Requirements:
- Photoshop CS4 or Photoshop CS5
- Color Document Scanner or Camera
- Blank Sheet of Paper
- Pen or Pencil (I prefer a thick highlighter)
edit: misplaced, meant to place in the graphics tutorial forum; I would appreciate it if a moderator would move it
This is in lieu of the standard introductory post, as I’ve always preferred writing something somewhat more substantial the first time around.
To be brief, this briefly describes a process by which you may add a quasi-realistic character or characters to a person or piece of paper that a person is holding. I am aware of https://hackforums.net/showthread.php?tid=1126300, this simply represents my own, unique method. As a warning, this only briefly the how and why for the process… using the Photoshop tools themselves, while only basic ones are used here, must be learned elsewhere. Beneath is the rather simple base image
http://i52.[censored].com/34qohp2.jpg
To start, take a blank sheet and write whatever message is desired (mine, seriously scaled down, below).
http://i55.[censored].com/35hhglt.jpg
After doing so, open up the image in Photoshop, use the Select Color Range feature to select only the words in the image (like below), being sure to omit the whitespace.
Now that the desired character or characters are selected, copy them over into your image (for me, the words are always huge compared to the image I want to put them in initially), and scale them down to around what you want, you don’t need to be too precise with how straight the characters are or looking in-place at the moment. I personally like using Edit Transform (Ctrl + T on Windows) to do the initial scaling down and placement of the character set.
If you’re putting it onto a piece of paper or some surface that already has words, get rid of them first and make a uniform background: for the example, I quickly used a combination of the patch and clone tools.
http://i54.[censored].com/2557w2o.jpg
With that in place, using the warp tool a bit and positioning part of the character phrase or all of it makes it look much better, giving the 3-dimensional angled look that adds a lot to realism with faking characters on a person or piece of paper.
http://i55.[censored].com/2n9az6a.jpg
After that, I’ve found that it sometimes helps a bit to darken and lighten various parts of the text using whatever tools you prefer (e.g. burn/dodge) to make the text follow the shadows of the part of the image where the characters are. The characters themselves already have an infrequency in the pressure applied for their creation, but I’ve found that certain kinds of paper that typically have more texture (for instance, rice paper) tend to work out a bit better. In this quick example, ordinary printer paper was used. The opacity of the character layer(s) should be reduced a bit (using judgment for the image) to let the underlying texture show, especially for skin.
Now, this image sort of makes it too easy, and with a little more effort, it would be pretty darn good as a real sign (also, it is possible to change the color of the characters when they are initially selected by using such tools as selective colour). However, human skin tends to require a little more effort, for obvious reasons, but generally, just spending more time on adjusting individual characters and at the end possibly merging the character and image layers into a composite and smudging the edges of the characters with the surrounding skin should give enough of a realistic effect to be more than passable to the casual observer. Obviously, this is a method where the more time you spend on making the fake sign/message/whatever, the more you get out of it. For the example, I spent about five minutes from scanning the image to the final product (below), so the end quality is okay, not great.
http://i53.[censored].com/2nvrmrr.jpg
and
http://i54.[censored].com/1zy8tqw.jpg
I know I went through this all really faster, so feel free to ask if there are any questions.
Regards,
~Vanimelde
- Photoshop CS4 or Photoshop CS5
- Color Document Scanner or Camera
- Blank Sheet of Paper
- Pen or Pencil (I prefer a thick highlighter)
edit: misplaced, meant to place in the graphics tutorial forum; I would appreciate it if a moderator would move it
This is in lieu of the standard introductory post, as I’ve always preferred writing something somewhat more substantial the first time around.
To be brief, this briefly describes a process by which you may add a quasi-realistic character or characters to a person or piece of paper that a person is holding. I am aware of https://hackforums.net/showthread.php?tid=1126300, this simply represents my own, unique method. As a warning, this only briefly the how and why for the process… using the Photoshop tools themselves, while only basic ones are used here, must be learned elsewhere. Beneath is the rather simple base image
http://i52.[censored].com/34qohp2.jpg
To start, take a blank sheet and write whatever message is desired (mine, seriously scaled down, below).
http://i55.[censored].com/35hhglt.jpg
After doing so, open up the image in Photoshop, use the Select Color Range feature to select only the words in the image (like below), being sure to omit the whitespace.
Now that the desired character or characters are selected, copy them over into your image (for me, the words are always huge compared to the image I want to put them in initially), and scale them down to around what you want, you don’t need to be too precise with how straight the characters are or looking in-place at the moment. I personally like using Edit Transform (Ctrl + T on Windows) to do the initial scaling down and placement of the character set.
If you’re putting it onto a piece of paper or some surface that already has words, get rid of them first and make a uniform background: for the example, I quickly used a combination of the patch and clone tools.
http://i54.[censored].com/2557w2o.jpg
With that in place, using the warp tool a bit and positioning part of the character phrase or all of it makes it look much better, giving the 3-dimensional angled look that adds a lot to realism with faking characters on a person or piece of paper.
http://i55.[censored].com/2n9az6a.jpg
After that, I’ve found that it sometimes helps a bit to darken and lighten various parts of the text using whatever tools you prefer (e.g. burn/dodge) to make the text follow the shadows of the part of the image where the characters are. The characters themselves already have an infrequency in the pressure applied for their creation, but I’ve found that certain kinds of paper that typically have more texture (for instance, rice paper) tend to work out a bit better. In this quick example, ordinary printer paper was used. The opacity of the character layer(s) should be reduced a bit (using judgment for the image) to let the underlying texture show, especially for skin.
Now, this image sort of makes it too easy, and with a little more effort, it would be pretty darn good as a real sign (also, it is possible to change the color of the characters when they are initially selected by using such tools as selective colour). However, human skin tends to require a little more effort, for obvious reasons, but generally, just spending more time on adjusting individual characters and at the end possibly merging the character and image layers into a composite and smudging the edges of the characters with the surrounding skin should give enough of a realistic effect to be more than passable to the casual observer. Obviously, this is a method where the more time you spend on making the fake sign/message/whatever, the more you get out of it. For the example, I spent about five minutes from scanning the image to the final product (below), so the end quality is okay, not great.
http://i53.[censored].com/2nvrmrr.jpg
and
http://i54.[censored].com/1zy8tqw.jpg
I know I went through this all really faster, so feel free to ask if there are any questions.
Regards,
~Vanimelde
