The Magic of Masks

OK, you have this great image. But it is trapped in an impossibly busy or dark background. How do you get that image out of the background so you can merge it with another image? I took the following two images and merged them into one image by using a selection tool and masks to extract the flower from the varied green background.

   

Now, on to masks. When you understand the theory behind masks and how to manipulate them, they are very easy and straightforward. This is how to extract an image through use of the Freehand selection tool and a mask:

  1. Open the image and make sure it is 24 bit, 16 million colors.
  2. Choose the Freehand selection tool (the Lasso). Set it to Smart Edge and check the Antialias box in the Controls Palette.
  3. Click on the edge of the carnation, move a little, click again and keep moving around the edge of the carnation. The "smart edge" samples the colors and snaps your selection to the color closes to where you are clicking.

  4. When you have your whole flower selected and you have met your starting point, double click. This will join the entire selection.
  5. Choose Masks|New|Show Selection from the top menu. You will now see your carnation and the background will be a checkerboard. This means that the background is now transparent.
  6. Choose Masks again from the menu and click on View Mask and Edit. You will now see your selected flower with a reddish background. Deselect.

  7. Since there are still some dark pixels around the edge of the flower, you can clean them up now. Set your foreground color to black and set your paint brush tip to 2 pixels. Use the zoom tool to zoom in on your graphic.
  8. Click on the stray black pixels with the paint brush. This will take the black away and allow the red from the mask to show through. This is good.
  9. You can also use the eraser tool to get rid of the black pixels. Just choose the eraser tool, pick your settings and apply the tool to the black pixels.
  10. When your mask is cleaned up the way you like it, click on the flower with the Magic Wand. This will select the flower. Contract your selection by 1 (Selections|Modify|Contract) then feather your selection by 1 (Selections|Modify|Feather). This smoothes the edges so they will transition well into the background. Turn off Masks View and Masks Edit. Copy your selection.

  11. Open your background (in this case the bush). Choose "Paste As a New Layer". Name this new layer "Flower" (right click on the layer selection and choose "Properties). You now have a two layered graphic. The bottom layer is the bush and the second layer is the flower with the background around the flower transparent so the bush shows through.
  12. You can resize the flower by having the flower layer active, choose Image|Resize, click off "Resize All Layers", Choose "Resize Type", Smart Resize, then enter the new size either in pixels or percentages (I prefer percentages).
  13. If you want, click on the Flower layer and play with the opacity slider. Lowering the opacity will allow the bush to show through the flower.
  14. When you are done with your graphic choose Layers|Merge|Merge All. Save your graphic as a jpg (File|Save A Copy As).



More Masks...

Sometimes you can use a mask to retrieve part of an image. The following image of my husband's favorite woman (next to me...of course), Ms. Betty Boop, was hopelessly lost in the black background. There was no way to get Betty out of the black background intact using the Magic Wand. As you can see in the graphic on the right below, a Magic Wand selection of Ms. Boop left out a lot of her head! But, was there really a need to mask her whole "self" out of the image...a rather tedious endeavor?

     

Instead of masking her whole body, I just made a mask of her head (as outlined in the "Magic of Masks" instructions above) and saved the mask (Masks|Save, I named it Boop.msk). The graphic on the left below shows the mask, the graphic on the right shows the mask selected.

     


I then made a selection of the background in the image using the Magic Wand (my tolerance was 50 with a feather of 2), inverted the selection, made a copy of the selection, and pasted it into a white background (left image below). I deselected everything and loaded my saved mask. I then chose Masks|Edit, selected the mask with the Magic Wand, chose Masks|Edit again (this removed the mask and left the selection..as in the right graphic above), and then made a copy of the selection. I switched to the incomplete graphic of Ms. Boop on the white background and pasted her head "As a New Selection" and moved her head into its proper position. Viola! Ms. Boop and her head are reunited into a complete graphic!

     



Combining Images

Combining images is a cinch with PSP 5 and layers. You can open one image, then superimpose another image on top by adding it as a new layer. Or, you can just build an image a layer at a time, combining elements. The ability to manipulate each new added image in its own layer is the power behind PSP 5!

Combining Two Images

Here's an image of a wizard staring off into space. Wouldn't it be nice to give him something to look at? Lets have him staring off at earth (this must mean he is on the moon!)

  1. Open the two images.
  2. Select the earth with the marquee tool set to circle.
  3. Copy the selection and paste on the wizard picture "As a New Layer".
  4. The first picture with the earth is just a copy and paste.
  5. For the second picture, I feathered the earth to 3 before copying, pasted onto the wizard picture, then lowered the opacity with the Opacity Slider on the layer. I think this made the merging of the two graphics more realistic.

