I'm still at the beginning of learning Photoshop so this may not be a tough selection for most but, I'm stumped.


In this tutorial "Frozen Ice Text" you create a nice looking effect of, well, as it says, Frozen Ice Text.

The problem is, I want to use the text in another .psd file as a layer with a transparent background (ie: get rid of the black behind the text) Any time I try to extract or cut the text from the background, I loose a lot of the "frostiness".

I've only really tried selection by Color Range, because I figured the background was black and once I eyedropper sampled the black it would leave behind only the text. Unfortunately the lighting effect creates tints of the black and I'm only getting circles selected.

I'm babbling. I'm sure anyone here that's good with Photoshop can help me out and show me how to make a selection around only the text.

TIA!!

-hartigan

Using Magic Lasso with Feather? And pasting it as another layer and then using some blending option that looks good? At worst it will have wasted 5 min of your time.

Thanks for the advice!!

I'll give that a shot but, there are a lot of bits and parts around the "icicles" of the word that need to come with the rest of the selection.

Regardless, I'll give it a shot.

Any other thoughts out there would also be appreciated.

-hartigan

Another question I have is why would a tutorial not generate an object that is not on a transparent layer so it can be used with another .psd? Isn't the above tutorial basically useless if you want to use the text with something else?

So lemme get this straight... you just want to use the "frozen" text without the black behind it?

If you ever have a layer in Photoshop in which has a black background, but you don't want the black to show, set the blending mode to "Screen", and any color but black will show. But the layer has to have something other than straight white behind it, or nothing will show at all.

You could also set the blending mode to "Exclusion"... this will technically invert the colors, but will allow the underlying layers to show through as well. In which case, press Ctrl-U, and get the color back to blue... and make sure the "Colorize" check box is selected.

EDIT-
As far as transparent layers... it's iffy. Sometimes, filters won't apply the way you want them too if the layer is transparent. Some filters require adjacent pixels to render correctly... and if the layer is transparent around your graphic, it might not filter right. If anything, make your graphic on top of white, as it is easy to set a white bg to a specific blending mode and make it "disappear".

Here's how I would probably do this...
Paste your frozen text over top of whatever other image as a new layer
Apply a Quick Mask to the top layer (the one with the text)
Then use the magic wand on a really low tolerance setting, like less than 10
Go to selection-feather and use something like 5 pixel feather
Fill the selection with black (make sure you're still editing the mask), and that should remove most of the black background by masking it out.
Then go back with a small soft brush in a mid-gray tone to clean up the nasty edges.
If you really want to be fancy you can also apply a gaussian blur to the final mask to smooth out the transitions.

Hope that makes sense...

If the text is on a layer by itself then click the layer while holding control (it should highlight the text). Now drag the the layer where you want it to go.

Thank you to everyone for their advice. I'm definitely going to keep this thread in mind because every suggestion will certainly become useful in their own unique applications.

I went with the setting the blending mode to "Screen" suggestion by Jobistober, mostly because it was the first one I read that sounded super simple. I can say I definitely benefited from this because it worked like a charm!!

Unfortunately the Layer was not solely a text layer, but was comprised of text that had been merged with another layer and filter>pixelate>crystalized so I couldn't simply Ctrl+Layer Icon to select the text. Thanks for the suggestion though, SpecialBlend218!!!

4x0n and Bionic, thank you also, for some great suggestions on how to make complicated selections. Those will probably work very well for organically shaped solid objects that have no extraneous "bits and pieces"


A final thanks to all of you for the help!!! You've saved me from a delinquent assignment in my G. Design Theory class!!


-hartigan

Glad you found my rambling useful! Good luck with your graphics design class.

Quote: Originally Posted by Jobistober Glad you found my rambling useful! Good luck with your graphics design class.

hey jobi were you ever in a design class? I havent.. does it help improve skill at all?

LOL so I got bored and decided to give this a whirl. here's what I did:

I'm going to be pasting the "Frozen" text from the Tut you followed onto this picture I found with a GIS:


Next I went to the "Frozen" pic and hit Ctrl-A to select everything, then Ctrl-C to copy. Click back to the main pic and hit Ctrl-V to paste it in as a new layer. I used the Free transform tool to roughly match the perspective of the cavern:


Then I hit the "Quick Mask" button, circled in red below. It's a gray square with a white circle inside. Using the Magic Wand tool with a tolerance of 5, I selected the area surrounding the text. I had to do several selections (using Shift-Click) to get everything:


I tried to feather the selection like I mentioned above, but it looked bad, so I didn't do that next. I simply used the paint bucket tool to fill the selection with black. In a mask, that means "don't show this"


To clean up this rough mask, I took a round, 3px brush with a hardness of 31%, set to a middle gray tone and really roughly just went around the outside of everything, where you could still see solid black from the initial rough mask.


To finish everything up, I applied a 5px gaussian blur to the mask to smooth it all out, and adjusted the positioning a bit. I also dropped the layer opacity to 75% so it would blend a bit better.


That's it, took about 15 min or so A little more time would have given a better mask, but oh well. Hope this helps in future PS tasks.

Quote: Originally Posted by DavidVaini hey jobi were you ever in a design class? I havent.. does it help improve skill at all?

Well, never took a "design" oriented class... but I took a Photoshop class my freshman year of college to get started... and I've been hooked ever since. The best thing to do if you want to improve your graphic design skills, imho, is just get your hands dirty.

Google around and see what styles other people are doing... browsing the deviant art website always gives me new ideas and motivation... but not copying ideas, mind you Just getting new ideas and working on improving them.

EDIT-
But if you do ever get a chance to take a design class, I'd suggest taking it. Of course it'll help improve your skills. But as far as I know (and the only way I know), just getting out there and experimenting with your techniques and learning new ones is just as good... the "self-teach" method if you will.

Quote: Originally Posted by Jobistober Well, never took a "design" oriented class... but I took a Photoshop class my freshman year of college to get started... and I've been hooked ever since. The best thing to do if you want to improve your graphic design skills, imho, is just get your hands dirty. Google around and see what styles other people are doing... browsing the deviant art website always gives me new ideas and motivation... but not copying ideas, mind you Just getting new ideas and working on improving them. EDIT- But if you do ever get a chance to take a design class, I'd suggest taking it. Of course it'll help improve your skills. But as far as I know (and the only way I know), just getting out there and experimenting with your techniques and learning new ones is just as good... the "self-teach" method if you will.

Excellant Advise :-)