Editing Tutorial

As requested, here is the text/image tutorial of how I edit my screenshots. As a forewarning: this tutorial is NOT meant for Photoshop newbies--if you do not have at least basic knowledge of how to use Photoshop, this tutorial will not teach you!

At certain points, I may direct you to other tutorials to teach you how to do certain techniques I use in this explanation. You may ask me to elaborate on anything those tutorials say that does not make sense, but don't ask me to explain without reading/watching them first.

What I Will Be Using:

• Photoshop CS5 (Download for you scallywags!)
• Topaz Re-Mask 3 (Download for you scallywags!)
• DanLuVisi's Brush Set
• Water Splash Brush Set
• Pioneer Woman Action Set (Just for Slight Lighten)
• Kaleeko's Warm Color-Pop Action

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Part One: A Good Screenshot

While this may seem obvious, it's important to note: you can't use editing to turn a bad screenshot into an amazing picture. It simply is not possible. Editing is used for enhancement; if what you begin with is not worth enhancing, your effort will be wasted.

So, when setting up your game to take a screenshot, here are some things you should pay attention to:

1.) The Rule of Thirds - As most photographers know, the rule of thirds is essentially setting up a shot so that it can be divided into three equal sections both vertically and horizontally, kind of like a tic-tac-toe board. The reason the rule of thirds is important is that it can be used to add "interest" to the image; having the focal point off-center draws the eyes in, and makes the image more visually appealing. For more information on the RoT, read about it here.

As you can see in the diagram above, this image follows the rule of thirds in the following ways:

• Margo's body follows the left vertical line
• Bean extends across 2/3's of the image
• Although it would have been better if the image had been slightly more tilted, the horizon almost flows from the bottom horizontal line to the top one

Try to maintain consciously aware of where the subject of the image is when taking the shot, to ensure you aren't just haphazardly placing the subject in the image. Following where the 'thirds' lines fall will really help accentuate the subject in your image.

2.) Composition - The contents of the picture are important to making sure it remains visually appealing. While this seems like an obvious conclusion, it is something a lot of people seem to miss, so I'll break down some of the elements to pay attention to when setting up:

• Color: Try to keep the color palette of the image as simple as possible. "Less is more!" With outdoor shots, green tends to be an unavoidable color--so in the case of this shot, I went with: Green, Black, and Red, with a touch of Blue in the Sky/Water. If I had added flowers, as I did in this shot, I would have kept them red with this scheme. The cleaner the color scheme, the less distraction there is in the image.
• Avoid Clutter: Now, when I say avoid clutter, I don't mean "No Clutter Decor!" Clutter Decor can keep things realistic--but keep it realistic, not distracting. "General" Clutter can be as simple as an errant toy laying on the ground, to a sim looking lifeless in the background. There's a point where adding objects to an image subtracts from how good it looks, so keep a balance. Complex images look messy--again, less is more. Make every part of the image intentional!
• Perspective: Familiarize yourself with Tab Mode, and get good at it. Similar as with the Rule of Thirds, looking at a subject from certain angles--above, below, slightly skewed--adds interest to the image. Interest means it looks better to the eyes. Use it!
• Lighting: Light is good. Shadows are good. Dark images suck, but too much light can also make an image look flat. Try to find a balance; pick a direction (or two) for light to come from, and if indoors/at night, place floor lamps on the ground (outside of view) to light the subject to give it depth and make it more visible.

3.) Graphic Settings - This is the one that everyone is always thinking is what makes my shots look so pretty--and yes, it does help. But it is not out of the realm of possibility for you to achieve, as long as you try! It's not like my computer is a brand new shiny model, either.

• Resolution: Play at the highest resolution you can without distortion, and play it at fullscreen. When you resize screenshots down, it preserves some of the quality of playing at a high resolution, so they will look clearer and smoother. It will help get rid of some of the hard, pixellated edges in your shots. Bigger Is Better!
• Card Settings: Find out what graphics card you use, and look up how to improve its settings on the manufacturer's website. Don't crank it up to max--you don't want to burn it out--but find certain settings like "Smooth Edges" and bump them up.

Alright, once you have yourself a pretty good shot to work with, now you can start messing with it!

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Part Two: Image Alterations

This is a good time to make the alterations to the image that you need to make BEFORE doing the distance blur. In this case, it is a) merging two screenshots to add Margo's helmet to the image, and b) adding clouds into the sky.

Any other changes made to the backdrop should go here. Changes to the subject should wait until after the distance is blurred (since it will be harder to blur around them than to simply paint them over what is already blurred.)

- The first thing I generally do is merge any two screenshots that I need to merge--usually, it's to combine a riding helmet and a hairstyle, since Margo's hair is way too bushy to hide under a helmet.
-I won't go into detail on how I do this here, as I've already done a tutorial on it--click here to read that!

