Guide for adding soft edges to extracted character portraits
This is Palsa's guide for creating soft edges around character graphics extracted from GUST's games using the lilie tool.
The original forum post is here.
After reading this tutorial, you should read this one, which is a continuation.
Contents |
Introduction
Ok, it took me awhile to get around to this.
I'm going to share a few tricks that I've learned on how to add softened edges to the character portraits.
I'll also cover the techniques that I use to add borders and how I prefer to touch up certain places that look awkward.
This is the picture I will be editing:
As you can see, some of the edges were altered during the decompression process.
Note. The methods I will be using are fairly basic and simple, and will take longer to explain then to actually preform.
Preparation
1. Before you do anything else, go to Canvas Size.
Note how the original size is 384x384?
What I generally do is add a 1 to the highest digit under height.
So 384 height would become 484 height, 700 height would become 800, 950 would become 1050. etc.
But Only the height, we don't have any reason to alter the width.
I also set the placement to Up, so that new section will be added to the bottom of the picture.
2. Temporally switch your selection tool to Add.
And select the section directly under the portrait, only select the areas where the bottom of the portrait touch, leave the transparent sections alone.
3. Now, fill the selected areas with any color.
Note. this is not on the portrait.
It should look something like this when your done:
4. Switch your selection tools mode back to Replace, you do not want to leave it on Add.
Now your ready to start.
Note. When your done editing, just go back to Canvas Size and subtract the extra digit that we added earlier, so 484 returns to 384, you wont have to remove the area below.
A basic outline
1. Choose to Select All, then click on the picture so that it selects only the non-transparent regions
2. Create a new raster layer above the first
3. While you are still selected, go to Select Selection Borders
Choose Inside border, make sure that the border width is set to 1, and anti-alias is set to off.
It should select the very edge of the picture:
Now do you see why we did the 'Preparation' phase?
4. Create a new picture, the size doesn't matter, as long as its solid black
This picture will be used several times, so I'll just call this one the black picture from now to the end.
Copy the black picture and paste it into the selection on the upper layer of our portrait.
Note. 'Past Into Selection' is usually Ctrl+Shift+L, but you should be able to access it from the 'Edit' tab.
5. Deselect the picture and set the layer options for the upper layer to Opacity 75%, and Darken as an effect
And that is how to add a basic outline.
Add a faded outline
Preform actions 1 through 2 of 'A basic border', but instead of adding a border this time, we'll copy from our black layer, and paste it into a feathered selection.
Note. See 'A basic border' for 1 & 2.
3. Fill the selection of the upper layer with black from our black layer.
Note. As before, paste into selection should be Ctrl+Shift+L or on the Edit tab.
It should look something like this:
4. Now, add an Inside/Outside Feather.
It should be set to Inside and the feather amount we need is 2.
Hit Delete to clear the selection, it should look something like this:
5. Adjust the settings on the upper layer so that Opacity is 65%, and Darken is the effect.
Now it should look like this:
And that is how to make a faded outline.
Combining both methods
The best result is by combining both of the above methods and changing the Opacity for 'Both' of the upper layers to 50%.
It should create a more balanced image:
And that is how I generally go about this.
Touching up
A lot of the time the image will have an area that doesn't look right, because it is near a border, but the brightness of the 'Inner Line' is not consistent.
I generally use two tools to fix this.
Paint Brush with the size set to 1.
And the Pen Tool.
Setting up the Pen Tool can be difficult, and almost needs a tutorial of its own, for the basic functions.
For adding transparency to background color, follow the images:
Now, back to touching up.
1. Select either of the uppers layers and add a black pixel over several of the smaller places that need to be fixed.
2. We'll use the Pen Tool for the rest.
If 'Create On Vector' is turned on in the Pen Tool, it will automatically create a new vector layer, we want this.
3. Change the vector layer to Opacity 65%, and leave the effect set to normal.
After using the Pen Tool, you should have something like this:
4. Now, right click on the vector layer to convert it to a raster layer.
5. Select around the transparent areas where you used the Pen Tool and hit the delete button, we do not want any ant-aliasing at this point in time.
The result should look something like this:
Softened edges
Now I can finally get around to the soften edges part of the tutorial.
1. Make sure that you have right clicked on one of the layers and select to 'Merge Visible'.
2. Now that our layers are merged, create a duplicate layer by right clicking on our layer.
3. Toggle the upper layers visibility to make it invisible.
Note. We will be working on the lower layer now.
4. Select all but the transparent regions.
5. Go back to Select Selection Borders, but this time set it to Both Sides and turn Anti-alias on.
As you can see, this time it selected both the inside and outside of the border and added a soft anti-aliasing effect.
6. Add a soften effect to the selection.
It should look something like this:
7. Deselect, and temporarily switch to the upper layer.
Leave it invisible, were not modifying it.
8. Select all of the non-transparent regions on the invisible layer, And Switch Back To The Lower Layer.
9. Go back to Select Selection Border, but this time turn Anti-alias off.
It should look like this:
10. Make the selection black by adjusting the brightness.
It should look like this:
11. Turn the upper layers visibility back on and set the Opacity to 70% with no effect.
And that is how I add a soft edge to the outline. ^_^
Here is what the finished portrait looks like:
Face set for the costume
And here is the entire face set for this costume.
Note. I found a pixel sticking out of the hair that I had apparently missed while making the tutorial, so I fixed it in these.
