#sims editing tutorial

Okay! Starting off by opening my pic in Photoshop - I'm choosing this one of a sadboy

I'll simply create 3 layers

grab a brush, set it to white,

and on the first layer, I paint some tear shaped blobs in the characters eyes - I'm just doing whatever, as long as the shapes are round and bubbly in some way, it's okay.

now, I'll set the opacity of that layer to around 25%

on the layer above, I want to draw some simple, round highlights with the same white brush

and set the opacity to around 30%

Finally, on the last (top) layer, I'm grabbing that same, white brush and making it really small - like, 2px.

Shortcut to increase & decrease brush size is [ and ]

and I'm going to paint some lines around the tears. Not all the way around, just kinda, artistically around some of the edges, and leaving other edges open.

now, I'll set the opacity to around 50%

I'm happy, so I'll flatten the image and save!

and that's it!

Here are the three layers isolated, just so that you can see.

2.

3.

and combined

Hope this was helpful!

You will need

Photoshop

Internet Access

I was inspired to make this tutorial after facing a dilemma in my game. I wanted my sims to swim in Brindleton Bay, but, shock horror, the water there is not swimmable. Luckily, I know how to change the background of my screenshots to make it appear as though it is - and I'm going to bring you through the process of how!

Starting off, in game, I brought my sims to Tartosa and got my desired shot. Then, heading over to Brindleton Bay, I got some shots of the horizon that I wanted as a backdrop.

Here's a picture I took:

Okay! Let's open up Photoshop!

For reference, I have Photoshop 2024, but most if not all of the features I've used should be included in older versions too.

Here's our image! Now I'm selecting the Background layer in the layers panel and press CTRL J twice to create two duplicates.

I'll turn off the bottom two layers for now, (by clicking the eye button, for newbies) and go to the properties panel. this should be on the right hand side, above the layers panel, but if it isn't, simply go into window > properties to switch it on.

With the layer selected, I click remove background and voila! Photoshop has... er... done her best to remove the background (she sometimes gets it wrong, but at least it's a help)

You'll see that a layer mask has been created. (circled in image).

If you haven't used layer masks before, the only important thing to know is that black will erase and white will add.

So with my brush tool (shortcut B) selected and set to black, I can go around the image and erase all of the parts I don't want.

If you have a steady hand and a tablet/cintiq you can do the same job a little quicker with the lasso tool (shortcut L) by selecting any unwanted area and simply pressing delete

Once I've removed all that needs to be removed, I see that there's a little slice of her hair that needs to be added. I can change the brush colour to white and paint it in.

Done! Easy!

Okay, let's switch off this layer for now, and switch on the one beneath it.

This is the layer I want to make look like the Brindleton Bay sea. So I'll make sure to pull an image of the water up as reference for colour.

This time I'm going to create a layer mask using the polygonal lasso tool

It's easy.

Find the lasso tool in the tool panel on the left of screen (the third icon from the top - or by pressing L on your keyboard)

Left click & hold, and a menu will pop up. Select the polygonal lasso tool.

Click around the area you'd like to mask, in my case, the sea. Tip: if you hold down the shift key while clicking, you will be able to create perfectly straight lines.

Click on the layer mask button at the bottom of the layers panel (pictured)

Everything except the selected area should disappear!

A small thing here, but I don't want the reflection of the rock in the water in my picture. I'll select the layer (not mask), take the eyedropper tool (shortcut i) with the sample set to all layers, and use a soft brush (B) to paint it away.

Next I'm using adjustment layers to edit the colour of the water, to try and make the blue turquoise paradise look more like the horrible green bog water of the bay.

You'll find these next to the mask button in the layers panel.

For my picture, I'm using hue/saturation for the colour and levels for the light. you can fiddle around with any of the adjustment layers to find what works for you.

I've shown the adjustments I've made for my specific scene below, just for reference.

When I'm happy with the colours/lighting, I select all adjustment layers (shift + L click to select multiple), then right click and choose create clipping mask. This is to ensure that the adj layers don't affect any other parts of the image, just the area I want it to.

And there! My water is looking sludgy, just like I wanted.

Okay! I've decided that I'd like some texture in the water. It always annoys me that sims water looks so flat. So here's where Pinterest enters the story.

I like Pinterest because unlike Google, the majority of the images are not watermarked. You're also slightly less likely to find AI slop.

I wanted some water ripples, so I searched for something like Water Texture, found one I liked, and dragged and dropped it into my photoshop file.

