Photoshop : Or how I learned to stop pulling out my hair and request second opinions

[Émile Roux]

Evening folks, not sure if this is actually the appropriate place to start this topic or if it would of been more fitted in the Water Cooler or Writer's Workshop seeing as it's inherit purpose is to get some criticism and aid in learning this bloody beast of a program. If there's any issue, let me know and I'll recreate it in the proper place, alternatively whoever stumbles upon it can feel free to move it around as they see fit.

Without further ado, I need a bit of a second opinion, or several, in learning this stuff. Barely started using this stuff for about three days so I apologize in advance for any eye sore it may cause. To start, mostly been toying with a few emblems and attempting to properly crop them out of their original pictures to manipulate into something more fitting for my use, the problem is that I believe I reached a dead-end with what I can do by simply brute-forcing my way through the use of the magnetic lasso, magic wand, and a few hours of struggling to select one pixel at a time with the marque tool. The image I cropped out is in the spoiler below, one on a transparent background and one on a black background to better highlight the faults.

Spoiler

Below is also the original picture from which I cropped the emblem.

Spoiler

Now my primary question here is, what can I do to further improve the quality of the edges on every petal? As much as I try, some of the shapes are downright murderous to get right due to their design, the triangle at the bottom being a prime example.

Spoiler

The damn thing is well designed and gorgeous as far as I'm concerned, but the magnetic lasso goes bonkers when I try to work around it and the current example above is the best I've managed to achieve through simple brute-force. I need something better to properly top it off and I'm not sure what to do with it. Just as well, if someone could explain the phenomenon of phantom pixels and the color wheel the lasso uses when selecting pixels to me, I would be forever in your debt. I'm not sure if Phantom pixels is the correct term here but by them I mean stripes of pixels near very sharp edges that, for all intents and purposes, are not actually selected on the image with the magnetic lasso. Nevertheless, deselecting the unselected space where they are approximately located seems to remove them when pasting the selection onto a new work space and it's boggling my mind something fierce.

 

[Nyxie]

Get a digital pen tablet and learn to trace edges with a pressure pen. Works wonders for smoothness/jags.

(Edit: It's worth noting that it honestly looks fine and I don't really see what the issue is. Go over the edges with a very small alpha brush or eraser if you want it to look more flush, unless I'm misinterpreting the issue? Again, whatever it is, is not very apparent.

I use GIMP and in my experience GIMP seems to automatically smooth out lassoed edges and alpha the edge pixels on its own just fine, but I'm not really sure what the differences are between the two programs.)

 

[Émile Roux]

[member="Cheshire"]

I'm afraid buying a tablet is out of the equation for me simply because I am incredibly stingy with my money. While I do enjoy the challenge of getting everything to work perfectly in this program, it is not something I'm willing to drop a fair bit of money just for a simple accessory to make my life easier, doubly so since I plan on doing this only as a hobby rather than actually do anything professional with it. As for the issue itself, to put it even more bluntly is that the shapes look worse off now that I've mostly gotten them cropped out. For example on the top corner of the elongated rectangular piece on the right there are bits of miscellaneous pixels I'm having a hard time properly removing, in the bottom left the downward slope of the piece seems jagged and uneven, and the bottom half of the bottom-center triangle I seem to have cut a bit too much yet I can't find the proper combination of pixels to remedy it.

I'm a perfectionist when it comes to stuff I enjoy so I honestly can't tell if I'm simply imagining these issues or if they actually exist, but even so any ideas or tips would be appreciated as it would make further projects easier to handle. As far as online tutorials and tip / aid sections go, most of them are . . . lackluster, to say the least.

 

[Nyxie]

[member="Émile Roux"]

Well, it could be that my monitor is like a billion pixels large (exaggerating) but I can hardly notice any outstanding imperfections in the cutout. When I zoom in, I notice a few very minor white spots along the edges in some places but nothing not to be expected of a cut out and alpha'd image.

Again, going over the edges slowly and carefully with a very small alpha brush or blend might alleviate that. You could also try manually placing nodes in greater quantities and skip magnetic altogether (which is what I used to do in PS during High School and was forced to do in GIMP each time before my tablet), as that will increase the accuracy of the crop. If all of those fail for you or are just too tedious, there's always the lazy little trick of keeping the alpha background and adding a very small/light glow to it that will end up blurring out the edges nicely if you set it just right.

As for the stinginess, decent tablets go from 60-100 USD and not only make life infinitely easier but are also really fun to draw and derp around on. Sometimes I use mine as a mouse, and I'm pretty sure I could use it to fly my ship in Star Citizen if I wanted to. XD

 

[Audren Sykes]

[member="Émile Roux"]

I tend to use the magnetic lasso for high-contrast areas and the polygonal one for others. The more anchor points you drop, the higher amount of control you have. And at that resolution, I really don't see the issue. Biggest thing I see is that the original seems to have a bit more curve to the bottom triangle, that might just be my eyes taking me for a ride. If it were ten times larger it would be noticeable, but you'd also have been given more detail to work with originally, so...

That said, Feathering with the lasso tool can be wonderful, but can also add a blur to your edges, so use it wisely.

 

[Netherworld]

[member="Émile Roux"]

What you're looking for in the case of such nice contrast is Select > Color Range.
Eyedrop the reds of the emblem and play around with the settings for a bit until you get solid results.

And for the love of the Force, use masks instead of erasing or cutting out the shape. It'll save you a world of pain when you have to correct things.

Spoiler: Examples

With Refine Edge tool.

With Color Range tool.

Cheers.

 

[Émile Roux]

[member="Cheshire"] | [member="Netherworld"] | [member="Audren Sykes"]

Y'er all bloody lifesavers and I don't know how to thank you enough for this. Cheers folks, I owe ya' one and immensely appreciate the help.

And for the love of the Force, use masks instead of erasing or cutting out the shape. It'll save you a world of pain when you have to correct things.

I wasn't aware of how or even what to properly use them for since most of the stuff I've been able to find online regarding this sticks to the very basics of cut / copy and paste unfortuanetly. I'll definitely tinker around some with them and hopefully manage to learn its kinks well enough to use properly.

 

[Netherworld]

[member="Émile Roux"]

There's a ton of tutorials on masks to be found on Youtube and such, but the basics are as simple as can be.

They translate grayscale into opacity. Black is 0%, white is 100%. You can adjust them however and whenever you want, and they make blending much, much easier.