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Yes, once you apply a text it becomes a part of the image and you can no longer edit the text. To change the color, you could use the recolor tool, or re-type the text.

Booya! Gold star! My life is complete... I appreciate that though. I've always felt hair was the one thing PDN couldn't really do amazingly, but then I found this and decided the story must be told. Goes to show that the individual plugin/program doesn't really make an image, but the steps used in conjunction that can make something special.

Whoah. You are a genius!

Wow. Interestingly you did pretty decent on the hair for the most part O-o To me it seems like all thats left to do is to just keep practicing, and work closer to the edge of her outline. Some areas like between her buttox and backpack still have some white as you see, so it just takes a matter of finely erasing those parts out. It can be tricky to do when zoomed in so far, so take the time to zoom out and orient yourself/detect hard to see lines, then as you zoom in follow that line the best you can to determine which pixels form that line. I notice that the backpack has a very slight shadow against the wall. This might pose some difficulty discerning where it should end against her pants. In this case, try to imagine where the pants should end. Or, you could create a layer above this, and use a line tool to draw white curved lines to help visualize where the lines are going. Then use those lines to help you erase. Seems like you blurred the image a little, which is a good idea to help smooth out the lines. But unfortunately it's blurred her face/body too :l Something to do about that would be to duplicate the layer (after you have cropped her out), then only blur the lower layer. This way only the blurred edges are exposed, and the unblurred layer above still presents the crisp/detailed features on the "inside" part of her. "Inside" meaning anything inbetween the edges, like the purse to her watch. I like the background too I'm seriously surprised how well the top of her head looks with all the hair.

Well if you're selling it I don't think I'd suggest giving out the PDN file as well, unless you're okay with people altering you're work. You're planning on selling different sized photos? Save the original file in .pdn file format. Copy the watermark you're using, and save it in a completely separate .pdn file. Then resize the photo for each given size (you ALWAYS want to resize down, never enlarge). Copy the watermark from the other file, and place it on top of each of the newly resized photos. I'd especially suggest this if you're using 1 watermark for all of your photos. It would be best to have your watermark in it's own file since it will be used in a large array of images.

That's some fancy font :>

You forced me to (try) to out-do you lol Here's what I got. It's a mixture of "Combined Effects" (I think it's called) which involves noise reduction, contrast, saturation, and a multiplying factor (idk what if does lol). I think used "Curves+" and was actually able to pull most of the text into a new layer, making the background transparent. I think placed a pure black background behind it, then did some contrast/brightness on the text again It's not too different from yours, perhaps a hair brighter. Idk if that's good or not though Edit: Erm. I just realized I double posted, and I'm not too sure why I did that...my mind was absent I guess. My apologies

Those are some pretty good results. That's almost entirely legible. "French" seems to be a little smurred though, looks more like "Fanch" or "Franch"

Not a bad idea. Would you suggest an aliased line then? So the antialiased part doesn't accidentally cut out parts of what you want? Or do you not have that issue

Wonderful idea. I can't agree with this more and am currently facepalming myself because I should have bothered rick with this sooner lol

Yep, unless you've got Photoshop, this is the only way to get great results in PDN. Even if you had photoshop, you would still be doing something rather time consuming. It's essentially a lasso selection tool, except it's adjustable as you go and much easier to work with/more precise. In either situation though, it involves manually scrutinizing every edge pixel you want and outlining the whole piece I wish you luck! If you'd like, feel free to PM me for help.

You mean instead of a rectangle selection tool, you would like a triangle selection tool? That doesn't exist unfortunately (Unless I've been extremely oblivious for several years). My best suggestion would be to use a magic wand on a triangle like area to give yourself a triangle shaped selection, then move it around to where you need it.

Paul, consider this me encouraging you to get them published. I think that's a remarkable thing to do, and I can guarantee you WWI WILL get a lot of coverage on the 100th anniversery. Just see how much coverage WWII gets every year on important dates. One major reason, I feel, WWII gets more coverage is because there's more photographs and film-age of it available. I, and my friends around me, have always died wondering what it looked like back then. There's something absolutely mystical being able to look 100 years back in a photo. It's eery in an incredible way. I absolutely must implore you to continue, not only because I KNOW it will be financially beneficial to you, but because it will be a great experience for the rest of the world to see. I absolute love the title you have in mind as well. My first thought is that maybe you should contact someone from "History Channel". I'm certain they'd love to get the photos, because I'm certain they're already scheming up a WWI 100 year anniversary special. I'm slightly concerned that they might want the original photos to keep for some reason though... I have absolutely zero idea on how History Channel functions, but that's a fear that sticks in my mind for some reason. I am absolutely more than willing to help you with this project. You can PM me for help, or additional ways to contact me. I too, have no artistic background. My only artistic outlet is through Paint.NET, I've been using it for years now and I feel I've made considerable progress in my artistic ability. So I feel comfortable in giving you advice, but of course, open discussion is generally more productive since more ideas get thrown around.

