Preserved Topic: How can Photoshop make my puppy smoother?

I have a line drawing, http://www.runningwolf.com/runningwolf4.com/images/black_running_wolf.gif, and it's got the jaggies. What's the best process for anti aliasing something like this? I don't like it when my puppy has the jaggies!

Pat Richard
Web weenie
http://www.gurusnetwork.com
ICQ 23113317

[This message has been edited by Pugzly (edited 29-07-2000).]

You have several options.
1.) Trace with pen tool and then fill, stroke, or whatever.
2.) Use a minor gaussian blur and then use levels to clean it up.
3.) Ummmm...I'm sure there's a ton more ways, but those are the two that come to mind. :P

Pugz:
The way that I clean up pics with jaggies is to select the entire area of the pic that has jaggies around it (or the "halo" effect).
Contract the selection 1 or 2 pixels (Making sure the jaggies mostly fall outside the selection).

Now, I feather the selection by 1, then SELECT>>>INVERSE.

Now you've got just the exterior edge selected, with a thin, smooth feathering mask. Do a gaussian blur at a low setting (usually 0.3 to 1.0 works best), and voila....no more jaggies...and WITHOUT the annoying blur through the rest of the graphic.

If it fades out your line colour a bit too much, playing with the brightness and contrast (with the mask still intact) will fix that easily.

That might not be the simplest way..but I find it's the most effective. Doing just a gaussian blur on the whole image almost always leaves it looking lossy, and very amateurish.

Hope it helps man <img border=0 align=absmiddle src="http://www.ozones.com/forum/smile.gif">

Peter



ICQ:# 10237808

Pugz - I gotta think about this a bit. mbridge has the two classic solutions, but the blur/levels thing is going to do violence to the interior shapes. DG's suggestion probably works like a charm for a filled solid, but your example is line art and I don't see how it's going to differ from mbridge's much in a line drawing. I'll get back to you...

The only reason I reccommended that he just gaussian blur then levels the image is because it's just a line graphic. There is no interior or exterior image to mess up.

Right. I could fill the image in, clean it up, and then cut it back out. No biggie.

Pat Richard
Web weenie
http://www.gurusnetwork.com
ICQ 23113317

Pugz:
I assumed you had a higher res, larger PSD than the little gif, and seeing that the jaggies seemed to effect the outer line, and not so much the inside of it I made the suggestion.

Working with Comic line art as much as I have, fixing pixelation with just a general blur and levels can change the positioning and connections of lines somewhat.

BUT

heh
Seeing now, in my less tired state, that it's just a tiny graphic with no line weight differences, then go nuts with mbridge's suggestion, while I go get some coffee, and curse an inker or two.
<img border=0 align=absmiddle src="http://www.ozones.com/forum/biggrin.gif">



ICQ:# 10237808

[This message has been edited by DarkGarden (edited 29-07-2000).]

This is about te best I could come up with. The original didn't have much data to start with. A one pixel, curvy line at 72 dpi is about the toughest thing to deal with - adding the antialiasing the curve needs wipes out the crispness of the outline.

Oh well. Hope it helps. Sort of lose the "wolfness", but then you called it a puppie, so I guess some species confusion can be allowed!!