If you’ve seen the image board thread of this, you know where it came from. I’m basically just copy and pasting so that there’s a place for these long after the thread disappears. For today, we have 2 tips for you.
~~~
Raw Setup Macros
This one is purely optional, but it can help you keep your PSDs more organized and ease the process of starting new edits.
For myself at least, there are several things that I want to do when I start editing a new page: applying the leveling values for that particular doujin, creating my edits layer, creating an unlocked copy of the raw layer, and setting up a layer set for Text with subfolders for Speech and SFX. This is quite a number of steps to go through for each page, but with a macro I can click one button and get everything set up and labeled in about fifteen seconds.
In order to do this, you’ll need to have your levels file saved off first.
1. Open the first file, then on your History window (you can turn it on from the Window menu if you don’t see it) select the Actions tab – it’ll look like the attached image.
2. Hit the button I’ve marked in blue – this is the “New Action” button. It’ll prompt you to name your action; the other options here aren’t important to us. Call it whatever you like, then move on.
3. Next, hit the Record button (marked in red). While recording, follow the exact steps you want the macro to follow – for myself, I create my layer sets, then duplicate the background, delete the original, and apply the levels file, then create and name my edits layer. Once all of this is done, hit the Stop button on the actions window (to the left of Record).
To use the recorded macro, you can just load up a new image and hit the Play button (in green) to run through all of the previously recorded actions. Now your image is leveled and ready for editing, with whatever customized options you yourself use when you’re working.
Misaligned Lines
AKA “Dammit, I missed!”
Ever tried cloning a straight line, only to find out that what you thought was lined up wasn’t? (see the area circled in red) Annoying to have to restart from the beginning, especially when the line IS actually straight, it just doesn’t meet up – and there’s no guarantee that you’ll get it to line up right the -next- time, either.
Well, you don’t have to.
1. Start by using the Polygonal Lasso tool to select the segment of line that’s misaligned. In this image, the clone started close to the point I’ve circled in green, so I started the selection area there. Any point that’s decently lined up will work, however; the farther away it is from the disjoint, the better.
Be sure that the end of your selected area goes exactly across the break, though, or as close to it as you can manage – you don’t want to leave anything behind or pick up anything that’s aligned.
2. With your selected area, select Free Transform (Ctrl+T, or Edit->Free Transform).
3. You’ll notice a little dot in the center of the transform area; this is your center of rotation. Move this all the way to the end of the transform area, on top of the line that’s misaligned. You may need to press Alt to get it to drag (mine can be a little weird sometimes, or I’d be more precise).
4. Go up to the tool status bar at the top and put the cursor on the Angle value (just to the right of the horizontal image size). Use the mouse wheel, or enter in values, to rotate the image a bit – clockwise is positive values, counterclockwise is negative.
5. Once your line looks aligned, go ahead and complete the transformation. If it still doesn’t quite line up, just undo it and do it over again, tweaking your angle as needed.
Once it’s done, you’ll probably still need to do a bit of cleanup with a white brush or the eraser tool, but it’s a lot easier than the crapshoot of trying to get the line to realign correctly from the beginning again.
Comments are closed.