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Posted

 

No, it does not come with a transparent background

 

That's a shame. How silly of them to remove the background, but not provide a version that would be the most useful for graphics artists. Anyone could add a black background to a transparent-background version, but going the other way is much harder.

Posted

Is there a similar way to turn some or most of the white to a cream tone, just to make the two wolves look as if they are marked similarly, but obviously not the same colors?

 

There is.

 

1. Activate the unmodified flipped layer  - it should still have a grey wolf in it.

2. Set Primary to FFF4CC

3. Set Secondary to F9F9F9

4. Activate Recolor tool

5. Set Brush Width to 60, Hardness to around 60. Tolerance remains at the default 50.

6. "paint" over the grey wolf. If the background is white, some of that might be recolored too. Don't worry.  Tip: try to do this step in one continuous go.

7. Not 'cream' enough? Repaint the entire wolf again on another single continuous motion.

8. Trim off the overlap on the white background by magic-wanding the white. Adjust the tolerance until all the background is selected. Press Delete.

 

yhsjjie_110.png

 

Red glowing eyes.

 

1. Copy the eyes from the base layer as before.

2. Paste both eyes into the same new layer.

3. Open Adjustments > Hue & Saturation

4. set Hue to -38 & Saturation to 127. Leave Lightness at 0.  (Hue: 26, Saturation: 200 & Lightness:9 = glowing golden eyes ;))

 

yhsjjie_111.png

Posted

Glowing eyes.....

 

2. make a careful selection around the eye with the Ellipse select tool. Zoom in with Ctrl + Mousewheel makes it easier. Get as close as you can then press M twice. See the control

 

Erm, what's Ctrl+Mousewheel? I have a touchpad mouse with two buttons... although experimentation shows it has an arrow on the right side of the pad, which, together with Ctrl, does in fact zoom in on a picture....

 

Learn something new every day. I've been using this style of mouse for years and never noticed that arrow before....

Posted

Yes. The top layer should have the edge trimmed back to eliminate all of the background pixels, or the pixels that are a mixture of background and foreground (wolf fur). The purpose of this layer is to prevent erasing any foreground pixels that happen to have the background color. The lower layer should include the entire image, or at least all the edge pixels. You could erase most of the background away from the edge, but I find it easier to leave the entire background. (What I refer to as the lower layer is actually the middle layer if you add a constant-colored contrasting background as the lowest layer.) You then use the HSV Eraser, or something similar, to erase the background, leaving the edge. If there are any remaining pixels away from the edge, they can easily be erased using the Eraser tool. It's much more important to get a good-looking edge than to erase every background pixel.

 

Ideally, the edge will be smooth, but for the wolf picture, it may still be a little ragged. (It would be much easier to get a smooth edge if the background color were more distinct from the wolf's color.) Various tricks can be used to smooth the edge. I first used the Zoom Blur since it blurs outward from a central point, which is sort of the way the fur grows. Then I applied the AA's Assistant and BoltBait's Feather. These are for me the go-to plugins for edge smoothing.

 

I could probably do a better job then I did. I'm not too pleased with the darkish line along the top of the wolf's head.

 

EDIT: To smooth the edge, you might also try using Red ochre's FurBlur plugin as Cc4FuzzyHuggles suggested. That seems like an excellent idea.

 

Okay, just when I thought I understood the two layers, you threw in a third layer on me?

 

Have the Furblur from RedOchre. I don't really understand the controls on it.

 

Zoomblur is apparently built in....

Posted (edited)

Here's a recolored wolf, using what I think is a useful technique. I didn't recolor the eyes; I just wanted to show a method for coloring the fur.

 

wolfrusty_zpsnbxgi2lx.png

 

 

I started with my background-removed picture.

I created a new layer below the wolf layer.

I filled the layer with a constant color of 155, 111, 50 using the Paint Bucket tool  (That's not quite accurate; I'll explain below)

I copied the wolf layer to the clipboard.

I then switched to the lower layer and used BoltBait's Effects>Object>Paste Alpha plugin with Alpha Source set to "Clipboard alpha."

This pasted the alpha into the lower layer so it matched the upper layer. The color was now confined to the wolf area.

I selected the upper layer and ran HSV Eraser with all default values, except:

- The Match Color: 127, 127, 127

- Portion of Non-Erased Color to Preserve: 1.00

- Gray matches All Hues: Checked

This made the gray fur transparent and allowed the brownish color to show through.

I then flattened the image.

 

As I mentioned, I didn't use that exact background color. I used a slightly different color gotten by using the Color Picker on the wolf's ear. After applying HSV Eraser, I used the Hue/Saturation adjustment on the lower (fixed-color) layer to get a color tint I liked. Both layers were visible, so I could see the results of my color adjustments on the the image.

Edited by MJW
  • Upvote 2
Posted

Here's a recolored wolf, using what I think is a useful technique. I didn't recolor the eyes; I just wanted to show a method for coloring the fur.

 

wolfrusty_zpsnbxgi2lx.png

 

Uhm, am I looking at something incorrectly? Because I do not see the wolf.

Posted (edited)

I can certainly see it, both in my original comment and in the quoted portion in your comment. Can anyone else see it? Is it a magic wolf?

Edited by MJW
Posted

I can certainly see it, both in my original comment and in the quoted portion in your comment. Can anyone else see it? Is it a magic wolf?

 

Obviously a magic wolf. Because this morning, when I clicked on this thread, I can see it just fine.

 

Gremlins. Has to be gremlins. Or the House Invisibility Spell. You know, the semi-sentient creature who hides whatever you're looking for UNTIL you ask for help, whereupon it places the item in plain sight and the person you asked for help says, "What do you mean, you can't find X? It's RIGHT HERE!" while you hear giggling in the background....

Posted

Okay... I would very much like to thank everyone who took the time to chip in on this thread. I am saving it, and when November is over, I will get my Fotolia subscription and DL the wolf and the moon I need for this. Well, and the DNA and hand I need for the first one, and the mountain road and singer for the second one, and then start digging through tutorials.

 

I've already spotted three I want to work through....

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