How to use selection tools, layers & masks in PhotoPlus X4 Faking it! Combine three source photos and add text to create a composite image or montage. The example montage uses photographs of a famous building (the Empire State Building in New York), a toy gorilla and a schoolboy. You might want to use three similar pictures to create your own composite image a person, a monster, a building. Choose Open from the Startup Wizard and navigate to one of your saved photos. Click Open. Repeat this for all the source images you plan to combine. The Documents tab below the work area displays a thumbnail gallery of all your open image files and provides a quick and easy way to view and switch between images in the workspace. Serif Europe 1
Click on your monster photo to make it active and from the Lasso Selection Tools fly-out menu choose the Polygon Selection Tool or the Magnetic Selection Tool. Carefully draw around the outline of the monster to define a selection region. For greater accuracy zoom in on the image. You can use the scroll wheel on your mouse, the Zoom tool or the Navigator tab to do this. On the Edit menu choose Copy. Now click on your photo of the building to make it active and from the Edit menu select Paste > As New Layer. The pasted monster may need to be rescaled, but first save your work in the editable SPP format as fakingitxxx (replace XXX with your own initials). Note that the Magic Wand Tool could be used to make this selection because the figure has a plain background. Try it to see which you prefer. Click on the Deform Tool on the Drawing Toolbar and drag the corner handles of the selection rectangle in or out to scale the figure while maintaining proportions. You can also use this tool to rotate the figure: place the cursor just outside a corner and when it changes to a curved arrow left-click and rotate the selection clockwise or anti-clockwise by eye. Click on any other tool to toggle off. Save your work. Use the Move tool to reposition the monster on building. PhotoPlus has a very useful feature called the Image Cutout Studio that enables you to remove unwanted background easily, as with the brick wall behind the boy in the third source image. Click on the Cutout Studio button to bring up the dialog box. Draw an outline around the section you want to retain with the Keep Brush Tool from the toolbar on the left of the window. Use the Discard Brush Tool to paint over areas you want to delete. The Help tab gives detailed step-by-step support as you work. When satisfied with the selection, click OK. The background will be deleted. Serif Europe 2
Choose Select > Select All and then Copy from the Edit menu. To add this figure to the montage, make the building image active and choose Paste > As New Layer on the Edit menu. Save your work. Rotate, scale and reposition this figure using the Deform and Move tools as at step 4. Your montage now has 3 layers. Applying layer masks will enable you to set extracted figures realistically into the background. Select your monster layer by clicking on it and turn off the visibility of the boy layer or your equivalent figure by clicking on its Hide/Show Layer icon. This will help you see what you re doing more clearly. Click on the Add Layer Mask button on the Layers toolbar. Select the Paintbrush Tool from the Drawing Toolbar and adjust the brush size on its Context toolbar. Make sure that the foreground and background colours on the Colour tab are set to black and white (switch these around by clicking on the double-headed arrow). Zoom in for greater accuracy. When you paint with black on the layer mask, the layer below is revealed 100%; when you paint in white, the layer below is obscured 100% (i.e. the top layer is restored, which is useful if you make a mistake); shades of grey allow for different levels of transparency. Paint with black to remove unwanted areas e.g. the part of the monster hiding the top of the skyscraper. Switch to white to get the transparent pixels back. When you are satisfied, select Mask > Merge Mask from the Layers menu on the Standard toolbar to make the changes permanent (see the next page). Save your work. Serif Europe 3
Repeat this process on the layer with the human figure, so that the monster will seem to be holding the figure as above right. Save your work. Export your completed montage in a universal format, for example as a JPEG. Select File > Export and choose a suitable file type. Navigate to your project folder and name the image fakingit1xxx (replace XXX with your own initials). Make sure that you also save the editable SPP version for future use. Add and manipulate text To add type to an image select the Text Tool and click anywhere on the picture. Adjust settings such as font, point size, colour on the Context toolbar. PhotoPlus creates the text on a new text layer. Note that this is not a word-editing program, so hit the Enter/Return key for a new line and be aware that there is no spell-check! However, size, colour, font and position can all be edited later if changes need to be made by re-selecting the Text tool and moving the cursor over the text until it changes to an I-beam, then clicking on the text. For greatest flexibility use a new layer for each block of text. Serif Europe 4
To make the type stand out, add a drop shadow by clicking on the fx (Effects) icon on the Layers tab. Select the Drop Shadow Option in the Layer Effects window and experiment with the options for Opacity, Colour and Distance. Add other text effects such as Outer Glow if you wish. Save your work as before. Serif Europe 5