Combining Multiple Images

Recently, while cruising a CD of pictures, I came across all these great fantasy images. I thought these would be a good example of how to combine different images into a collage. The following are thumbnails of the images used in the final collage:

     
     

The following method works well with images that have a solid color background. To create a collage:

  1. Open a new image somewhat larger than you want your final image to be (you can always resample it to make it the final size), set to 16 million colors.
  2. Open your first image. To crop the image from the background, do as follows:
    • Select the entire image (Shift A or Select|All)
    • Right click on the background color of the image (this sets the background color in PSP).
    • Go to Selections|Modify|Transparent Color and set the Transparent Color to Background Color and the tolerance to somewhere between 20-50 (you might have to experiment here)
    • Click OK.
    • You should now have everything selected except for the background color (it has been made transparent).
  3. Make a copy of your selection (Ctrl C or Edit|Copy).
  4. Move to your new graphic and paste the copied image "As a New Layer".
  5. Deselect the image. If there are still parts of the background color clinging to your pasted image, zoom in on the image, choose the Eraser tool and use it to "erase" the unwanted color pixels.
  6. If the image looks good, but is too big, choose Image|Resize. Uncheck "Resize all Layers" and choose the size you want your graphic to be. I find that using the percentage ratio works best.
  7. You might want to flip or rotate an image. I used Image|Mirror on Merlin since he was going in the wrong direction. Again, remember to uncheck "Rotate all Layers".
  8. You can move your graphic to a new position by choosing the mover tool, click on the graphic and drag it to where you want it. Later, when you have all the layers, you can come back and move your graphic again just by clicking on it with the mover tool and dragging it to a new position.
You can also use the Magic Wand to select the background (always have a feather of at least 1), invert, copy and then paste. I prefer the above method, though, because if you have background color inside your image, you will have to select it manually (hold down the shift key and click with the Magic Wand to add to a selection). When you use the transparency method, all the colors matching the background color set will be made transparent and you won't have to do the adding to the selection.



Cleaning Up a Selection

Selecting an image on a light background and pasting it on a dark background can create a problem. I selected Neptune from a white background (using the Selections|Select All - Selections|Modify|Transparent Color method outlined above) and pasted him into a dark background and you can see the problem resulting below (the second picture). I solved this problem by feathering the selection (Selections|Modify|Feather...I used a feather of 5), invert the selection (Selections|Invert) and hit the delete key (make sure your background color is still the same as your background currently). This takes off the "jaggies". Final version of Neptune on black is on the right.

    



Watermark an Image

A major problem on the internet today is people "stealing" other people's images and using them on a web page without permission. It is impossible to stop someone from downloading images from your web pages. If you are an artist, you will probably want to protect your images by watermarking them. I design web graphics and post preview graphics to a web site for clients to view. After I had someone download all my graphics then refuse to pay me, I made it a policy to watermark all posted graphics until I received payment from the customer. With PSP 5, creating a watermark for an image is very easy. My favorite method of watermarking an image is to use my "Cutout" technique.

The graphic on the left below had floating unchecked on the text. The graphic on the right had floating checked with the text color a blue I picked out of the background.

  

  1. Open the graphic you want to Watermark.
  2. Add a new layer.
  3. On the new layer, place your text with floating unchecked or checked.
  4. If you use a colored text, drop it on a layer of its own, then add a new layer for the cutout effect.
  5. Apply the Cutout filter Shadow Color: Black; Opacity 100%, Blur 4-5, Offset 2,2.
  6. Add another new layer and apply a drop shadow, Shadow Color: White, Opacity 100%, Blur 1, Offset 1,1.
  7. Play with the opacity settings on the text layer (if using) and the cutout and shadow layers until you get the effect you want.
  8. Turn off the graphic layer (leaving only the cutout and shadow layers selected).
  9. Choose Layers|Merge - Merge Visible.
  10. Turn your graphic layer back on.
  11. Click on the Watermark layer and choose Image|Rotate, uncheck "All Layers" and rotate the image 25 degrees to the left.
  12. Save the graphic as a psp file to keep the layers.
  13. Save as a jpg.

Old Photo

HalfDome

You can find plugins to create an "old photo" effect. But, it is very easy to do without a plugin and you have more control over the finished product. I took a color photo of Half Dome and made it into an "old photo" using the following technique:
  1. Open the photo you want to apply effect to. Make a copy (Window|Duplicate). Work on the duplicate so if you need to start over, you can just duplicate the original again.
  2. Greyscale the image then return to 16 million color mode.
  3. Adjust the brightness and contrast if necessary (I applied 20% brightness to my photo, since it was pretty dark).
  4. Add a new layer.
  5. Flood fill this new layer with the "tint" color you want to use.
  6. Adjust the opacity slider until you can see the photo through the fill layer and it looks good to you.
  7. If you want to "wash out" your photo further, right click on the photo layer button and choose "Promote to Layer". Add a new layer and drag under the photo layer. Flood fill the bottom layer with white. Then you can adjust the opacity slider on the photo to wash it out further.
Experiment with different shades of brown until you get the color you want. Note: If you want to try another color just turn off the fill layer, add another layer, flood fill and repeat the above steps.



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