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Photoshop help (please!)

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Tue, 12/13/2005 - 20:53
sedjtroll
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So I have Photoshop CS on my computer, and my Graphic designer sister gave me a 2-hour rundown of all the commands, which of course all made sense at the time. But I'm finding it difficult to do things I want to do.

I know several mambers here are really good with photoshop, so if anyone would like to help me out with a tutorial, or some suggestions, or by downloading Skype, giving me a call, and walking me through something then I would greatly appreciate it.

For starters, I would like to make supply/demand tracks for Terra Prime. I envision a sort of bar graph, where the bars are the tracks for each resource, and they're superimposed over a picure of the earth. I have a picture of the Earth on the background layer, and I decreased the opacity a bit. Now how do I put rows of boxes for the tracks on top? Do I have to create the boxes in another program and then put them into photoshop? Or can I draw them in Photoshop?

Oh, I just had a thought... I could put the opacity back to 100% on the background, then in another layer on top of that I could paint the whole thing black, then make it pretty transparent (like a mask I guess), and then cut square holes for the boxes... so the brighter colors from the background will show through.

At the bottom of each track I'll probably put an icon for the resource that's being tracked.

Any thoughts on that?

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Tue, 12/13/2005 - 21:26
#1
doho123
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Photoshop help (please!)

The easiest way to build basic shapes (such as boxes) is using the vector tool, and then copying and pasting those.

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Tue, 12/13/2005 - 21:58
#2
Emphyrio
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Photoshop help (please!)

I've been using Adobe Illustrator CS2 to do that kind of thing... you can import your raster image as a background layer and then put whatever vector art and text you want on top.

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Tue, 12/13/2005 - 22:20
#3
sedjtroll
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Photoshop help (please!)

Emphyrio wrote:
I've been using Adobe Illustrator CS2 to do that kind of thing... you can import your raster image as a background layer and then put whatever vector art and text you want on top.
Sounds like Illustrator does a lot of the stuff I'd like to do in general. However, I don't have Illustrator. I have pagemaker (which I expect to be good for rulebooks), and Photoshop. So far I've done more art in Pagemaker than I have in Photoshop.

- Seth

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Wed, 12/14/2005 - 00:04
#4
Kreitler
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Joined: 12/31/1969
Photoshop help (please!)

sedjtroll wrote:
Emphyrio wrote:
I've been using Adobe Illustrator CS2 to do that kind of thing... you can import your raster image as a background layer and then put whatever vector art and text you want on top.
Sounds like Illustrator does a lot of the stuff I'd like to do in general. However, I don't have Illustrator. I have pagemaker (which I expect to be good for rulebooks), and Photoshop. So far I've done more art in Pagemaker than I have in Photoshop.

- Seth

Hey Seth,

My memory of Photoshop's tools is dim, but I can possibly set you on a path.

You've got the Earth in a background layer. That's good.

Create a second layer and fill it with black.

View the channels for that layer and select the "alpha channel" tab (I think this appears on the same tool palette as 'layers', but my memory fails).

Try filling the alpha channel with various shades of grey. That should affect the transparency of the black layer. I can never remember if white is fully transparent or fully opaque. I think it's fully opaque.

Once you have the desired overall transparency level, use the selection marquee to create a "marching ants" square in the alpha channel. Fill it with a lighter shade of grey. This should make a less opaque hole in the layer. Fool around with anti-aliasing and/or feathering the marquee rectangle to soften the edge of your holds. Once you get something that you like, you should be able to cut and paste it repeatedly in the alpha channel to build your transparent tracks.

Of course, this might all be gibberish. It's been so long since I used Photoshop that I don't really remember how do to anything. Plus, what I remember may be outdated.

If I were you, I'd IM Seo directly. He could get you set in less than a minute.

Good luck.

K.

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Wed, 12/14/2005 - 05:18
#5
seo
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Photoshop help (please!)

Kreitler wrote:
If I were you, I'd IM Seo directly. He could get you set in less than a minute.
I guess that suggestion makes you my official PR Manager. ;-)

Seo

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Wed, 12/14/2005 - 08:20
#6
OutsideLime
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Photoshop help (please!)

Quote:

I've been using Adobe Illustrator CS2 to do that kind of thing... you can import your raster image as a background layer and then put whatever vector art and text you want on top.

Funny, I do this the opposite way... create my vector imagery in Illustrator, then import it into Photoshop and work with it there.... either way is fine of course, it just depends on whether you want to adjust the shape of things or the look of things first

~Josh

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Wed, 12/14/2005 - 14:19
#7
Rick-Holzgrafe
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Photoshop help (please!)

Inkscape is a decent vector illustration program. It's not Illustrator by any means, but it's free. I am now using it to draw my initial board designs, which I import into Photoshop later if I want to spiff them up with images and textures.

You can get Inkscape (for Windows, Linux, or Mac OS X) here:
http://www.inkscape.org/

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