background colors

[OFD678]

I have 3 layers with the background layer a picture of my daughter swinging the bat. The 2 other layers are progressive swings. I was just playing with the background colors and can't get them to apply to the whole background. It will apply to layers 2 and 3. I have dragged it around in the pallete, but seems the background is protected. I do have a duplicate layer for my background and it is not locked.

Under the same theme, I tried to use the paint brush to make circles around poor techniques of her batting. when I circle the color shows on the background portion, but doens't show on the part where I copy and pasted her.

I really have tried to read up on this, I think it has to do with fill layers ( I added a fill layer for the background color). Just can't find it.

thanks
Brent

[Wendy]

Brent ...

I think that it may be easier if you open up your layers palette, take a screen shot of it and then post it to Pixentral. It may be easier to see what is going on in there.

I suspect that with the paint brush you are painting on a layer that is below the two images you added ... try adding a layer on top of everything else and you should then be able to paint the circles OK. I suspect that this may also be the problem with the bacckgroundd colours ...

http://www.pixentral.com/index.php

Wendy

[OFD678]

Hi Wendy,

I will try that. I am a firemen so I have some downtime at the firestation to work on this, but not sure if I can upload stuff from here. I will give it a try when things slow down later.

thanks
Brent

[Wendy]

OK Brent ... :)

Wendy

[OFD678]

http://www.pixentral.com/show.php?picture=18CedqA9TsfECGerCNbTowG3MCtvg

After I did this, I realized that you wanted a screen shot. I have not idea how to do that. I am working off one off line computer, copy to a jump drive and then use another computer that is online.

Can I do it that way? or does it complicate it too much?

anyway, here is the pic. Not very good, but 2nd try.

thanks.

[Wendy]

Hi Brent ...

Its coming along very well ...

Take a look in your layers palette and you should have from the top down

Figure three
figure two
Figure one
Background image


Now any text you do needs to be on its own layer and above the figure 3 layer and if you want to add circles then you need to create a new layer and paint on that. That layer need to be above Figure 3 also.

Imagine those layers are sheets of paper
and they have transparent areas
so anything that is below a solid part (like the child) just wont show
if you drag it above the child layer then it will ..

Hope this helps :)

Wendy

[bwolford]

I think you are well on your way to an excellent image.

I'd like to suggest you line up the images to overlay them (the transparencies Wendy mentioned) so that the feet don't move across the image. Thing of the pivot point of the toe on her right foot and plant it in the same place in the image in each layer.

Brice

[OFD678]

Is that basically done by "eye" or is there a more technical way of linging things up. Thanks.

[bwolford]

I do it by eye. I try to visualize the motion taken by the subject and sometimes I'll print a fastdraft picture of the subject and actually draw lines showing where their motion would be going.

I also just overlay the pictures on each other and adjust the transparency of the pictures on top so I can see the reference points common in both pictures. I line up the reference points and the subject is properly positioned. For example in this picture, I used the vault table under the girl as a reference.

As you can see by the rough line I drew in I knew the track her hands should take throughout the move.
http://img437.imageshack.us/img437/2218/vaulter3tx.gif


By using the vault table the hands lined up quite nicely.

Brice
P.S. She got a .05 - .1 deduction for the butterfly of her feet on the mount of the vault... :)

[OFD678]

That looks really nice! How do you select your subject? I have played with the image exactor, but have a hard time getting such clean lines like your picture has. Maybe it is just practice, but looks great.

[bwolford]

I have a Wacom Tablet which really helps. One technique I use is simply duplicating the layer and then carefull erasing everything I don't want. It's time consuming, but I've found the "Magic extractor" to be a "works well if you have the right kind of image extractor" and almost always requires a lot of clean up unless the background is very simple.

Bottom line, it's practice, practice, practice. If you saw the original full sized image you can see some of the flaws of the extraction.

Brice