Post by Sosa on Oct 20, 2006 11:00:16 GMT -5
Im curious, any suggestions on how to do good backgrounds straight from photoshop. Im just an amateur at it.
What kind of backgrounds are you talking about? If you wanted one like mine, you need to play around with filter effects a little bit. That's mostly about finding the right combination of effects to get it looking the way that you want it, and then tweaking it from there.
Multiple layers are a godsend; use them, love them. I tend to have somewhere around 6-15 layers depending on the complexity. This allows projection of depth, and lets you do some pretty cool things. Opacity is another thing that can be used really effectively - as long as you keep it subtle. For my background, I actually have... the Bastokan flag, a 'base' background I scribbled with the paintbrush tool, and then several layers of post-processing effects stacked on top of each other with adjustments to the opacity. It sounds complicated, but it's really not.
If you want a 'static' background - like a landscape - it's all about picture selection. You want the best picture possible to fit into your given situation. In this respect, it really helps if you have a vague idea of what you want before you get into it, since there is some effort involved in actually finding or taking the picture on your own. Code can probably give you better tips on this than I can, since he likes to use them in his sigs. He's got a great eye for capturing the perfect scenes... lol
Don't get bogged down in advice, the best way to learn is to just get in there and play around with it. You have to become familiar with each tool; and as your experience grows, you'll start finding more and more uses for them, and your work will slowly refine itself.
[Edit I misspelled 'paintbrush.' >_<]