Friday, October 31, 2014

Lil Pixel Sir: 54. Profiled


Lil Pixel Sir
54. Profiled
Oct 31st 2014, 15:05



I haven't been to bed yet, so hopefully you will excuse the quality of this post lol!  As I can't seem to sleep, I figured I would do another quick tutorial.  Today I am going to do a very basic profile picture.  Just head and shoulders, nothin too fancy.  But with this I can show you some easy ways to clean up a basic snapshot in your photo editing software.  Before I continue let me just tell you what I am wearing! (Please note, above is the finished image, cropped, most of the clothing items will be seen in images below)


Style Notes

Hat/Hair - Hype - Jack
Booger - Boogers @ Trunk or Treat - Snotty Boogers (freebie!)
Sweatshirt - Winter Ravens - Moustache Sweater White
Jeans - Awwdorable - Ripped Jeans Blue
Shoes - FLITE - Flytops Burgundy



Onto more fun stuffs!!



So here I am, ready to begin.  To make life easier on myself, I have chosen to do this against a background inworld.  This is a fast way to get a nice picture with very little effort.  One method I employ a lot (because I am lazy lets be honest).  SO I am currently standing around just on a platform in the sky, with a wall behind (texture: Skye).  I have also positioned my avatar close to the wall, this makes it easier to create a shadow behind the avatar, rather than having to twiddle with it in Photoshop.  I do advise getting as close to your avatar as you can and getting your settings up nice and high as I mentioned in the first tutorial ( Windlight Tutorial ).  If you are unfamiliar with windlight or graphics settings, please do read the first tutorial before continuing as it will help you a lot with the first part of this tutorial's process.



Our next step is to get a really good raw image.  I will be setting my graphics to high for the purposes of this tutorial, I normally use ultra, so if you can use ultra without crashing, go ahead!
I have zoomed into the avatar so that when I crop it I will get the lowest amount of pixelation around the avatars head (rather than taking a far away shot, cropping just the head and shoulders and increasing the size, this will make it look a bit icky).  In your preferences window, go to your graphics tab and move the slider to High (or what you can handle).  Make sure that you have 'Advanced Lighting Model' and 'Ambient Occlusion' selected.  Also be sure that your LOD is set to its highest (4), so that all your meshy sculpty bits load perfect.



Now go to the next tab and change your 'antialiasing' to a higher number.  The highest you can handle.  I will be setting mind to 16.  This seems like a minor difference, but it subtly smoothes your avatars jaggedy edges.  So less blurring to do during the editing process.. Huzzuh shortcuts!!



On the next tab in your graphics preferences, you want to set the 'quality of the shadows' to the highest that you can handle without crashing.  This makes for much softer, more natural shading.

Tip:  Dont select 'save' on your settings changes.  Just minimize the window so its easier to just 'cancel' your settings and go back to what you had before starting.



Now we are ready to select our windlight setting from your quick preferences.  I will be choosing [AnaLu Studio9].  I find the AnaLu set gives a good amount of shading in natural tones.  However there are so many different ones to choose, find a cool one to suit what you are going for.  I hear girls like pink light ..... o.O
Once your windlight is selected its time to edit it.  Go to World - Environment Editor - Sky Presets - Edit Preset.



All you want to do here is focus on creating that shadow behind your avatar.  You also want to make sure that you do not end up with odd shadows on your face and body.  A place I notice that I often get wierd shadows is either side of the nose and the cheekbones.  All that I have done to get the shadow behind my avatar is move the time of day slider and the 'Est ang'.  Pretty easy!  And already things are taking shape.  So once you have taken your shot, you can meet me in your photo editing software!



So here we are in Photoshop.  The very first thing I do is work out what size I want my picture to be.  You may have noticed that snapshots tend to get a bit squished when you put them into your profile.  The size I normally do for a profile picture is 1024 x 768.  I'm not sure if this is 100% right, but it seems to work pretty well for me.  Go to File - New - Set your dimensions as shown.  Now if you have taken your picture where the HEIGHT is correct and needs no cropping then you can simply change your raw images HEIGHT to 768.  If you need to, crop your image HEIGHT and then change the size to 768.  Go to Image - Image Size.  Make sure that you have 'constrained proportions' turned on and change your height to 768.



Now the fun stuff begins!  Zoom in on your image so you can see everything again (if your image shrunk on ya when you changed the size).  Now go to Filter - Liquefy.  Liquefy is a fun tool where you can almost morph your image, inflate areas, shrink/pucker areas and nudge.  What we are doing is looking for areas where the avatar has a jagged area on its form.  Pay attention to the jawline, lips, hands and nose. Now zoom in on your avatars face.  Nice and close.. make sure you can see those nose fuzzies with the magnifying tool or by typing in z on your keyboard.  Once close look on the left side of this window you will see a tool that looks like a finger ('forward warp tool').  Select this tool and look to the right side of the window.  Here just adjust the 'Brush Size' to about 10, the 'Brush Density' to about 15 and the 'Brush Pressure to 100'.



