I introduced myself to Firework’s sibling Adobe Photoshop over the Christmas break, and I realized that I may need a PhD candidate student beside me just to help me change the background color of my beginning canvas. This inferiority complex was with me as I approached our introduction to Fireworks in class last week. But to my relief, I found that this newer graphics program was a lot more user-friendly than its predecessor, and definitely a lot less intimidating. Our Professor, after a couple of classes of general overview, imparted on us two assignments that I would like to share with you. They are not too complicated, but like all graphics work, they require concentration and oodles of patience.
So our first assignment was to get rid of all the background from this image of the soccer player, and clean up the edges to make the image look sharp.
The tools I used to erase the background were the magic wand and the eraser. By simply clicking anywhere on the image with the magic wand tool selected, an area of the background was highlighted in dazzling dotted lines. I then proceeded to hit the delete key, and viola, that section of the background disappeared. This step was repeated many times until the majority of the background was gone. During this process, you may want to use the Tolerance button found below the canvas, to give yourself some leeway, but either way you are going to end up with jagged edges, and this is where the eraser comes in (and those oodles of patience that I mentioned earlier).
First, select the zoom tool and go to the 600% setting. I found this the best for getting rid of those jagged edges. These edges are basically white, so the task is to erase any white pixels surrounding the soccer player. With my eraser set to 2, I proceeded to erase any leftover background from the magic wand, and then all white pixels. This is where patience and deep breaths come into play, and where you will meet the most important button in your life, the SAVE. It is vital that after erasing each pain-staking white pixel from the soccer player’s outline you click the save button to ensure that you do not have to repeat the process. So erase a little section at a time, save, and proceed. However, a neat trick in case you do accidentally erase the player’s eye resulting from a nervous twitch, is to use the rubber stamp button to replace what you have accidentally erased (more on this to follow).
So two hours later, I found myself looking at the soccer player devoid of all the white pixels that was ever created by mankind (or so I thought). How much time and detail you want to spend on this is entirely up to you, your eye for detail, or your boss or professor. I called it quits when I ran out of Valium and when I determined that the image would stand up in court as a clean and jagged-less entity. This was a tedious but rewarding endeavor, but an experience that I needed to add to my Fireworks knowledge. After deciding on a new background, here is the final product….
My second assignment turned out to be a lot more fun than the first and it took a lot less time. My task was to erase the black line on the top part of the bird image and secondly to add one more bird to the image. The tool I used for this assignment was the rubber stamp. My aim here was to ‘copy’ a section of the blue sky and ‘paste’ it on the black line that was intruding on the pretty picture. So select the rubber stamp tool, hold down the ALT key and click the part of the blue sky that you want to copy. Then, using the drop-down list to control the size of the rubber stamp, click on the area that you want to rubber stamp to, so click on the black line. Each time I clicked, the black line was replaced with blue sky. I repeated this process until the black line was completely gone.
Now to add a bird on the wire was a little bit trickier. The objective here is to basically copy the bird on the far left and put that copy of the bird sitting comfortably on the wire next to his friends. After a few tries, I realized that I have to ALT+ click a spot just above the bird’s head and then click the spot where you want to begin using the rubber stamp. I chose about an inch to the right of the first bird and a little bit up. This is definitely a trial and error assignment. So Alt+ click just a bit above the first bird’s head, click the area where you believe to be the point where the ‘new’ bird’s head begins, and slowly wave your mouse left to right gradually moving downwards towards the wire. You should see the bird appear as you wave the mouse. When the cloned bird reveals itself it is more than likely that it is not sitting on the wire, but off a few pixels. Just undo and repeat the process until the bird is sitting perfectly on top of the wire and until the wire segments match up. I finally achieved success after my fourth attempt. The rubber stamp is a fantastic tool with many uses. Here is the finished product…
Canary In A Goldmine 