- Even with the right mods, the skies in TS3 look a bit bland, so for competition photos it's nice to add in some clouds. So, first--find a relatively SIMPLE image of the sky (bulky clouds are distracting) that has the right perspective (towards the horizon), and copy-paste it into the document on a new layer.

- Using the Transform tool (ctrl-T), stretch the sky to fit the width of the screenshot, and then move it up so that the section of the clouds you want to show is on top of where the sky peeks through the trees.
- After it's positioned properly, make the layer invisible so you can see the screenshot.

- Using the Magic Wand tool, select all parts of the sky you can see. This can be a bit time consuming, so setting the "Tolerance" to a higher number (20-30) and unselecting "Contiguous" can help select it faster. Just remember to unselect any parts of the image that AREN'T sky (like the reflection in the water).

- Invert the selection. (Select->Inverse, or ctrl-shift-I).
- Select the sky layer; make it visible again.
- Delete the selection--ta da! The sky has clouds!

- At first though, the sky looks a bit too bold and distracting--so under the Hue & Saturation panel (ctrl-U), lighten the layer and move the blue away from the green end of the spectrum and more towards purple. (It's not just personal preference--it needs to match the blue in the water's reflection.)

- Almost finished! The sky is still a little bit too distracting--the clouds are too white, the blue a bit too bold. So, lower the opacity on the sky layer a little bit.
- Flatten the image.

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Part Three: Distance Blur

This part is going to start becoming VERY confusing, so pay close attention! It is not very difficult, but showing how to do this is a bit tricky and may not make much sense if you don't have prior experience in working with Channel layers.

This is also where the Topaz Remask 3 Plug-In comes into play--if you do not have it, there are alternative methods, which I discuss in my previous tutorial (video), but for now I will explain how I currently blur my background, as it's a bit more efficient.

- This is the Topaz Remask window--you reach it by the menu Filter->Topaz Labs->Topaz Remask... - I am NOT going to explain how this works, as this very brief but very explanatory video will show that better than I could ever explain.
- As you can see in the image--the "Keep" areas (Green) include the subject and the ground beneath her, the "Discard" areas (Red) include the background, and the "Process" (Blue) serves as a border, telling the plug-in to try and find the edge of the subject.
- After quickly painting this in, hit "Compute", and it will create the 'Rough Mask'.

- At this point, you can refine it. As the video shows, you can paint with red, green, or blue brushes to refine the mask; switching between the 'Panels' at the top will give you a better idea of what is included in the mask and what isn't. In this case, there's a lot of gobble-dee-gook around the arms and back, so I need to paint that in red so it won't show on the 'Keep' Panel.

- Make sure that all areas you wish to remain in-focus are clear and precise. Refine the edges as well as you can. In some cases, you can be a little lazy (like I am around the helmet in this case--the sky doesn't really need to be blurry), but the more careful you are, the better this will look.
- Remember: Everything you want to remain "in-focus" should show up in the Keep panel! It should include the Subject, the Ground, and Any Object the same distance away as them.
- After you've finished, you can hit 'Okay'--and as you may have noticed, it created a new layer on top of the Background layer.

- At this point, there are several ways you can proceed; you can blur the Background layer with the 'Gaussian Blur' filter, hand-blur it with the Blur Brush, or you can do what I'm about to do--this is not necessarily the best method, but it's how I like to do it, so that's what I'm going to show you. :)
- Create a blank white layer underneath the layer created by Remask.

- Using the Hue & Saturation Panel (ctrl-U), darken the Mask layer completely until it is black, like so.
- Merge the Mask layer and the White layer together (ctrl-E).
- Select all, ctrl-c to copy, then delete that layer so that all that remains is the screenshot.

- Switch to the "Channels" pane on the right side of the screen, next to the Layers tab. (You may need to go under the menu Window->Channels to get it to show up.)
- At the bottom of the pane, hit the "Create New Channel" button (OR "New Layer from Selection").
- Paste (ctrl-V) your copied mask into this new channel layer--it will make the image appear partially red, like in the image above.

- The parts of the image that are red are those that will NOT be affected by the blur.
- The edge of the blur along the ground is not very smooth, so here, use a big, fuzzy brush (the 'Lighting Brush' from DanLuVisi's brush pack) to paint along the edge, and to lightly paint the nearby tree.

- The reason you need to do this becomes apparent if you hide the RBG layers in the Channels pane. What is Black will remain in focus; what is White will become blurred; any shades of gray inbetween will only be partially blurred. It's important to make sure the ground underneath the subject is black, as well as anything the same distance away, but as things get further from the "cameraman" (or incredibly close) they will get further out of focus.
- This is done to create the 'distance' effect; as things become further and further away, they become more and more blurry, thus you want the blur effect to be 'gradual'.
- Again: Use shades of gray to create the illusion of distance, and make sure the blurring on the ground is smooth/gradual and has no sharp edges.

