#daekie

When you find the pictures that you want to use and you open them up onto photoshop. The first thing I do is to unlock the background. Then I open a new transparent layer and move it below the picture. 

Click on lock and to get a new layer you click on LAYER => New => Layer and make sure the color is blank,

Then move the new layer below the background. 

Layers are your friend. There are do many advantages for having multiple layers. Like, by doing this, it makes it easier to change the background color, or put font behind the character, move them around the space, etc. 

Anyway, next step is cropping. 

Use the rectangular marquee tool to highlight the area you want cropped and than click on IMAGE => Crop

So now this:

Became:

Now use the Polygon Lasso tool to go around the picture. I do it sections at a time cause I am clumsy and could mess up the picture. 

Heres an tutorial I did for someone before thats hows what I mean: x

Also here’s a tutorial on the difference on polygon lasso and magic want. x

Now once I have the picture with a transparent background, like this

I can now color the background with whatever you want. I typically chose backgrounds with colors that are already in the original picture. 

Even before this, make sure you save!!!! Save it as a psd (photoshop) file. cause if you ever want to make changes you can always edit them.

Also notice that sakhmet is darker in my edit than in the original. I colored her by using mostly hue/saturation, color balance, curves, and/or brightness/contrast. These are found underneath the layers. Note that when you color the  picture. New layers will show up and you can decide what you want by playing around. I also learned how to use the magic want tool to make a copy of the skin layer, open a new doc and color it separately so that it wont effect the clothes. But I can show you that another time, if you want. 

Anyway. Once you have your at least do all the steps (minus the background coloring if you want)….we can go to sizing. I don’t start sizing until I have all the pics I want have a transparent background. I do that because the pictures are already at different sizes to I try to look for whatever looks best. Like how this 

Has different dimensions than this

Sizing can go based on what you want. The dimensions  I go for can factor down to usually 500x310 or anything around that. 

I can change the background size by going to IMAGE => CANVAS SIZE and adjusting it to pixels and putting what I want in. To match the sizes to be in the same dimensions, look at the pick you want to change. Go on IMAGE => IMAGE SIZE and either write down or just remember the one of the pizel dimension. Than go to the picture that’s already has the dimensions you want and go to their IMAGE SIZE and put in the dimensions you wrote down in the respective box. (just that one dimensions cause it’s automatically adjust the other dimension for you.) Write down or remember the newly dimension and go back to the first image and on it’s CANVAS SIZE, put in the new dimension and click where you want the arrows to point and it extends. 

Example to just show you the last bit cause that was a lot

Now you can color in the background if you didn’t already. 

There are different ways to color btw. I use normal for my plain backgrounds, multiply for colored textures, color for editing skin type…. but before I go off on another tangent, if you want to know that type of stuff let me know. 

For text, I just look around and see which font I have fits best with the picture, the amount of space I want to take up on the picture, and what it says. 

Depending on the amount of words, I open a text box for almost each word so they can be closer together. Plus this allows me to make some words bigger to take up as much space as others, or even tilt and move them to wherever I need them to be. 

If I like it. I save it as both a psd and a jpeg cause i can always use these pictures again in a different edit.