Zorro!
 
How to put bubbles behind
the ballerina in 220 easy steps
The art of digital masking
is occasionally as easy as two or three clicks of the Magic Wand tool.
More often, it’s a question of “How many tricks do I have up my sleeve?
” Which is why, in Parts 1 and 2, I emphasized that awareness of your
software’s capabilities is the real key to reaching your creative potential.
Imagination minus the power to make it real equals a daydream.
A quick review of masks
In Part 1 we used
a channel to make a mask in order to combine one picture with another.
You remember that white allows one image to pass into the other and
black does not. Any of the 254 shades of gray in between will act as
varying degrees of transparency. And, like a regular mask, you are free
to create your own, paint on it, use gradients, etc. The only restriction
in Calculations is it must be exactly the same size as the other image(s)
with which you are working. Open the Leaping Girl.jpg, and we’ll take
the Caculation box out for a quick spin.
Press Ctrl+D to duplicate
the image. We can make a quick gradient mask with the Linear Gradient
tool from the toolbox. In the fill color boxes in the Attribute bar,
make the first box black and the other white. Position your cursor about
25% of the vertical distance from left to right, and while holding the
Shift key drag all the way to the right side of the image. You should
have something close to this:
Press Ctrl+D to make a duplicate
again. Open up the Easy Palette, go the Fill Gallery, and choose the
Natural Texture section. Scroll down to the fill titled Stars and double
click. Not surprisingly, you now have document full of stars. Save this
image as “Stars,” so we can keep track of it.
When you open the Calculations
dialog now, you’ll notice that in each of the three image drop-down
menus you have a choice of the three images currently open in your workspace.
Make sure the Stars image is chosen for the Foreground. Check the Mask
box and choose the Untitled image (your black and white gradient) from
the menu. And finally, put the Leaping Girl in the Background. You see
the result of these combinations in the far right box. Click OK
 .
And very quickly you have
produced an image of a girl leaping into another dimension. You could
reverse the direction of the gradient and make her leap out of the stars,
if you so chose.
You can close that without
saving, because, obviously, this picture isn’t going to win you any
awards. But if you remember the tricks up your sleeve and set up your
Calc box again-this time using Operation: Difference-you have a more
creative place to start a very interesting image. That’s your decision.
Real world masking
Open the Ballerina photo and select the Magic Wand tool. Despite this
image’s mostly black background, it’s very difficult to make a reasonable
selection using the Magic Wand. I invite you to try it, but no matter
what settings or combination of settings you use, you will eventually
run the marching ants into the ballerina herself (not a disaster, as
we shall see) in an uncontrollable manner. Instead, we’ll grab as much
as we can, as accurately as we can, then move on from there.
Use the Calculation dialog
to check all the channels for the highest possible contrast which will
make the selection process easier. If you click on the Red channel you
can then use your up and down arrows to scroll through the other channels.
It looks like the Red channel is our best bet, so choose it and click
OK. This is a much better starting point for the Magic Wand, and after
some adjustments with the Tone Map it would be even better. Well, close
it without saving. I just wanted you to see it. It’s time to put another
trick up your sleeve.
Repeat the process, but
this time use the Red channel and change the Operations to Lighting.
Now you have a nice pure black from which to select all the major parts
of the ballerina in one fell swoop.
(If any of you are asking
yourself at this time, “That’s great, but how did he know to do that?”
the answer is this: One day, I spent 12 hours studying the effects of
various blending modes on various channels. And now I know. Sorry, folks,
it’s the only way.)
Set the similarity to 10,
Select by Area, and be sure the search connected pixels box is checked.
Click once in the background , once in the area between her right arm
and dress, and you’re finished for now. From the Fill dialog (Ctrl+F)
choose white and click OK. (It’s very handy when making masks to keep
the background color white. You can just hit the Delete button when
necessary to fill with white). Invert the selection and fill it with
black. Remove the selection.
I know it looks pretty bad
at this stage, but with a few additions to the head and shoes, plus
a little paint job, it will work very well. File>Save As “Mask.ufo”
and keep it open.
Combining two masks into
one
I am forever indebted to Barry Haynes, author of Photoshop Artistry,
for this next bit of trickery. It took me quite a while to transfer
the technique successfully to PhotoImpact, but it’s a real gem. Select
the original “Ballerina” image. The problem now is there isn’t enough
contrast around the upper head for the Wand to be of much use. So we’ll
do it by hand using the Lasso tool. Once again, we’re looking for contrast
in the Caculation dialog, so open it and choose the Red channel. Choose
Operations: Addition and click OK. Since we’re not concerned with color
at this point, this just produces a brighter image to see. Zoom to 200%.
Uncheck the Snap to Edges box, if checked, and put the Soft edge at
zero.
This is one of those “grunt”
tools, so you just have to be patient. Starting at the lower right neck
click the Lasso tool at various points as close as you can to the edge
of her head and background. Keep in mind that you can’t make a curved
line with this tool, so it takes more points to simulate rounded areas.
If you make a mistake, no problem, just use Backspace to go back as
many clicks as necessary. When you reach the left neck edge move your
cursor to the starting point and click to close the selection path.
Below I’ve outlined my final selection in green to give you an idea
of what your selection should look like.
Go to Part
2
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