Natalie,
For the sake of terminology, all images must be square – there are no oval images, only images that appear oval.
So what you do is create your oval on a transparent background. There are a bunch of ways to do this, but for the sake of simplicity, create a new image and make sure that Transparent is toggled in the File|New dialog box. Draw an oval with your elliptical marquee, then fill with your color. With the oval still selected, you can Edit|Stroke to give it your black line, or add a layer effect from the layers pallet.
Now you have a square image that has an oval fill. If you drag that over to another open image, it will retain its transparency.
Peace,
Tony
GMTA Colin. Impeccible timing.
Tony, I’m slightly confused (nothing new there)
If Natalie has a photo that she wants to be an oval, couldn’t she just have a new document open and then on the photo document use the oval marqui to select the area and then move it to the new document and then do the blend menu and select stroke.
Just askin’
Patty
Yes Patty, that’s exactly what I’d suggest – if it’s just another PS doc she wants. However, if it’s going to be exported to something outside of PS, she will need to start worrying about transparency and stuff like taht.
Hi Patty,
Yes, she could. I was trying to take into account that she hadn’t used PS for this kind of thing and was more than anything, demonstrating the principle of images being square, and transparency.
The fact is, we don’t really have enough information to guide her exactly *how* to do it because that depends, to some extent on the intent of the image. Does she need it vector? Then she might be better off using a shape layer.
Your way works too. She could use a layer or she might want to draw directly on the image – too many variables to say what’s best at this point.
In photoshop, there are at lease three ways to do anything. <grin>
Peace,
Tony
I get it Colin,
Depending upon what program will receive the image for printing…
Don’t know much about programs outside of PS—heck, don’t know a whole lot about inside PS, look forward to hearing what she will use and what you "smart people" suggest!
Patty
Again, my point of "intent". Hard to recommend anything. She could be printing directly from photoshop….
Tony, Colin and Robert,
I’m sure there is some specific terminology for this occurrence—(perhaps "bump")??—as I’m typing my "duh, slapping of the forehead" comment to Colin; all of you post things that I wasn’t aware of and didn’t understand, until now….
Not trying to say I "get the big picture", but enough to have a few twinkling lights going off.
I’m sure Natalie will appreciate the info, and I know I sure enjoyed it.
Patty
Thanks, everyone.
Most of the methods you explained are Greek to me, but I will definitely give them a shot.
To clarify, I am creating a CMYK newsletter banner directly in Photoshop. I plan to save the entire completed banner as either a JPEG or a TIFF, then either print directly from Photoshop or place onto a Pagemaker document and print from there.
To create my banner, I have started with a dark blue/light blue colored gradient background to which I wish to place text ("Baldwin Park Now" and some subtext) along with a photo (of the community center). After all elements have been placed, I will flatten the image and convert from a PSD to JPEG or TIFF for use.
The challenge lies in making the image (comm. ctr. photo) appear as an oval, as if it were cropped that way, for insertion into the banner. It would seem that there should be a very simple, straightforward way to do this.
~N
In PS, you can "crop" the contents of a layer to be any shape you like using the methods described.
BTW, why are you using CMYK? How are you planning to print?
Okay Natalie that helps.
First, some "no-no’s". Do NOT save as JPG. Use JPG as a FINAL Output Format only, not for editing. Use Tiff instead.
Second, if you are printing from photoshop or pagemaker to your printer, DO NOT use CMYK. Use RGB unless you have something special for your particular printer (A PostScrip RIP). If you don’t know what that is, definately use RGB.
Next, decide where you are going to print from. If it’s Pagemaker, and you are creating things in Photoshop, you will need to prepare your images differently for correct interpretation by Pagemaker. Specifically how you bring an image in and preserve the transparency is driven by the destination application.
If there’s no reason to do otherwise, use Photoshop to print from and your life will be easier, from the standpoint of transparencies and all.
For your community center photo, I’m not 100% sure what you mean, but it sounds like you want to do this. Place your photo on top of the gradient. Draw an ellipse (elliptical marquee tool) around the area you want to keep. Then on the layers pallet, simply click the button at the bottom of the pallet called Add Layer Mask.
Your full image will still be there, but you will be "masking" out portions that you dont want to show.
Give that a try.
Peace,
Tony
Try this, not really croping, but might work for you. Take the marque tool and make you oval,see the marching ants, push ,ctrl,shift ,I, then hit delete, Will cut the outer edges off and you have a oval.
Thanks again, everyone.
In answer to Colin’s most recent question, this banner will be used for 4-color offset printing (a newsletter on actual newsprint), so I need the CMYK color separations.
Today I purchased a Photoshop 6 guide, which I’m sure explains what I need to do here along with various other handy tricks. I could’ve used this book a long time ago.
Thanks again,
Natalie
