That's what I meant for the AE work - just make a wide still frame and you can match it pretty well to a steady dolly shot. Hand held matching (again, using a rendered still shot in AE) is much more difficult, but can be done. Locked down shots - easiest on the planet!

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 ;-)

Haven't looked at Marlin Studios (I'll check it out after this) but both Dosch and TurboSquid have good models. I'm sure you could also enlist someone in the "Jobs" forum to help make models and sets - just be up front about pay-or-no-pay (guessing no-pay). If you do VERY SLOW and CONSISTENT dolly left or right, even a little in or out, you can move your background in After Effects very convincingly without matchmoving software. Just don't try handheld or you'll drive yourself nuts! It can be done, but that's a LOT of Advil we're talking about! And about Maxwell - seen stuff on their site, looks great - but what if you already have the Advanced Renderer? Maxwell isn't Earth-shattering compared to stuff I've seen of AR... Shouldn't Maxon's AR be the equivelent, or is there something special about Maxwell that AR can't do? I only ask because I have the XL Bundle now (w/AR) - though I realize this is about to throw this thread off topic, so maybe if someone could tell me in a PM that would be great. I think I'm gonna throw this one into the C4D forum as well...

That was definitely a tough choice, and we could SO do without it - congrats RoBarb! Great image, and sentiment!

I'm really gonna laugh if it was the only thing left in the house to snack on besides rice-cakes.

My wife says it means nothing - but if a MAN eats this and is making a knot of the stem with nothing but his tongue, he's the big catch! HOWEVER, I've got 3 sisters and they say while this means nothing to them, if they're slowly eating strawberries you're either gonna get lucky or they need the iron... 50/50 shot, apparently hinging on whether or not they're smiling at you.

Hehe (looks around for the DeLorian and Michael J. Fox!).

Yeah, an 800x600 image is exactly the same size at 10ppi and 1,200ppi - it's STILL 800x600 pixels when all is said and done. There's absolutely NO chage in quality or size when you just change the resolution, and upsizing the actual document above 10% (in Photoshop alone) will start giving you unwanted artifacts. You might want to invest in something like Genuine Fractals - oddly, there's an article on the fronts page of this website about it - great program, and if you're going to be preparing it for commercial printing you'll need to convert it to CMYK (or the guy requesting the file might do it for you when he gets it - but they tend to ask for it already done). Good luck and congrats on what sounds like a sale! -Lew ;-)

If you're looking for clarity, as well as making it B&W, you can give this a try as well. Start w/the original, create an Adjustment Layer of Hue/Sat, and drop the Sat to make it B&W (sepia is considered romantic, but the photographers would be aghast - it's actually the print's emulsion RUSTING). Make another Adjustment Layer that is Levels and pull the right slider to ALMOST to the egde of white - don't let any details blow out, but this will brighten it all over and can bring some things out that you didn't realize were there (new deep scratches, texture on dresses and faces, etc. - bad AND good stuff). You might even want to pull the left slider to the edge of black - don't worry about it getting dark because you're not doing it to the actual image - just your VIEW of it at this point. Creat a new layer above the Background that is Soft Light mode - get your spray-paint brush (hit the letter "B"), make it 0% hardness (the softest, basically), hit "D" to make your colors B&W default, and change the opacity to around 30%. Paint on this layer to doge and burn details - this works MUCH better than the actual Dodge&Burn tools (oddly)! The reason for all the different layers is so that you don't actually alter anything on the original image. This give you the most flexibility later on when you want to tweak it for a final. At this point you might wanna go to the original image at the bottom and "clean it up" like using the Heaing brush and/or the Clone Tool to tidy up scratches and dust. Good luck and have fun! -Lew ;-)

She's so cute - congrats! And good lightening of the image as well. Get some sleep when you can, and enjoy being a new dad! You'll love it!

#8

It seems like Vue only keeps the focal length horizontally - whereas when you actually hold a camera and rotate it to go vertical, the subject will never chage size. It's the same POV angle of degrees regardless of rotation. In the real world, it doesn't matter the size of your negative or CCD, and in a 3D program it doesn't matter what size your render will eventually be (800 pixels wide, or 2,000 pixels - it doesn't matter when you're just setting up the camera), it's an angle measurement in degrees from a starting point - the lens itself. It's a spherical projection onto a focal plane - so it doesn't matter if it's vertical or horizontal, or any angle in between. In Vue, it looks as if you will only maintain your horizontal angle degree POV (best example being the Viking ship example above by Yggdrasil) while adding more or less on the top or bottom depending on your chosen aspect ratio. Not necessarily a bug - maybe it was just a bit too much for the programmers to figure out in a real-world way, so they chose to stick to horizontal measurements (which might be logical as it's main use seems to still be landscapes)?

Oh man that's cool! You guys just increased my productivity a bit (jumping between images without having to aim)! One day they will write songs about you guys!! -Lew ;-)

(scratches head, frowns, "hmmmmm...") I realize this is suggesting a headache, but have you tried putting the old video card (just guessing the 6600 is new to the system - hence your checking the drivers) back in and running Photoshop? The flip side would be (yes, another headache) uninstalling and reinstalling Photoshop.

Yeah, I'm completely shooting in the dark here myself, but when was the last time you defragged your hard drive? Glitches happen. Is your hard drive over 75% capacity? Same thing (which makes me wonder why this is a serious problem and the manufacturers don't just labels their drives to the 75% capacity in the first place...?). This is a particular problem for video editing, but can produce some headaches for graphics packages like PS and Painter. As far as the video card, how old is your computer? Meaning, if you've got a Mac G4 or a Pentium3 and you put in a Wildcat card it might not be able to handle it - new drivers or not. This could be a redraw issue for incompatible hardware. How old is your computer in general (or for that matter, specifically, your hard drive - getting old is not good) - does it meet the "minimum" specs required by PS (say, G3 or Pentium3, w/128MB RAM), or does it meet the "reccommended" specs (G5, Pentium4, or Athlon, w/512MB RAM)? Makes a big difference. Maybe drop in a list of whatcha got, and how long this problem has been going on. "It's doing this" can be a VERY vague question for computers. -Lew ;-)