How to route fire
ireid (1283 points) | Sat, 2009-06-13 15:38Hi guys.
I am a little up a creek this weekend. To make a long story short I need to do final artwork for outdoor branding and it involves the printing of realistic fire. I have a couple of hi-rez images already of fire but what's happening is I need the background of the printed image to show through. i.e I need to ROUTE around the fire. The original shots are or a solid black background. What's the most effective way to do this?
Can you point me to some tutorials?
Thanks again!
"Try not, Do! or do not, there is no try."
-Yoda
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Open the image of the flames in RGB mode. Now go to the Channels panel and select the channel that has the highest amount of contrast - most likely this will be the Red channel.
Command + Click on the channel to select it.
Now switch back to the RGB composite channel and with the selection of the fire, copy it (Command + C).
Now you should be able to paste the fire into the image you want of the house or whatever.
At this point, you can feather the edges a bit and cut out any halo, or use a soft edged eraser brush to clean it up.
OR
You could go to the Select menu and choose Color Range - select the black area of the image and adjust it until it looks like only black is selected. Then hit OK and invert the selection (so the fire is selected). Then just copy & paste as above.
Hope that helps.
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I have to try this as well.
Mucho appreciato!
"Try not, Do! or do not, there is no try."
-Yoda