Sunday, March 29, 2015

Issue Four Production Post Five

I'm finally back from the land of the undead (flu bug). I've finished all renders for Issue Four and have locked down the page panels. Word balloons are currently in placement and I need to think of a cover idea in the next few weeks. I'm pleased to at last have this latest adventure done, as it was really bogging (me) down after the holidays; I'm proud of all the hard work and the results show.

Here's a page from Issue Four to give you a taste of what's to come. Enjoy!

Saturday, March 7, 2015

Photoshop Compositing from DAZ Studio

A few stream of consciousness tips for Photoshop compositing:
—Start with your render from DAZ Studio, which I do at mostly 9000 X 6000 DPI, saving as PNG (this will be at 72 DPI and consequently huge in dimensions, but that's okay as you'll reduce it later).



—PNG preserves transparencies (alpha channels), essential for compositing backgrounds, secondary images, etc., and is a lossless file format—never, EVER save as jpeg.

























—Open image PNG in Photoshop, duplicate layer into new document, save as PSD at 72 DPI.





















—Do all editing with multiple layers, never altering original layer; layers are your best friends.






















—Layer masks are your second-best friends; use the paint brush for opacity (white), transparency
(black) and shades of gray (semi-transparent) instead of the destructive usage of the eraser.






















These are the basics for DAZ layers in Photoshop. I'll have more tips soon.