Hello everyone, I am new to Renderosity and an aspiring digital artist. I was wondering if anyone cold help me out a bit. I am working with screenshot manipulation just playing around with a few sigs for friends that play MMORPG's, the problem I am having is splitting the charater's image from the background of the screenshot, is there an easy way to do it that I am mising? Any help would be appreciated, and thank you in advance. I use Adobe Photoshop CS and my OS is Windows XP, if that helps.

I'm sorry, but unless you have a piece of software that'll probably start a stampede, you're probably working with a jpeg, bitmap or a tiff, and there just isn't an easy way to do much about the background... a couple of things that can help are if the background is mostly the same colour... if you use magic eraser in contiguous "mode", you'll be able to get rid of a lot quickly. otherwise, you can, and probably do, magic lasso the image you want to keep, invert and edit>clear it can be a pain, but it can get rid of a large chunk of what you don't want. Lou.

You should post an example (image) so we can provide you with better advice;) You can also use the pen tool, very nice. If you do use the magic wond tool, be sure to play with the setting, sometimes it dosent seem to do what you want it too until you have tweaked it some. Good luck;)

yeah an example helps to give the best solution... other than that, you can look around the HELP files (F1) for topics like "extracting image" "pen tool" "masking"... each one of these methods have +/- to them and depend on the image as to which one to use... retrocity

Extract (filter-extract) can do miracles somethimes, but also somethimes is not very usseful, it depends on image quality :) First with edge highlighter tool draw the border around the model edge, than with fill tool hold SHIFT and click inside the model. It will erase the background, but as I say the result depends on picture quality. So you`ll have to clean the edges a bit with cleanup tool and edge touchup tool :) Tihomir

I was gonna suggest the Extract Filter as well, with the caveat that the background needs to be relatively clean and give enough contrast so that PS can SEE the difference between the character and background. If you have a character wearing black against a black background, GOOD LUCK! Another could simply be to generally lasso the character, drag it onto the new document you're compositing it into, and mask it. Make sure the correct character's Layer is selected, click the icon at the bottom of the layer palette that is a shaded square with a clear circle in it, and that creates the mask. Click on the mask box (in the Layer stack) to make sure it's active, get your brush out (hit the letter "B"), hit "D" to make sure you're at default Black and White colors, and wherever you paint Black will hide what's on the layer. If you paint too much, paint White and it will reveal it again. Alter the brush's hardness (F5) for finer or softer edges, the opacity to see more or less of the layer, etc. Sans2012 is exactly right - if you can post the image (gotta get it to fit into 800x600, or just the section you're trying to cut out), maybe we can give you more precise advice. Good luck- -Lew ;-)

Hi Trevan, I'm new to Renderosity too. Welcome. I remove figures from screen shots all the time... I also blend their heads onto other bodies too, but that is another subject. ;p... and then I remove the backgrounds and replace them with other backlgrounds. The easiest was to do this is to use yout Polygon Lasso... the regular lasso requires too steady a hand to do something as intricate as a whloe figure. and the magic lasso will leave you with too much edge work to do... it tends to take either parts out of the image you want to keep, or leave too much behind making for a rough look to the edges. Set it at a 1 px feather, and then magnify your image way up so that you can see the edged between your figure and the background clearly, and start selecting your figure. it is important when using the polygon lasso to click at frequent spots along the edge that you are selecting because of the belzor curve that it uses. the good news is that if your hand get tired, you can take a break and come back to it. Make sure when you are selecting that you place your selections line exactly along the edge between the figure and the background not to one side or the other. when you have finished selecting (you will see the moving dotted lines that my sister calls 'the martching ants') go up to select > inverse. now it is the unwanted background that you have selected. go to Edit > Cut. Your old background is now gone, and you have a realitively clean cut figure with slightly soft edges because of the 1px feather... the very slightly soft edge will help you make a smoother blend onto the new backgournd. now if you pick a background that has a fair amount of texture and detail, or is very close in color to the previous background, you will have to do very little work cleaning up edges. if there is a big differance from the previous background and you are seeing sharpe dark or light lines along the edges, put up a solid colored contrasting backgroud like white or red behind your figure and use the eraser on a low opacity... About 30% ... and with a fairly small soft edged brush... abolut 2 to 5 px. and gently erase any stay pixels around the edges. That is it for the selecting and edge cleanting part. I hope that this helps you. Cactuskim