- After painting the channel layer, select the 'RBG' layer, then go to the menu Filter->Blur->Lens Blur...
- This window will appear--the most important things to make sure of are a) the source is set to "Alpha 1", and b) the Radius is set between 6 and 12.
- The "Radius" will define how blurry the backdrop will become; don't go crazy with this! I normally have mine set to 8 or 9, but this will vary depending on your screenshot's size. You don't have to blur very much to give a nice effect--often a subtle blur will look better than a heavy blur, so don't set this too high.

- After hitting 'Okay', you'll probably notice the image is not perfect. Depending on how well you set up the initial mask (sloppily, if you're like me), you'll have to do a bit of touch up work.

- Using the Blur Brush at a very small size (5-8px) clean up the edges around the subject.

- Try to avoid blurring the edges of the subject--just blur the parts of the background that have little "specks" and foliage that is still in-focus.

- Be very, very mindful of this. It is VERY important to clean these up; even one or two missed spots can make the image look crappy.
- I AM SERIOUS. Please, don't even bother to blur the backdrop if you aren't patient enough to make it look good. It will make people's eyes bleed.

- Tada! Lookin' good!
- It's okay if it's not 100% perfect, but if you intend to blur the backdrop, this is worth spending some time on. I spent about 5 minutes blurring this image--think how much better it'd look if I had been more precise?

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Part Four: Tack and Mane

I won't lie--when it comes to painting tack and hair, I am not the best. If you want to learn how to do a really good job, I suggest visiting another tutorial--however, I will show you how I do mine, because it's fairly easy and doesn't take very long.

- First, learn how to use the Pen Tool. It is fabulous.
- Don't know where to learn? This is a great tutorial. Go read it!
- Once you know how it works, use the pen tool to plot the path of the reins. Make sure the bit connects with the hands, and has the correct amount of slack, or lack thereof.
- This screenshot is a bad example, since the reins are taut, but if you need to, look up pictures of reins to get a better idea of how reins slope when affected by gravity.

- Create a new, empty layer.
- Make sure your brush is set to the correct color (this case = black) and size (in this case, it was about 6 px). For the reins, I used the "Hard Ink Brush" included in DanLuVisi's pack, but any solid brush will do.
- Right-click the image, and hit 'Stroke Path'. Do NOT select 'Simulate Pressure'; you want the reins to be the same thickness all along the path. Make sure 'Brush' is selected from the menu, and hit Okay.
- Right-click the image again and hit 'Delete Path'.

- If you want, you can go in with the Eraser and change the thickness of the lines, or go back in with the Brush tool and correct the reins in more precise areas like the hands and around the bit.

- Now, do the same for the stirrups; this time, make sure the color is gray.

- Repeat the process until you have both the stirrup and the strap.

- Because I drew the whole stirrup and not just the parts that show, I had to go back in, select the areas that should be behind the boot, and delete them. Make sure to do that, as well.

- Using a small brush size, paint a white 'shine' highlight on one side of the stirrup, and a dark shadow on the other side with black.
- If you need to, create a layer beneath this one, and lightly paint in any other shadows or highlights for the rest of the tack, such as shadows cast by the reins or stirrups. (In this case, I didn't need any, as both the tack and Bean are black.)

- Create a new layer.
- This is where DanLuVisi's pack really shines--the "Painting" brushes. Select the 'Detailing Painting Brush', and with the correct color for the mane, paint in the shape of the hair. (Note: this may be a bit difficult for those who do not have tablets--and the brush may not be as useful for those without tablets, as well. Sorry! :( )
- When painting hair, make sure to draw it together in 'clumps' and not strands; hair tends to stick together, so while there will be errant fly-aways, the majority of the mane will probably fall into locks and clumps. Think of them as small, wiggly shark fins!

- Start painting inside of the lines. For black manes, this is fairly easy, as they tend to be rather monotone; with other colors, you may notice how well this brush works for painting individual strands.

- Once all the clumps are painted in, it should look a bit like this...

- ... at which point, you can start to add in little fly-aways, thicken the base of the mane, and just in general make it look a little bit more like hair.

- Create a new layer on top of the Mane layer.
- Switch the brush color to White, and begin painting in the highlights on the hair.
- Notice how the highlights only appear on one side of the locks; it's important that when you paint highlights into hair, that they be bright only on the side where the light is coming from.

- The highlights might turn out a little bit too white, if you are painting with a high opacity; this is easy to fix, simply by setting the opacity of the whole layer down to about 20-30%.
- For certain colors of hair, you can repeat this several times to gradually add more and more highlight; you can also set the layer styles to "Overlay" or "Soft Light", to give a slightly different effect on how the highlight affects the hair.