This part requires a gentle touch.  You don't want to go overboard on this, just make small edits and check what you did every time you unclick your mouse.  In photoshop you can only undo the previous step and starting over from the beginning sucks.  In case you do muck up use ctrl+z to undo what you just did.  What you need to do is take your little crosshair and gently nudge (click and drag gently with small movements) to nudge those areas that look a little wrong.  For me I am editing the jawline a little, the nose shape and the corners of the mouth (cos I want a tougher look :P).  When you have finished, select ok.



Time to work on shading.  Because we have already worked with adding a shadow in the background, we have already skipped a huge step that can be fiddly and lets be honest, a royal pain.  But it is still good to tweak what is behind you a little bit.  So now people, drum roll please!  Introducing my favorite tool... Burn!  Look on your Left side toolbar.  You will see a Symbol that looks like a lollypop or a hand depending how your Photoshop is set up. Look for the Burn tool (the hand you can see selected in the image).



Now all you do is adjust the settings at the top of your screen.  With burn selected you can select what type and size brush you want to use (I am using a blurred round brush), the range (I will work first with shadows), and your exposure.  I always set my exposure low, between 13-20.  Simply put, you can add shading but its harder to take it away.  All I am going to do now is burn in places around the brickwork of the background.  I'm not touching the avatar with this tool at all.. yet.  As you play with this you will see that changing the exposure to midtones, and even highlights can be fun.  Play around painting your picture for a while, adjust the different levels and really get the hand of it.  Pay attention to where your light is coming from and have fun!



Now in the same little menu on the left toolbar select the lollypop (Dodge).  This is one to use sparingly, it is quite a powerful little beast.  But what it does it the opposite to dodge, too much and your picture will loose detail and definition, but used with a light touch it can assist our little burn buddy in creating some fantastic depth.  Doing the same thing as you did with the burn tool, work on adding highlights to your background.  All I have done is lightly swiped over each brick to make it as if the brick has light shining on it and reflecting on the painted surface.  How much, or how little you use of burn and dodge in your background is entirely up to you.  Have a play!



Now that that's done we can move on to tweaking the avatars shading.  Because I don't want to throw too much at you too fast we are going to work only with burn and dodge.  In my humble opinion you can do a great deal just with those two to really push your pictures to the next level.  Take your burn tool and making sure that you have your exposure very low, shade a line just under the chin, just to define that area.  I also like to burn the center of the lips, where they meet, it reddens them subtly and adds some great depth.  The other place to burny burn on is under the armpits, under the arm if it is on your body, and you can even do the folds of your clothes but just choosing a brush size to suit.  Remember.. lay on your shading, don't get impatient and go for more exposure super fast... fastest road to a big splodge on your work.. true story lol.  Have a go at just enhancing the shadows on your avatar. Using a brush size of 12, I will be enhancing under the chin, the line between my arms and my body, the shading on the right side of the whole avatar (light is coming from the left in this picture), a little of the hat and then LIGHTLY enhancing the shadows on the skin that were achieved with the windlight settings.



Same as on the background we are going to use the dodge tool.  Sparingly.  In future tutorials I will show you other ways of doing similar things, I swear.  But this time around, just lighten the highlights gently where you think they should go. I will only be highlighting the hat, part of the clothing and the lips (making the parting darker, and the lips lighter a touch, adds to the contrast and makes them much more visible). Where would the light, from your chosen direction, hit your avatar?  Give it a go :)



The second to last tool I will show you now is the blur tool.  I try to use this as little as I can.  I feel that it can go a long way to making your beautiful detailed image look flat and deflated.  It is good however to smooth out those imperfections that may have been nagging at you.  Like where you have a wrinkle O.O! Or if you are noticing a lot of jagged edges on your skin or clothes then using blur to just smooth those down is a good idea.  Your blur tool can be located on the toolbar to your left, and is shaped like a raindrop. The only blurring I am doing today, with my blur brush set on Mode Normal and a strength of 26 is the jawline, between my lips and chin (I have a line there that is upsetting me!!!) and my left armpit.. its a little jagged due to the pose.  When completed blurring your avatar.  We can enhance the hair a little.  Because I have dark hair, I am only using the burn tool to darken right where the hat would be shadowing it.  I will use the dodge tool to create highlights.  Do this by making thin lines where there are natural highlights already in your hair or where you think there should be some.  Or just enhance where there is a light pool to give your hair a less flat look.



Once you are happy with your hair you are ready to drag your picture onto the new file, sized already for your profile :).  Just Click and Drag on your edited image onto your new blank page and move the image into a place you are happy with.  If you have set your heights on these two files to be the same then you can use 'snap' to make this easier.  Go to, View - Snap, and move your image side to side to get it where you want it.



If you are happy with it, you can stop here.  Save as for Web and make sure transparency is NOT ticked and then save as a png.  All ready to be uploaded.  OR you can add a light effect. :)  Go to Filter - Render - Lighting Effects.  Select your type of light from the drop down (lots of choices!) and move the cross-hairs around on the little preview to get the light how you want it.



So thats it!  You have learnt,liquefy, burn, dodge, blur and lighting effects.  If you are new to editing, Huzzuh! You Rock!.  I hope this was useful and as usual, any questions into the comments and I will try to answer.  Look out for tutorials in the future on other stuffs.




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