Oh you want this to be published? I thought this was more of a home project for family. In that case I wouldn't do what I said. I think I'd try erasing all the grey/tan background color, leaving the text alone. Then contrast/brightness might work better. You could also try recreating the lettering at that point using the clone stamp tool.

Just do what I do. Hunker down and prepare yourself for some intense and very precise eraser tooling To me, it's the only way to get near perfect results. Effects can help smooth it out, or make it easier, but erasing has been the only way to get it exactly to how I want it. I just made a guide on something similar to this, it gives some pointers, but there's really nothing you can learn from a guide it's more of something you just have to practice at.

Yeah that does look tough. To be honest, I don't think that's really within the limits of any contrast/brightness effect. I would create a layer above the original, and trace it all out with a a curved line tool. I would use the original because, although it's fainter, I think you get the best visual of how it should look. Red Ochre did a good job of bringing out, but you can see it's kinda faded in some areas, and almost even harder to read because of that. No fault of his, that's just the limitation of contrast/brightness I was talking about. It MIGHT be worth trying some "reduce noise" or "median" effects on it. I'm not too sure how that would turn out though.

I think it's called a coincidence? lol

This tutorial is available as a PDF. Click here to view or download it Came across a neato method to render/crop (I've heard both terms used interchangeably) hair out of photos with a bit better results. The ultimate quality of your image will come down to skill though, really. This isn't a "Follow these steps and you'll get perfect results" type of guide. I'll try to make it as helpful as possible, but honestly this type of thing just comes down to lots of practice. It will outline the general practice to cropping out subjects from backgrounds that any other method (magic wand, 'grim color reaper') can't do on it's own and provide a few steps to smooth out the end look. I was asked to take this/these guy/guys (?? lol) out of this picture for a sig My regular process would be to manually erase out these guys and hair best as possible. Then I might use "AA's Assistant" to smooth out the edges. That would leave me with this It's not horrible, but certainly you can see how the hair is TOO smoothed out creating dips where hair should be. This guide should give you something a bit more like this though Notably more detailed, but maintaining smooth edging. Right so enough jabber. Required Effects: AA's Assistant --- Effects > Object > AA's Assistant Splinter --- Effects > Blur > Splinter (This may be included with PDN, I am not entirely sure though). Step 1: Whip out your favorite music, and start erasing away at your image. I generally start out with a large brush to erase the large amount of background, then quickly decrease the brushes size to get a more general outline of what I'm getting at. I repeat this about 3x before I just hunker down and start very finely erasing at the edges I want. It's better to slightly erase any dark outline you see than to leave it behind. Even if it is a part of the image you want. Those lines will show up later and cause headaches Here's some pics. Step 2: After a good hour or so of that (maybe more maybe less depending on who you are) It's time to move on to fine tuning our results which should really just look like a heavily aliased cropping of jim carey. Duplicate layer :DuplicateLayer: and uncheck it's visibility. Rename this layer as "Original". This layer is purely meant for backup in case something bad happens or you don't like your results and need to start over. Never, ever, ever, ever do anything to this layer besides duplicate it. Even when saving, do not touch. You want this forever. Believe me when I say this has saved me countless hours of work, and WILL save you the same amount if not more. Step 3: Take your exposed, aliased, freshly cropped layer and duplicate it again! Name the top one "AA Assistant" and the middle layer "Splinter". Your layers should look like this Step 4: Let's do AA's Assistant layer first. Select it by clicking, and hide all other layers (just so we can better see what happens). Apply 'AA's Assistant' to that layer. I honestly don't suggest fiddling with the settings. I've done this plenty of times, and 99 times out of 100 the default settings are the best. The ultimate thing to look for is smooth edges, no random bumps or hills and proper colors. If you see anything amiss, press Ctrl+Z to undo, then go back and erase (or color in) the defected spot. Reapply 'AA's Assistant' and repeat until things are looking smooth. Don't just focus on the hair too! Remember we have an entire body to crop out, so be sure to look at arms, legs, torso, etc etc. I didn't have any issues to touch up to show you unfortunately. I'm just that good (that's a joke) Step 5: Hide the 'AA's Assistant' Layer, select