Render-Spot

Rendering Tips

So you think you want to cut out images, become a renderer huh?
Well lets start here. First be humble, if you are good people will tell you that you are. I hear it all the time. I get people that contact me via chat all the time from places that I haven't heard of.

Here are a few tips for you.
Learn the pen tool, its what most people use. Its a simple tool really, drop a few points and move some around until you finish it up and close off your path. Start simple, basic logos and shapes until you have a familiarity with it. Then move up to the harder objects like game images and people.

Whats that... How do you cut out effects?
Well that takes some practice. The tool that most people use is the extract tool. Takes some time and maybe a few layers to get it all. There are other programs out there that most people don't know about.These are extensions of the extract tool. One is Fluid Mask by Vertus Tech (http://www.vertustech.com) and will cost you about $200 US dollars.The details that you get is incredible. To bad it does not work with Windows Vista. It does work with Mac though.
The other one is Mask Pro by onOne (http://www.ononesoftware.com) and will run you about $160 US dollars. This one is not as user friendly but does the same thing. This one however does work with Windows Vista and is supposed to work with Mac.
Both of these programs are Photoshop plug-ins and work great. I believe both have a 30 day trial. I have used them both.

What size image should I use? Well thats a good question.
I started out with whatever I could get my hands one to help me practice. Now I look for large demension good to high quality images, the larger the dimension and better quality the better.

Where can I get these images from? Thats another good question.
I use several sites really. One pay site and the other free or semi free. The pay site I use is Game Wallpapers (http://www.gamewallpapers.com) they charge about $15 US dollars a year.
The other sites that I use are E-Wallpapers (http://www.e-wallpapers.de), its a multilingual site that is semi-free.
You have access to alot of wallpapers. This site has more then just games. The reason that they are semi-free is because sometimes they charge for new content and other times they don't. The last one I use is Gamers Gallery (http://www.gamersgallery.com). This site contains alot of game images, from wallpaper to concept art as well as screen captures from the different consoles that the games are one.

What.. Where do I get all these women from?
Well thats my little secret since I get them from two sites. One I have already mentioned and the other I wont let out for now.

How do I cut hair?
Well thats something that is hard to answer. The way I do it is to use either the plug-ins or to use the pen tool.
The plug-ins get all the little strings that hang off the hair while the pen tool will take them off if your not careful.

Now remember to always finish your image. Make sure you all the little spots. There are several techniques that I have posted that a lot of renderers use. So I will post them here again.

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Cleaning
So you think your render is done now its time for the complete clean up process.
Make a second transparent layer and move it under the image to be rendered.
Change the color of the 2nd layer to a color.
the 4 that I use are black, white, light gray, and dark grey.
sometimes I through in a few odd colors to make sure I got everything
(pink, green and what not)
Also to make sure you got all the little pieces around the work area, use the magic wand and it will show you where to clean up at.
This is for the nearly transparent pixels that don't show up on the background color.

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Fixing
So people are complaining that the image quality isnt that good.
You got your image from a comic book or something and its a little pixelated. Time to fix it up.
Step one: Open the file you want to fix up. Do not down-size the image yet. The larger it is, the better (so long as it's not so huge it's slowing down Photoshop).
Go to Image > Adjust > Auto Levels (or Shft+Cntrl+L), and then Image > Adjust > Auto Contrast (Alt+Shft+Cntrl+L). Note--this may appear to do nothing, or, depending on your image, may throw the color off. This just has to be your judgment call. You can try adjusting them yourself on Image > Adjust > Levels, or Image > Adjust > Brightness/Contrast.
Step two: Still don't re-size! Although I didn't do it on my example image, I would take the opportunity now to extract my image and put it on a transparent background. This may just be the easiest time to extract.
Step three: Duplicate your layer. Obviously, keep the two layers aligned.
Step four: If you've extracted the image already, select the bottom copy of the image, by holding down Ctrl while clicking the bottom layer.
Step five: Go to Filter > Blur > Gaussian Blur. Set it between .5 - 1.5. A good rule of thumb? The larger the image, the more you can blur. Also, if your image has more details you want to hold on to, don't blur as much.
Step six: Set your top layer on Soft Light (this will be on your Layers section, next to the layer opacity.
Step seven: Now you can re-size that image! It's important not to shrink your image before you do these steps, or else it may come out looking overly blurred.
Again, all of this will need to be toggled to get it just right, on an image that is close to perfect, this can give a much richer, smoother image without too much work.
It is not really necessary to size the image it does help a little more.

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Remove the Halo
You know when you just finished a render checked it against a few colors and notice that halo around the image. Think to yourself "damn it, now I have to go over it again!!" Well heres the trick:
Magic wand any cleaned area (make sure contiguous is not checked) > Select inverse > Select > Modify > Contract (choose 1 px, press enter) > Back to the render > Select inverse > Press delete one time
That annoying halo is gone. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Smoothing
So you have, Cleaned, Fixed and Removed that halo. However there are some jagged not so smooth spots just keeping your image from being a prem.
All you gotta do is this:
Double the image size > Magic wand the image > Feather 1 px > Resize back to the original size.
You get the feather effect without the blurred look.
Thanks to jesse_boi89 for this tip

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Final Step
Crop your image, all that area where the background used to be is not needed. This will save space and make the size of your image smaller.