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Hello and thanks for your interest in creating OOBs, I am by no means an expert on the subject. I wanted to show other PSP users how this can be done with masked layers.
These images are at 1024 resolution. Click on them to open in a new window/tab and see them in full size.
Lets start by loading the picture in.
First thing I like to do is create a copy of the background, you could also just promote the background to its own layer, but a copy will work nice.
Next we want to create the mask layer on top of the copy we just made. The mask layer will tell the layer below it what to show and what to hide depending on the degree of brightness. Because the mask layer only works with brightness you can only paint on it with black, white, or shades of grey.
Right click the layer and go to "New Mask Layer" and select "Show All".
Now grab the freehand lasso tool and go around the subject. Don't worry about being precise just get close, and if you get too close its not a big problem either
Make sure you have selected the Mask layer.
Now invert the selection, this will give us a selection of everything we really dont want in the final.
At this point make sure the original background layer is "hidden" by clicking the little eye next to it in the layer palette.
* a note here I am Isolating the entire subject you really do not have to, you can just Isolate the parts that are "popping out". I prefer to Isolate the whole thing and save a seperate version of it isolated for future use.
Ok now set you background color to black and hit the delete key to erase the selected area (we really are not erasing anything. when an area of the mask is painted black it hides that portion of the image)
remove our selection by going to selections -> select none, or you can hit control-d
Now comes the fun part, grab the paint brush tool and set the forground color to black and start painting away the background thats left up against the subject.
I use a brush size of aroun 90 here (the original picture is HUGE) and a hardness of around 80.
Here is the beauty and power of masks, if you make any mistakes they are temporary. just set you forground color to white and re-paint the mistake back into the picture.
Here I painted black on the mask over the quarter on purpose to show that it can be fixed, and easy too :)
Finish isolating the subject, best you can.
Ok now we have a nice isolated subject, lets create a new layer on top and call it "frame", we are going to start working on ... the frame!
Grab the rectangle area selection tool and make a selection around the size you want your frame to be.
There are several ways to make the frame border from this point, I am going to do the easiest.
Hold down the control key and "eye" in a smaller box inside your original rectangle selection. this will deselect the center part of the frame (the part we want to see through)
If you make a mistake use undo (control-z) to go back to your solid selection and try again.
Make sure your forground color is set to white and your in the "frame" layer and not in the mask layer no more, never hurts to double check.
Use the flood fill tool to fill in our frame with white.
Now we have a frame but its not "cool" looking like those tilted frames you see in most OOBs
Lets tilt it! Use the perspective coeection tool and make a trapeziod shape (I hold shift when moving the points to lock the plane)
the shape your making is a correction to the layers perspective remember that. So to get the desired result you have to make it upside down. (more narrow on the bottom)
When your pleased with your shape double click it or click the check box up in the tool palette.
Dont look right? Undo and try again. Sometimes I have to use the tool reset in the tool palette to get the desired effect I want.
Now use the deform tool to squish it down a little and make it a little wider this is where your eye for the frame you had in your head comes into play.
Now right click the frames layer and add a new mask that shows all. (just like you did for the subjects layer)
Start painting with black on the places we want to hide. Like where the frame comes in front of the subject.
Tired of the checkerboard transparent background? Well lets make a new one create a new layer and fill it with a gradient. I like to apply the gradient in the same direction as the lighting.
Move the layer with your new background down in the layer palette by dragging and dropping it until its the second from the bottom
Here you can mask back in the subjects background. but only where it is inside the frame.
Do this by selecting the subjects mask layer and painting white. Already its looking 3d
Ok.. whew well done so far now for the shadowing. Let me start by saying each shadow job "may" be different. Sometimes you can just create the shadow layer and slip it under the subject layer, well this is not the case here since the light is coming from the right side.
Use this shadowing section loosely as a guide. You may have to create multiple shadow layers or frame layers or both to get your desired effect.
With that said lets start.
Select the mask layer of the subject and goto selections -> create from mask
This will give you a rough outline of the masked area and there maybe mistakes you will see areas you thought you painted fully but missed. No problem. grab the lasso tool and use/hold the control key to draw areas you want to deselect. Once its clean enough move on.
Create a new layer and fill your selection with solid black.
Using the deform tool skew the layer by grabbing it by the center dot, upper edge while holding the shift key. drag it left some. then release the shift key and shrink the layer some (squish it).
Good shadow so far, very dark though and hard edged.
Lets fix that, first reduce the opacity of the layer by dragging the slider next to the "eye" on the layer palette.
Now goto the "Adjust" menu and select Blur then Gaussian Blur. I use a value of near 25 for this, but depending on the resolution of your subject you may want to use 15 or so.
Again goto the subjects mask layer and create a selection from the mask. We are going to use this selection to erase the shadow from the front of the subject.
* note this step does not need to be done all the time sometimes we can slip the shadow behind the subject layer and be done with it. in this case we can not though
Select the shadow layer again and hit the delete key, then deselect the selection and use the eraser tool on the shadow layer to erase any strange extra shadows
There you go save it, resize it, sharpen it if need be.
Hope this helped shed some light onto masks and how to OOB in Paint Shop Pro.
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