Your Adobe Photoshop questions answered!

[slleipnir]

Do you mean the picture itself is a circle? If I get what your saying..then you need to paste it to a transparent bg and save it as a .gif..is that what you ment?

[popcornbird]

No. You'll get it if you look at my sig.

The way I cut Popcorn and Muffin's pictures as an oval, and pasted them to the signature background as an oval, without getting white corners around it to make it a square/rectangle. I know several softwares have this feature. Does PhotoShop have it too? *Cutting part of a picture as a circle*

Like in lovemyshiba's last signature that Amy made, the pictures of the pups were cut as ovals, if I remember. Maybe Amy can answer this question

[AmylovesMisty]

this thread is back!!yay..even though im a jasc person im willing to answer any other jasc peoples questions! I dont have an answer to your question..if you see a box that you can select squares,rectangles,triangles etc. if u find an oval i think that might work but ive never used adobe so dont mind me if you have no idea what im talking about

[slleipnir]

Just use the Marquee tool, click and hold it in (the marquee) and select the oval marquee..works for me

[popcornbird]

OMG! I got it! Thanks SO much!

Just 1 month ago, I didn't know ANYTHING about PhotoShop but opening a new picture on it! Now I know so much! Thanks so much everyone!

[zanzanfergie]

Ooh and it's paid off PCB...I love your new sig!

[trayi52]

Hey, I would love to see this thread keep going, there is so much that I don't know about photoshop, and some of the other programs, it would really help people like me that are new and want to learn these photo programs, like photoshop. It is completely confusing to me. Popcorn suggested that I try this thread, well I feel like a child, I don't understand things very easily, and forget too easily. I guess I need step by step insturctions, like a small child would need. I find this very interesting. I want to learn so much how to make the signatures.
Thanks to all.

Willie, the one.

[slleipnir]

Hi I've been using photoshop for a while now. I'd be more then happy to help you with anything I can. Feel free to PM me or AIM/MSN me. I love to be of help. I was thinking of making a new thread for this just the other day :x so weird you brought it up today lol :x

[dukedogsmom]

Thanks! I think my brother is getting me this for Christmas so I'll have to be sure and bookmark this thread.

[trayi52]

I wish you would start one on this subject, you could be our teacher. , I have this one signature, but I would like to have another one to include some of the other pets I have that I want to start new threads on, for instance I have a Capuchin monkey, a cockateil, some chihuahuas, a ferret, anyway I would like to include some of their pictures in it. Popcorn was sweet enough to make one for me, but I really want to learn this myself. You know how it is, sometimes its just more fun doing it yourself, and I am always wanting to learn new things, I love a challenge, and this is about the most enormous challenge I have come across, I look at the help files, but those help files tells me nothing except that I'm not smart enough to understand them. , I just get more confused I would love it if there was a program that would let you take lessons and go step by step, like in the class I took in college that taught me how to use Office 2000. I need educated on this subject, I wish this college would offer that. Yeah, I'm 50 years old and decided to start college about two years ago, but have took a break for awhile. I would appreiciate any help you can give me. Isn't that popcorn the most precious young lady? Hard to believe somebody her age has so much common sense. . Well thanks for replying to this post so fast teacher, when does class begin?

[trayi52]

By the way slleipnir, I would also like to learn how to make my avatar flash different pictures like yours does.

Willie (thats my real name, I hate it, because I am a woman with a guy name)

[slleipnir]

Hm. You probably want to learn the basics first eh? Once you get the hang of photoshop, its really easy! So no saying your 'stupid' only I'm aloud to call myself that heh.
http://unavoidable.net/adobebasic.htm I made this tutorial a while ago which absolutely no one uses..-cries- which how to use all the basic tools. So that might help you a little to get started (not sure if you knew thatmuch or not..I'm just assuming you've never used it before???) Anywho. The first step to making a sig, let say a simple version of what PCB did for you in your sig. Gather all your images, of course. Now, you can do what PCB did, and have a white background which is easy enough. Simply make a new image (whatever size you want your sig to be) and pick white under the 'contents' part of making a new image. (file - new) Or if you want a BG, like I have, simply find one you want, and have it open and ready for when you need to use it. Now its time your crop your images. The polygonal lasso is a good tool to start off with for this. Only its most likely set on lasso tool right now, so click and hold that lasso button on your tool palate till 3 options pop up. Just pick the polygonal tool *use the tutorial if you need help here, it shows the diff tools*

So now your ready to cut out your image! Go to your first image, lets say one of your birds you want in your sig. Use the lasso tool and click all around the image till your back where you started, it will then join up and make a marquee around the part you cut out (so you get only your image, not the BG) Now. Copy it (ctrl c) and go to your bg image, whether it be white or an image and hit ctrl v. This will paste your image onto your new bg.

(BTW, you can also do it like PCB did. Use the marquee tool and select a circle or square or what not around the bird or whatever you want in your sig. Do the same thing as other option (ie: ctrl c, ctrl v)

Now, with either one you desided to do, this step can/will apply to both. You probably want to smooth the edges a little. I start by using the blur tool. Just use it and go over all the edges. This will kinda blend it together with the bg a little making it cleaner looking

Now if you want, you can take it one step farther and use an option called 'outter glow' (one of my fav tools ) To do this, go to Layer (at the top) layer options - outter glow. Play around this this. The settings I usually do is something like. blend mode: normal opacity: 70-100% depending. and leave the rest unless you want the outter glow bigger or smaller. (also pick a color you want)

Thats pretty much the basics to it. Not sure if it all made sense as it does to me seeing I've only done it 50 million times. So let me know if it doesn't and I'll try to go more indepth. It takes time I guess, but you'll get use to it. Its a great program. Really hope I was of help!!

(sry so long..)

[slleipnir]

As for my avatar, I did that in Paintshop Pro's animation shop. Adobe unfortunatly doesn't have animation stuff, so you'll have to use something like animation shop or something along those lines

[Karen]

While Photoshop itself doesn't have animation options, you can create the "frames" in Photoshop, and then make them into an animation in Adobe's ImageReady, which comes with some versions of Photoshop.

[popcornbird]

Originally posted by trayi52
Isn't that popcorn the most precious young lady? Hard to believe somebody her age has so much common sense. .

Awww thanks!

I'm glad you found the thread. I told you to search for it because I was too lazy to look for it, but I would have done that for you if I wasn't in such a lazy mood. Hope it helps you as much as it helped me!