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[astridv]

Any of you who know your way around Photoshop/Paint Shop Pro... if I want to take drawing A and overlay it over background B, what do I have to do to get rid of that annoying thin white line around the silhouette? Short of retouching ever single pixel, I mean.

I varied the tolerance when I cut it out of the white background, but I cannot get rid of the damned line. Any ideas? (I've done _very_ little previous work with these kind of programmes. As you may have guessed. Ahem.)

Comments

[rahirah]

Do you have anti-aliasing turned on? That'll help.

[astridv.livejournal.com]

Anti-aliasing? I haven't even heard of it, so it's probably not turned on. Thanks, I'll see if I can find something like that in my program.

[astridv.livejournal.com]

Um... can you tell me where I find that anti-aliasing tool? I just installed my newly-purchased copy of Photoshop (have been using Paint Shop Pro so far) and I couldn't see anything like it.

Unfortunately my PS is in German, even though I told it to install the English version.

One thing is sure... had I done the background the traditional way, it'd be done by now. Sigh.

[rahirah]

Anti-aliasing isn't a separate tool. It's an option on several tools which basically means that when you select something, the program will smooth the edges of the selection. Instead of a sharp pixelated edge, you get a smooth gradient when you paste the selection onto something else. Depending upon how high your tolerance is set, you will have anything from a virtually invisible blend line to a very noticeable one.

If you pull up the little info box for any tool which allows you to select an area, there will be several little check boxes or drop-down menus which you can use to tell the tool how to behave. In PS7, these various options appear in a toolbar at the top of the workspace when you use a tool. In earlier versions of the program, you have to double-click on the tool palette to bring up the info box for a tool.

When your tool info is up, see if anti-aliasing is checked (it probably is, otherwise you'd be getting the opposite problem, a pixilated, ragged edge). Look for another check box which says "tolerance" and set that to zero.

Now use the tool to make your selection, copy, and paste.

Your white line problem whould be greatly reduced. The only way to eliminate it entirely is to turn anti-aliasing off altogether, but that will give you some pixelation--which, considering the darkness of your background, may not be a problem at all in this case.

[astridv.livejournal.com]

Thank you! That sounds very helpful. I'll print that out, tinker with the settings some more.

[estepheia.livejournal.com]

God, the Angel puppet is so... Angel. LOL.

Your book arrived, btw, thank you very much. :-)

The kids enjoyed it a lot.

[astridv.livejournal.com]

They enjoy it? That's great. :o)

[jwaneeta.livejournal.com]

I've had the same problem in the past. I believe Rahira's right about the anti-aliasing. I don't know why I've never used it -- stubborn, maybe. And lazy. And I have a good dose of Luddite fear. :) I've usually gone the pixel-by-pixel route, which really doesn't yield very good results anyway.

That dumb white line turned one of my recent fan projects into a real pain. I'll have to check out a-a next time I'm in PS.

[astridv.livejournal.com]

luddite... hah, learned a new word today. Yeah, goes for me double, but my inherent laziness and lack of patience definitely overwhelms in this case. The mere thought of correcting every little pixel gives me hives ;o). I'll try that thing Barb suggested.

It's really incredibly time consuming to work with graphic programs if you've used them as little as I have, but I figure that this will pay off in the long run. Once I figure out how to make it work. So I shall tackle the problem some more. *rolls up sleeves*.

Gah, forgot to say -- great pic!

Thanks. I'm mostly pleased with it myself, though I think it doesn't work as well as I'd hoped in a small format... I'd though I'd be able to use it as some kind of icon/banner/cover-thingy or something, to link to the comic. Look here, here's a detail in a larger size...


Spike is really damned difficult to get just right, for someone with such distinctive features. For a smaller format, I think I'll have to simplify the features more. Tricky. But then, I like a challenge. :)

[astridv.livejournal.com]

That's weird... oh, typo. Here we go again...

[jwaneeta.livejournal.com]

Gah, forgot to say -- great pic!

[damnskippytoo.livejournal.com]

Hmm, don't know how I got here. Just clicking through various friends. Anyway, about the white edges, in Photoshop you can do something called "defringing." Select the layer with the cut-out image, go to layers > matting > defringe. A pop-up box will let you select the number of pixels around the image to get rid of. There may be a stray pixel you might have to manually erase, but it usually works really well.

Great drawings, btw. I don't anything about drawing for comics, but these look fantastic.

[astridv.livejournal.com]

Oh, thanks a lot. That sounds fairly easy; I'll definitely give it a try when I check out the program.

in Photoshop you can do something called "defringing."

You know you spend too much time on LiveJournal when you read that as "defriending" at first...