.

Lesson 1-Simple Selection Tools

Lesson 2-How to Add or Subtract from a Selection

Lesson 3-How to Select Areas by Color

Lesson 4-How to Use the Quick Selection Tool

Lesson 5-How to Select a Subject with One Click

Lesson 6-How to Refine a Selection with Select & Mask

Lesson 7-How to Make a Layer Mask from a Selection

Lesson 8-Using the Pen Tool to Make a Selection

Additional- Select Sky & Select Subject, just follow the "Try It In The App" button!

Pro Tip: Check out the Discover panel to explore many of Photoshop's new features!

Artists of the Day

John Dismukes

John Valk

Sakke Soini

dx-Building the Cantelope Chef

Open a new document in PS 750x750ppi RGB.  Then Edit>Fill>Black or use Fill Tool(the bucket) to fill the Background Layer with black.  Then just copy and paste the the images that you will use below into your Photoshop document.  Be sure to do a clean selection on each, it may require you to add and subtract to the selection to insure this.  You may use the Select & Mask controls, or simply the add and subtract to selection options with the selection tool of your choice. Use the selection technique called for.

Head- Use Magic Wand (Tolerance set at 50) to select around melon then delete.  If “fringes” show up then Select>Modify>Expand 1 or 2 pixels then Delete.  Use Edit> Transform to re-size melon to a good enough size to fit nicely in the new document.

Eyes- Use an Elliptical Marquee to select carrot slice for eye.  Re-size Marquee using Select>Transform Selection to get it just right.  Follow the same process as with the head. Just make one eye as you will duplicate it in the next step.

Pupils- Do the same for the blueberries to create the pupil.  Once you have one eye done , then go to the blueberry layer above the carrot layer and go to the Layer options and Merge Down.  Once these have been made one layer, create another eye by using the Move Tool+Option-Alt to drag a copy. 

Nose-  Using the Path Tool, trace a path around the pear.  Then open the Paths Palette and change the path to a selection (look for the little icon at the bottom of the palette)  Don’t include the stem! Inverse selection and Delete, then re-size on the melon.

Mouth- Use the Polygonal Lasso Tool to trace around and select the watermelon then Inverse selection and Delete, resize for the mouth.

Eyebrows- Use the Freehand Lasso Tool to select around the snap beans to create eyebrows.  Make corrections with the following: SHIFT key adds and the 'OPTION' key subtracts. Hold down each key to add and subtract from the selection (or use the little icons at top).  Inverse selection and Delete, use the Edit>Transform to rotate and size.  Duplicate the layer by dragging it down to the Create New Layer then Edit>Transform>Flip Horizontal.

Chefs Hat- Use any method you wish to select the mushroom for a chefs hat.  “Adjust selection as necessary by any method.  Also once it is placed and sized on the melon, erase any portions that do not look right.

Ears- Use any method you wish to select ears from the squash or banana.

Bowtie- Path or Polygonal Lasso might be best.

On the internet find some shoes/feet to place under melon and some "hands" for a comic effect.  Once finished select and flatten all layers but the black background, find an image and place the melon person in an amusing setting.  Feel free to customize as you wish depending on setting!  

We will use this in the future so hang onto your original file.