- After you've finished with the highlights, switch back to the Mane layer, and with the Big Fuzzy Brush type on the Eraser brush (set at a low Opacity, about 20%), gently erase the tips of the mane. This will give the hair more of a 'wispy' look, and prevent the ends of the hair from looking a bit too thick and fake.
- Resize the Eraser tool to very small (about 2-5px wide), and erase small lines in various parts of the clumps of hair. This will give the clumps look a bit less thick and chunky, and give some space between some of the hairs. Don't do too much; just a few lines here and there, to break them up a little bit!

- Congratulations! You now have new reins and a shiny new mane.
- If you desire, you can also fix up the tail--however, I did not for the sake of this tutorial, as I am quite bad at tails. ;)

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Part Five: Misc Effects

This would be a good time to add any other effects to the image you might want to add, such as dirt being kicked up, or splashing water. As I got a couple of questions about how I did the water in my Cross Country images, I'll show, here.

- Install the "Water Splash Brush Pack" linked in the first section of this tutorial. You will find dozens of different water shapes! Find 3-4 that you like.
- Create a new layer.
- Set the Brush opacity fairly low, and the brush color to White.
- Paint on the first splash, at the water level around the horse's foot.

- Select a different splash; make it a bit of a different size as the other splash, and this time, click the mouse a few times to increase the opacity of the second splash, so it looks a bit whiter.

- Add on a third one! Really--the more depth and levels to the water, the more dimensional it looks. When you splash water, it comes up in several waves, so it's important to give a few of them.

- If your image is at an angle like mine is, Transform the splash layer (ctrl-T) and tilt it to match the direction of the horizon.

- Add a few more splash particle effects. To do this, select the "Texture" brush from DanLuVisi's brush pack; paint lightly away from the splash, with a slightly heavier concentration near the impact on the water.
- At this point, you should have a fairly realistic looking water splash!

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Part Six: Actions

This is where you'll want to use whatever actions you like to use on your image--but for the purposes of this tutorial, I'll use the ones that I normally use: the Slight Lighten action from the Pioneer Woman Action Pack, and the Warm Color-Pop Action I made.

- First, I use Slight Lighten.

- Then, I use the Warm Color-Pop--but, unfortunately, it's a little bit TOO warm for my tastes, on this image!

- After tweaking the opacity on several layers (namely Color Balance and Curves), the image looks like this. SUCCESS!
- Flatten the image, and resize to the desired width.

At this point, this image is DONE. However, for the purpose of showing a greater how-to, there is one more thing I will show you guys how I do: Lens Flare.

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Part Seven: Lens Flare

As an important note about Lens Flaring: DO NOT Lens Flare every image, even outdoor images! In fact, this image should NOT have a Lens Flare, but for the purposes of being a good tutorial, I would like to show you guys how to do it properly so it looks nice!
The first thing to know about Lens Flares is what causes them: Light Sources. Lens Flares do not come from plants, open skies, or horse butts. The most common light source: the sun. If the sun appears in your screenshot? Increase the sun's brightness, and place the Lens Flare coming out of it.
It is also possible for lens flares to be caused by bright artificial light, and rarely by the reflection of a very bright light off of a shiny surface--but, when in doubt, don't use it. They look cool, but as with Background Blurring, if you don't do it properly, it can detract from an image rather than add to it. Use your best judgement; you can ignore my advice and do whatever, but... well. You did come to me for advice! ;)

- The first thing to do when creating a lens flare is to increase the amount of light from the light source by artificially drawing in the brightness.
- To do this, with the 'Big Fuzzy Brush' set to a medium opacity and the color white, lightly paint in the area around the light source. In this case, I artificially added sunlight coming in from below the horse's head.
- Note: when adding light coming in 'around' objects, it's okay to have the white bleed into the object (ie, paint the white lightly around the edge of the horse's neck). In real life, light bends around objects, which is why they appear to glow next to bright light source.
- In this case, there also needs to be reflection of this new light source on the water, so I painted in some white reflecting off of the surface in certain areas.

- To give the water depth and the ilusion of having light penetrating through it, I created a new layer, set it to Overlay, and used the same brush settings to paint over the area where the sun is hitting the water.
- The increased shine makes the colors pop a bit brighter, so they appear more golden and more blue, depending on the color of the water. (This also further brightens the white streaks on the water.)

- Now, you can finally add the lens flare.
- Small lens flares look a bit silly, so if you're putting it on top of the sun (like you should be, *staredown*), be sure to set the width to somewhere between 80-140%, or even bigger if the sky is that dominant in the image.
- Go ahead and flatten the image again--and resize, if you did not resize it before.
- YOU'RE DONE! Save, rinse, and repeat on a new picture! :)

Thank you for reading this tutorial! If you have any questions, feel free to ask me:

- On the Thread on the Equus Forums
- In my Ask Box on Tumblr
- In the Comments Below!

Hope you guys found this at least semi-helpful!