Hello their, i'm back with more exciting questions and because i ask you is basically that i think you are the most experienced in your field through the world ^^

Well let's get back to the questions they are pretty simple for you if you know the deal.

1, How do you clean the the person in the image and the image itself so beautifully. What settings should i use to have the same results like a pro.

2, What is "vector" and what could it be useful to?
In wich case, how do i use it to make the picture look better

3,Where do you get the background the melt in perfectly with the character. I heard that a few is using real life photos but how can you manipulite it. What i mean is what filters do you recommend.

4, Please give me some tips to how to get the best results in a wallpaper. I really need your opinion. Also give me some tips on how to make that extra touch so the image feels alive.

Hope i'm not asking to much cuz you guys are the best!

Thanks for helping me develop my understanding in photoshop
i really really appreciate it!!

And foremost the most important matter..
keep up the good work !

OK here's my attempts at answering. But read all the answers different people give because there's no single way to do a lot of things in walling :P

1. You need to take your TIME. I find the pen tool is best for getting smooth curves around the edges so it looks more natural. Then use a small brush of whatever colour is used for the lineart and touch up the edges so the extraction looks like it followed the lineart flawlessly. If the scan looks grainy or has print inkdots visible, you can downsize, smart blur and use duplicated blurred layers to improve quality and make the colours more vivid.

2. Vector means to vector trace an image instead of extracting and cleaning. You can use a vector program or do the same sort of thing with the pen tool in Photoshop. A true vector image would be resizable and retain the same detail at any enlargement - nifty if you want to make your own posters of anime characters :P I think the time to vector is when you want to enlarge all or part of an image, or it is covered in text and it would be too hard to do a good job of cleaning it up with brushwork.

3. Blending the background with the character can be achieved with the use of the same types of colours or overlaying textures. If your extraction is good then that makes things a lot easier. In the context of stock manipulation, the smart blur, posterize and cutout filters are worth playing with.

4. How to get the best results? That's something you'd need to find out for yourself from experimentation :P Everyone has their own style. But things like tight colour schemes, vivid colours, careful thought over composition and typography and not going overboard with default filters are the things to keep in mind.

Hope this is helpful :P

Thanks Furikuu i'm gonna follow your suggestions right now actually!

But i got one more thing..
How do you shadowing the part you want on the character to make it look real...Thanks!

I'm not as good as many of the wallers here, but these are some things I've learned from my own experience.


1.) I extract the image with the pen tool, zoomed it a lot, but I don't use curves. Instead, I use a lot of straight lines. If it's an anime character, I then use a blending option such as a 1px inner stroke, and mess around with the opacities with a bit, to look like the original image's lines.

3.) With photos, I usually use filters such as... Cut-out, dry brush, and various blurs. Most of the time, when I use stock photos, I use a lot of them. i.e: If I make a sky, I'll use probably 5 different pictures of sky, set on blending options soft light or overlay.

4.) I found that to make the wall fit together, textures are really important. Lighting is also. I'm not sure exactly how everyone does it, but this is what I do. I finish the whole wall, flatten it, and put it into a new file. I then add a layer on top of it, and brush on it with either black or white. I then set the blending options to overlay or soft light. The type of brush you use can really change the mood of the wall you're doing, and helps fit the image and the background together.

With shadows, duplicate the layer you want to have a shadow. On the lower one, fill it with black. Using a variety of transforming tools (perspective, skew, distort, etc.), try to make it match the background. Then, change the opacity, or brush away some of the shadow so it's not a solid black shape. Identify where the lighting is in the picture, and try to make it fit.

Hope that helped.

In my case I cut out the images using the Polygonal Lasso tool in photoshop. It gives you a really clean shape, if used right. It's just like tracing with the mouse over the image.

Lately though, I've been more into vectorizing my images. Like that, I can resize it to anything I want without changing the quality of it. Besides, my university has a print shop and I want to make posters out of my vector art :D

http://www.animepaper.net/forum/posts.php?tid=3772 may contain some answers to your questions :).

1, I use the pen tool to extract my images. A good tutorial on extraction and improving image quality can be found at http://www.imanimetions.net/

2, Vectors are nice when your scan isn't of good quality and cleaning it up with filters won't do the job. Plus, they're stylish. Too bad I suck at vectors. XD

3, There are PLENTY of ways to make good backgrounds. These days I usually draw them. Sometimes I would use stock photos as reference, and then paint over them and add some details. For abstract backgrounds, I use different brushes and textures.

4, Experiment. It also wouldn't hurt to follow a few tutorials. ;)

Shadowing the part on the character? I'm not sure I understand but usually I try to work the lighting in the rest of the wall to match the scan, not the other way round. I think it's easier that way.