From here, I transformed it (CTRL + T) by resizing & rotating the bounding box, then grabbing the corners while holding CTRL to create some kind of perspective that works for the image.

I didn't bother bringing it all the way to the horizon, because I intend to fade that out with a gradient anyway. I had to sacrifice the bottom of the image for the sake of correct perspective, but that's fine. I will crop that out later.

With the texture layer selected, set the blending mode to soft light. It blends nicely!

Now! Another layer mask! These are our friends

With the texture layer still selected, I create a layer mask.

This time, because I had nothing in the image selected first, the layer mask will appear white. That just means nothing has been masked yet.

With it selected, I find the gradient tool (shortcut G) if you press G and the paint bucket tool is activated, simply navigate to the tool panel on the left of the file, hold the paint bucket tool down and select gradient.

I'll change the colour to black, and make sure I have the foreground to transparent gradient selected.

Other settings are pictured.

I'll drag the gradient over the area I want to mask. In this case, the top of the water texture to make it appear as though it's fading away towards the horizon.

(Doubly make sure you've selected the mask, not the layer while performing this action.)

Looking good!

Time to drag the layer above your adjustment layers and create a clipping mask again.

Alright! Let's do the background.

I'll drag that image of Brindleton Bay that I took earlier into the file.

I want to place it below my sea layer, and above that original background layer (I am going to leave that untouched for insurance reasons)

Then, using the move tool (shortcut V) I'm simply going to move it to the correct place. Basically I just want the horizon lines to match up.

Tip: hold the shift key to drag an image in a straight line.

Enter to confirm.

You can see that the sky is now unfinished, but it's such an easy fix. I'll just select the sky colour with the eyedropper tool, then use the paint bucket tool & brush tool to fill in the sky.

Done!

Now - note that the sea doesn't quite blend in with the background. To fix this, I'm going to take my eyedropper tool (shortcut i) and select some of that dark green colour beneath the mountains.

I will create a layer (+ button on the base of the layer panel) and drag it above that sea texture layer I created earlier.

Then I'll create a layer mask to clip it to the sea.

I'm grabbing that gradient tool again (G) and creating a nice gradient on the horizon.

The horizon line is a little sharp, in my opinion, I want it more faded. So, using a soft brush (B) and that same green colour, I'm going to create a new layer & place it above that green gradient, this time I'm not clipping it.

Holding down the shift key, I'm going to draw a straight line right across the horizon. This helps to blend it all together a bit better.

Now! for Reflections!

Firstly, I'm going back to that sky layer with the Brindleton Bay mountains, and I'm going to duplicated by pressing CTRL + J

I'm dragging it above the sea layer, but below all of the other clipping masks. This will automatically create a clipping mask for the new layer.

Next, I'm going to edit > transform > flip vertical

With the move tool (V) I'm moving the image upwards so that the horizon lines meet and it looks like the lighthouse and mountains are reflecting in the sea.

Note: make sure auto select is off while using the move tool on a layer that lies beneath several others.

This leaves a little bit of a mess on the bottom on the canvas, which can be fixed by creating a layer mask & the gradient tool set to black, and dragging a gradient over the bottom of the image until it blends nicely into the sea.

With the mountains reflection done, I'm going to move onto the people.

I'll turn that top layer that I worked on earlier back on.

Then I'll duplicate it (CTRL + J)

Right click on the layer mask of the duplicate and select Apply Layer Mask from the dropdown. This simply bakes the layer mask into the image. Usually I try to edit non-destructively as much as possible, but in this case it's fine to destroy.

I'm going to rename this layer Reflection

With that new, reflection layer selected, I'll go to Edit > Transform > Flip Vertical, just like before.

I want to add a little water/shimmer effect to their faces, so I'm going to Filter > Distort > ZigZag

I'll just mess around with the settings here until I find something I like.

This is optional, obviously, I've done reflections in edits without doing any of this, but it just adds something a little extra to water scenes, I think.

Here's a time I didn't do that.

anyway, my sims are looking a bit crazy now, but it's fine, because I'm going to, you guessed it, add a layer mask and gradient.

But first, using the lasso tool (L) I'm going to draw around one of the characters and drag her into place. I can move the bounding box around a bit to make her shoulders meet in the right place.

Then I'll do the same for the other character.

Tip: Hold CTRL while moving, warping or resizing something for a smoother, more precise experience.

Now, I'm doing what I said I would, and I'm creating that layer mask. We know how to do it by now, right?

