Creative Sheep *Biology of Animation*

Welcome, well I was suppose to show you some finished images of an animation that I’m just about finished, unfortunately I ran into a few minor road blocks that I will have paved out for sure this week as well as some employment opportunities in which I’m seeking.

In the meantime I have a Photoshop Action Tutorial for automatically creating a resize this is especially useful for web images where you usually have to keep the size of the image to a specific width and height.

Creating a Resizing Action in Photoshop

1. Open an image

2. Create a new action and start recording

3. Go to File > Automate > Fit Image

4. Set Constrain within to Width <XXX> Height <XXX>

5. Click OK

6. Go to Image > Canvas Size

7. Set the Width to the width you entered in Step (4)

8. Set the desired Anchor point

9. Make sure Relative is unchecked

10. Click OK

11. Save the file

12. Stop recording the action

13. DONE

Now onto another Photoshop Tutorial.  In this tutorial you will learn how to scan a magazine using Photoshop, this is useful for your own blog or for emailing to someone a magazine article in which you scanned and you want to show to whomever.

How to Scan a Magazine using Photoshop

1. Scan the image at a resolution approximately 150-200% higher then what you need for final output.

2. Go to Filter > Noise > Median

3. Use a radius between 1-3.  Typically the higher the quality of the source, the lower the radius can be. Use your own judgement, but you will probably find that 3 works well for newspapers, 2 for magazines and 1 for books.

4. Go to Image > Image Size (Image > Resize > image Size in Photoshop Elements in-case your not using the power horse Adobe Photoshop)

5. Make sure you are zoomed to 100% Magnification.

6. Go to Filter > Sharpen > Unsharp Mask

7. Exact settings will depend on the image resolution, but these settings are a good starting point;

Amount 50-100%, Radius 1-3 pixels, Threshold 1-5. Use your eye as the final judgement

Tips: If you still see a pattern after applying the Medium filter, try a slight guassian blur before resampling.  Apply just enough blur to reduce teh patter.  If you notice halos or glows in the image after using Unsharp mask go to Edit > Fade. And use these settings: 50% Opacity, Blending Mode: Luminosity (Some features are not available in Photoshop Elements)

NEXT WEEK I hope to give a brief tutorial on something in Autodesk Softimage the 3D visual effects animation software that I use for my animations.  I also use on occasion Autodesk Maya but my primary is Autodesk Softimage.

This entry was posted on Sunday, September 20th, 2009 at 10:52 PM and is filed under CreativeInfo. You can follow any responses to this entry through the rss 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.