Preserved Topic: Edge tecniques

This is one of my weaknesses in Photoshop and I hope you can help me out. I noticed that there are no tutorials for this on the guru's network, except for the newspaper one (which I didn't fully understand).

So here is my question in a nutshell:

How do you create nifty edges with photoshop? Like, torn edges, splattered edges, human-skin-ripped-from-the-flesh-edges... ?

I'm not sure if you want a quick fix or not...but...

There's this tool (not a filter) called the "airbrush." I believe it does everything you mentioned.


s t e p h e n

I'm not sure what some people do but I have a few select brushes (custom made) that I use with the erase tool and lightly erase around the edge or edges where I want it to look torn/ripped what ever. I then touch them up with some shadows and a few highlights.

I start in an Alpha. Get a decent/rough shape going. Then Spatter once or twice, maybe even try a few othe things to rough it up. Layer, load, Fill (Preserve Transparency just in case). Clip some Layers to it and paint away. Play with blending modes and opacities.

Different ripped/torn materials have different styles about them, so you will have to play. Probably have to touch-up by hand like XF.

Unless you come up with a spiffy quick-fix, you are going to have to get your hands dirty with airbrush to darken/hightlight and such.

I don't mind doing it the "hard" way... But I was interested in some of the built-in filters that will assist the process.

warjournal - ok, the spatter filter is a good start. And I noticed there are a number of brush presets that allow for very chaotic ripped patterns. After playing for a while, I feel a lot more confident that I can create the rough edges I need...

Thanks.

Someone say "human-skin-ripped-from-the-flesh"?

Okay, let's say you've got this nice square selection, and you want to give it a gooey torn kinda border.

- Bring the selection up in the channels palette, and fill it with white.
- Select the inverse (that is, everything not in the selection), and add some noise to it. I'd say 80% gaussian, but you add whatever you want... just make sure that that it's not hard to see the dots.
- Now, gaussian blur the noise for 2.
- bring up the Image>Adjust>Levels... you should see something of a mountain in the dialog. Drag the left arrow to the left end of the mountain and the right arrow to the right end. Hit okay.
- Gaussian blur again... make sure to keep the same selection through all this...
- Again, Image>Adjust>Levels... Drag the right arrow towards the center of the line, then drag the left arrow until you see something you like... the image should be updating as you move the arrows so you can see what it will look like.
- Now, you've got something looking torn, but add a bit to it by bringing up the Filters>Distort>Glass filter. Using a frosted filter, give it a distortion of 4 and a smoothness of 4. Adjust these to you liking.
- Finally, use the airbrush with black as the color to remove the little unecessary bits.

Now you have your new torn border. Let me post some pics to demonstrate...
[edit : put the images on a better server]



I hope that helps.


[This message has been edited by Human Shield (edited 08-27-2001).]

human-skin-ripped-from-the-flesh-edges?

Well, this is not actually what you're looking for. But check this zombie tutorial. Always liked that tutorial ;-)

// Softhead
eXPerimental LAB - XP.no

I've done things similar to Human Shield's suggestion, but with a quick mask. Start with a selection. Enter quick mask mode. Filter the heck out of it: crystalize, I don't know - finally a use for at those wacky "artistic" built in filters, the exit quick mask mode and either delete or layer mask or whatever. Helps to have something contrasting behind or a (gulp) drop shadow.