Hey I was wondering if any of you guys were familiar with creating and designing wallpaper and screensavers? What kind of programs do you use to create wallpapers, I have both Paint Shop Pro and Adobe Photoshop and I heard these will both do for making wallpapers but HOW THE HECK DO YOU USE THEM!? Example: How do you take the background out of a photo and leave the person or thing in the picture then add a new background. What kind of program(s) do you use to create screensavers though? I haven't heard of any programs which make them. And if anybody else knows of any how good are they? Then what programs do you use to incorporate wallpaper, screensavers, cursors, icons, etc. and create a desktop theme?
Well, removing an object from the background from the background isn't particularly difficult with Photoshop (though it depends). Right now, I'm trying out using the Lasso tool roughly (I mean veerrry roughly) tracing around what you want to remove or keep (there will be background left, this isn't meant to be perfect). I then either use the Magic Wand tool or Eraser (the eraser is better if you want to get it exact, the magic wand tool isn't perfect). Voila. Just cut or delete what it was that you wanted to get rid of and you're left with.. wide open wide space in the shape of what you deleted. You could also try out the Image > Extract thing. Now, the harder part (to me) - getting the background back where the object was. The best method would probably be the Rubber Stamp tool. Just ALT + CLICK the area that you want to repeat, then just paint it (like the regular paint brush tool) over the white space. I'd normally tried to keep what I.. stamp.. and where I put it level vertical-wise, so they're aligned, but it's up to you (if it's sky, it won't really matter). This is just a quick overview, with the names of the tools, if you need any in-depth details, feel free to ask. Whew.
Lil'Pun Go to Screensavershot.com (or is it shots?) anywho...go there. They sell they a screensaver program for about 14 bucks, or get the free version with their name/ad in the corner of every pic of your screensaver (kinda bugged me so I shelled out the 14 bucks!). I've got the full version and its really, really easy, just add photos pretty much is all you do. Got some major cactus screensavers, one of my dawgs, a golf one, a Tiger woods one, gonna make a cycling one tonite...and so on and so on till da breaka dawn... OF backrounds...if you mean tiled backrounds? Create a small gif in your photoshop or paintshop pro, then TILE it in your controlpanel~backround~etc...er, you do know how to change backrounds huh? YEah, so just tile it baby!
Also, depending on what version of Photoshop you've got, you may have the amazing "Magnetic Lasso" at your disposal... That thing rocks. It attaches itself to the outline of an object (and you can customize it to do what you want). It is a huge time-saver.
Maybe I was wrong I never noticed the magnetic lasso I had gotten it confused with the standard lasso. But it is in 6.0 I just checked. I like 6.0. I think it is a good improvement over 5.5 especialy with that new options bar at the top. Plus I think imageready 3 is a good step above 2.0 as well.
The extract feature in Photoshop in 6.0 is much improved. You can do a great deal to refine the extraction with it. The magnetic lasso is helpful too.
I think it's about time that I start begging the folks for some cash to put me over the top for the upgrade cost
