PS Advice: Graphics (FOR LAYER MASKS, SEE POST #7 OF THIS THREAD)

[gmccsierra]

I was wondering what was the best method to make custom graphics. I know this could be a long process, but could someone give a basic "how-to". I'm talkin about tribal designs (or separators, flames, etc.) kinda like the one chuggs put on his non-comp entry for the last contest.



I know how to take a graphic from one truck and put it on another, but how do you make your own? Because I've got some ideas but was wondering what the best tools were to use to make them.

[Chuggernaut]

To be honest with you, that tribal was just a brush that I had downloaded about a month and a half ago.

But to get more detailed about the process, whenever a color is going to be readily visible that it can contain a reflection or a glare, I make a new layer with the whole truck painted that color. I then use layer masks and the lasso tool to isolate what sections I want to be visible.

For a really intricate tribal design, it doesn't hurt to create a photoshop file for the tribal alone -- especially if you might be using it on multiple projects. If you use masks in that tribal work, you can duplicate the layer from the tribal to the photoshop of your truck and the mask will come over to the new file too. From there, if you set the selection to the layer mask, you can then mask off one of the solid colored truck layers.

Probably sounds confusing right now, but when I get a chance, I'll see if I can make a tutorial with screenshots for you. It'll be a while though.

[gmccsierra]

Originally Posted by Chuggernaut

Probably sounds confusing right now, but when I get a chance, I'll see if I can make a tutorial with screenshots for you. It'll be a while though.

Cool,thanx alot. I'm workin on gettin an updated version of photoshop so I'll be able to start using masks. Considering I can't use masks, I don't mind if it takes a while to make the tutorial. (unless others want it too) I was also wondering what type of lasso tool you use mostly. I always use the polygon lasso tool, but the freehanded one seems useful.

[Chuggernaut]

The only lasso I use is the polygon lasso.

[gmccsierra]

Well, I attempted a tribal without masks and here's wat i came up with...

[Chuggernaut]

Not bad at all If you want to lose the rough edges, you'll have to work on a bigger scale though.

[Chuggernaut]

As for that tutorial I promised, here you go.

This is basically the pic I started off with (+ or - a few minor tweaks like the grille).



Because I would eventually wind up with three colors on the truck, I made three duplicate layers.

Working up from the bottom (disregard the layer names):
Duplicate #1 -- adjusted brightness / contrast for a lighter silver
Duplicate #2 -- adjusted hue/saturation for a yellow color
Duplicate #3 -- adjusted brightness / contrast for a black



Here it is with Duplicate #1 active and the body of the truck selected:



Instead of inverting the selection and deleting what I didn't want, I pushed the button with the white circle inside a gray rectangle at the bottom of the layer toolbar. This created the mask that you see in black and white on that layer:





Repeat the process on Duplicate #2 to select and mask off the upper part of the two tone:







Now, for Duplicate #3, the black layer, I hit the mask button without selecting anything. Note that everytime you use the mask button, the mask itself becomes active instead of the layer. By default, since I had nothing selected when I hit the button, it made the mask all white, indicating that the whole layer was visible. Since the mask was active, I hit CTRL + I to invert the mask so that nothing was visible, as seen here:



Now, for the tribal, I actually had downloaded the brush from somewhere (I can't remember the site right offhand). But here you can see the brush outline.



With white as my active color and black as my background and the mask active, one click put me here:



The cool thing about masks is that they are infinitely editable without destroying the layer. Your eraser, paintbrush, lasso and all the other tools all work on the mask just as they would they would otherwise. All you have to remember is that white shows the layer and black hides the layer. This is great, especially if you decide later that you want to colormatch the bowtie in your grille or something, because the color has already been matched. All you have to do is edit the mask to expose it.

So, with the tribal set in the mask, I used the line tool to edit the mask further to get my divider that ultimately wound up here:



That's really all there is to it. If I had wanted to, since the original pic was large enough, I could have cut out my own tribal design from the layer mask. Don't forget that with the masks, you can still make full use of your blending methods and effects.

[AirRide]

STICKY STICKY STICKY!!!

[insanemunky]

Okay, so, I've given it a shot as well... using the same image that chuggs created...




I downloaded a font called 'Tribalz' and used it as the ghost tribal.

Chuggs, It would be greatly appreciated if you could find out what the font name is that you have for tribal.. and get back with me on that.. the font I have is rather... lame... if I may say... but thanks for the tutorial. I've always looked up to you over the years that I've been on this site... *bow*

[Chuggernaut]

Actually, what I used was a brush, not a font. But the font isn't a bad substitute. Like I've said before, there are many ways to do things in Photoshop and your use of a font is just another example.

I did some digging and it looks like I had bookmarked the brush site. I was just looking in the wrong folder when I wrote this tutorial. Here you go:

http://www.brushes.obsidiandawn.com/...ibal-large.php

They also have a tribal small that has some neat stuff in it too.

[insanemunky]

Sweet, thanks Chuggs.. I'm gonna take another stab at it :)

One quick question, how do I install the brushes? I'm gonna keep trying to figure it out.. If I figure it out, I'll post what I did incase others might not know as well.

[RnuovZ71]

#7 is what I really need to read.