Creating Panel Segments
- You have made it through the most difficult phase at this
point and should have a nice base image saved. Now it's on to the creative
portion of the tutorial. You will be using your base image to create 12 individual
panel segments that will ultimately make up your final panorama.
- Open your base image file in PSP7. Use the Magic Wand to
select the white region of your image and then go to the Selections menu and
choose Invert to highlight the terrain only.
- Next go to the Selections menu once again and choose Promote
To Layer. Then go back to the Selections menu and choose Select None.
- Open up an image that you will use to copy a distant scene
from into your base image as a second background layer. Use the Selection
tool to outline a specific portion of this image. Try to find a region of
no more than 900 pixels wide.
- Click on Edit from the main menu and then Copy.
- Switch back to your base image.
- Next click Edit and then Paste As New Layer to add your
selection as a 2nd layer to the base image.
- Choose Layers from the main menu, then Arrange and lastly
Send To Bottom. This will move your 2nd layer behind the base image.
- Now click on your 2nd layer and drag it to a position behind
the base image which is to your liking.
- Once it is properly positioned select Layers, Merge and
then Merge All (Flatten). This will combine all the layers into a single image.
- You will then use the Paint Brush tool to edit out all unwanted
areas from above the terrain. Stay away from the far edges as you want to
keep these intact to ensure perfect, seamless tiling amongst all your panels.
Remember to use a larger brush (size 10 to 25) first and then a smaller brush
(size 2 to 3) to detail out the top edge of your terrain. I will once again
state that is recommended to go a few pixels below the top terrain level to
avoid any out of color pixels in the final panel image. Here is a sample panel
segment I created using the base image in Part 1 of the tutorial.
- Next use the Magic Wand tool to select the white region
of your image.
- Go to the Selections menu and choose Invert to select your
new terrain only.
- Now choose the Selections menu and then Save To Alpha Channel.
Click Ok and then Ok again. The alpha channel is used to define all visible
data in your panel. The white area (color 255,255,255) defines the transparent
portion of your image which will be invisible when the panorama is loaded
up in the Course Architect program.
- After saving to an alpha channel go back to the Selections
menu and then click Select None.
- Now you will save the final image as a Targa (.tga) file
named Pan Segment 01.tga in your Panos folder.
- Repeat the above steps 1 thru 15 for the remaining panel
segments naming the files in succession from Pan Segment 01.tga
thru Pan Segment 12.tga. Use different background layers for
each panel if possible to add needed variety or you may choose to use only
the base image for some panels. You can edit the base image in each Pan Segment
slightly during these steps by using the Clone Brush and Paint Brush. This
will also help to prevent duplicated scenes in your panorama. I have included
anothe panel segment sample below in which the base image terrain was edited.
When you are finished saving all 12 panel segments you can
proceed on to Part 3 of the tutorial which will describe how to add your panorama
to a library that can be used in the Course Architect.
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