Make sure everything is deselected first by pressing CTRL + D

Create layer mask

Select Gradient (G) set to black

Drag gradient over bottom of reflection (If you ever need more precise gradients, you can select the round gradient at the top of the file. I needed it to blend the reflection on the right more, because the characters are not at an even height.)

In the Layer panel, change opacity to 20% (or whatever you like) and hit Enter to confirm

Using Crop (shortcut C) I'm going to crop my image, cut off that pesky strip at the bottom and just basically make the framing of the picture a little bit nicer.

And viola!

I could edit this image more, throw in bounced light, splashes etc etc but I'll leave it like this.

The only thing I will add in is a little lens flare to indicate sun, so again, I'm taking to Pinterest and searching for one that works.

Tip: make sure the background of a lens flare image is completely black. Otherwise it will be harder to use.

Below is the one I have chosen.

I'm simply changing the blending mode to screen, moving it and resizing it with the transform tool (T), and fiddling with the opacity until I'm happy.

That's it!

I made a video running through this whole process, with all of my shortcuts in the bottom right hand corner so that you can see exactly what is happening.

If there are other tutorials you'd like to see in future, please let me know!

And I'm more than happy to answer any questions!

I always start with the background. I have a simple white one saved on my pc.

I then click on the bucket icon & fill my white background with a color of choice. I used green this time.

Then I open the pic I want to edit. I select it and copy it.

And then I paste it on to my background color (I forgot to fill it with a color, that’s why on the right it’s still white)

After that I press the Quick selection button & select the outlines of my sim. Then I press the Refine Edges button.

You can then fiddle a bit with the settings, but be sure to select the output to “new layer”.

Then you should get something like this. Be sure to leave the box next to layer 1 unticked.

Then right click on the background & choose Flatten image.

When asked to discard hidden layers, click ok.

First, start off by opening a screenshot from the demo.  I take mine with fraps, which can be found here.

Next, select your magic wand tool.  Make sure you have tolerance set to around 60, Anti-Aliasing checked, and Contiguous checked as you may run into an issue with a white outline around the body when you add a background later.

Roughly select the area around the sim, this does not need to be perfect, just the blue area is fine.

Right-Click your image and select 'Select Inverse'.

Now that you have your sim selected, copy him by using the command keys ctrl + c.  Create a new layer.

Paste your sim in the new layer with the command keys ctrl + v.  There should not be a difference in the image itself as of yet.  There should, however, be a little picture of your sim with a transparent background in your new layer.

Next you'll want to hide your background layer.

Then you'll want to select the eraser tool and erase anything outside of the sim (other than the bar at the bottom and the arrow in the center of his body, you'll just be editing those out later when you crop the image.

Next, you'll want to create a new layer, and then drag it on the side in the layers tab until it is below your top layer, but above your old background layer.

Select a color you would like to use for your background and fill in your new layer with the 'Paint Bucket Tool'.

Next, you'll want to flatten your image.

Now to crop the image.  As I like to keep the proportion of my image the same as it was before, I use a special method, as you'll soon soon.  First, you need to select the entire image with either Select -> All or command keys ctrl + A.

Next, you'll need to set your selection to 'Transform Selection'.  You can achieve this by going to Select -> Transform Selection.

Now, holding down your shift key, click and drag the corner to crop the image.  Then hit the little check mark at the top when you're happy.   Finally, you can crop the image by going to Image -> Crop.

Next, you'll want to deselect the image by right-clicking and hitting 'Deselect'.

Now you'll want to run the action you're using.  I currently use forducklings' Ducklings Glow, found here (Also her sims are adorable, just saying... ♥).  Excuse the fact that I have a billion actions... v.v

Next, I like to add a small central gradient.  You'll need to create a new layer, set it to 'Soft Light', and about 80% opacity.

Next select the 'Gradient Tool' and click and drag the gradient to wherever you feel you need it (usually only about half of mine covers the sim).  I use an off-white color instead of a true white, the color code is #fff5db.  Also, when adding the gradient, be sure to have the second icon in the options bar set to white to transparent and the gradient type to a central gradient.

This step doesn't really do much, but I like to think that it brightens the skin tone up slightly.  Add another new layer, set it to 'Soft Light' and about 10% opacity.  Add a small central gradient to the face using an orange, my color code is #f7941d.  Now, you'll want to flatten your image by going to Layer -> Flatten Image.  Yours probably won't say ctrl + f beside it, I have a command key order set to flatten my image as there was not one before.  I think ctrl + f triggers a filter.  You can change this to add the command by going to Edit -> Keyboard Shortcuts.