and expose the 'Splinter' layer. Open up the Splinter effect, set 'Splinters' to 50, and 'Distance' to 1. Leave the rest alone. Step 6: Expose the AA's Assistant layer, then select the Splinter layer again. Go around the edges of the splinter layer and erase the edge of it everywhere you don't like it. In my case, I found it gave a noticeable black line around areas like the shirt and neck, so I erased it there. However it was perfect or unnoticeable in other areas, like the hair so I left it alone. This is not necessary to do, but may be favorable depending on the image. All that's left is to observe and touch up what looks offbeat. I'd like to say that you should try different background colors, and of course place that color in a new layer at the bottom of everything. Sometimes it will look absolutely terrible on white, but very very nice on black. Ideally it should work on all colors, but in my case I do plan on using this for a signature with a dark/black background. So as long as this looks good on black, who cares how it looks against pink! It comes down to how you're going to use it. If you plan on leaving the background transparent, I HIGHLY suggest testing out many many background colors to scan for issues. Final Image on white Final Image on Black (looks like I need to touch up that slight white outline on the hair) The best way to remove any outlines, like in the black picture above, would to either try erasing the white if possible/manageable without ruining the image. If it's a gradient, you could try using "Curves+". I'd explain how, but that's another guide in itself as it's quite a few steps. You could also use the lasso tool, then try playing with saturation/contrast/brightness levels or blurring it further. Finally another "AA's Assistant" effect may remove that outline, but it may damage other areas of the picture as well, so use with caution. You could also cheat (As I'm likely to do ) and quite simply added a white/bright graphic behind the afflicted area thus "covering it up", and use that graphic in conjunction with a black background. Here's a break down of why/what happened The AA's Assistant layer is on top. It smooths out the edges and gives us a nice fade-out look to apply over different backgrounds. It also maintains the clarity and crispness on the inside of the subject at the same time. Splinter smooths out the entire image very slightly. This looses quality on the inside, which is why we want the AA's Assistant layer to cover it. The subject is smoothed, but the very fine edges of hair are still maintained, at least much better than AA's Assistant does. So splinters gives us some more hair detail, but keeps them blurred/smoothed enough to be acceptable on the edges. I'd like to say that this takes time, practice and killer patience. For some sick and twisted reason I enjoy sitting here for hours erasing away at images, but I won't pretend for 1 nanosecond that doing this didn't take me months to become acceptable at. I can give you all the help and tips in the world, but ultimately it comes down to you trying, and trying, and trying and trying some more. Hair is BY FAR the most difficult part to crop out and something I'm still incredibly uncomfortable doing. Give a few images a try to learn your limits, then work on something manageable to build skill. This is how I worked my way up. And finally, I made this with almost 0 sleep put in the day, so point out any errors and I'll fix them. I rechecked this thing like 50 times though, so I'm hoping it's fine...

Oh so is there an option in the plugin to paste clipboard as background? That would be awesomely useful if I had known about such a feature before lol

Drop Shadow...that's familiar...I think I had it once, but then it just constantly crashed PDN so I removed it. Idk if it was a bad download, version of PDN or if the plugin got fixed. I'll give it a try a bit later as well

O: Man I could have sworn in the topic it mentioned the plugin being lossless. I haven't noticed any degradation when I've used it. Granted, I've never used it a lot, and I don't think I really stared it down to see differences. I DO know it makes the file size smaller though lol

LOL Now THAT is funny

Oh hey since I'm here... Pyro is there any way for your plugin to show layers below the one I'm working on? The smudging works great and all that, but it gets really hard to reference where the results will be, or how I want to smudge something based off the layer below it, when I only have 1 layer to look at. I don't want/need access to switch working layers, just the ability to see it any below it

Doh! I knew that! Playing Supreme Commander on Win7 gave me crashes when battle sizes got to large because it would break the 2gb memory limit. Windows 7 was fine, but the game didn't know what to do after 2 gigs was hit (the game was built for XP), so the game would crash D: That was incredibly frustrating since the game always gets good once the battle sizes are of epic proportions. EPIC I SAY!

Can't wait to try this when I get home... I WILL post results. Man I'm stoked lol