Heyo. Question for you.
Sometime I'll be in Firealpaca trying to just crop the white space or shadows out of a picture so I can make it transparent. And I always try the magic pen tool to just select what I want to and then just delete everything else but it never really works and I always end up just going in and erasing stuff manually. I've tried messing with the tolerance but haven't had any real success. Am I doing something wrong or is there a better way to do this maybe?
Thanks a bunch!
Hi! Ok, so I want to clear some things up before I properly answer:
* you're trying to crop things out - usually cropping means cutting off an excess part, but in digital graphics this more exact - an image can be cropped to exclude some frame or outer parts, but not the inside of it. So I assume you mean that you want to just cut out parts of a picture and make it transparent. So:
* the magic pen is usually not a good tool for this, especially if this area is a traditional drawing scan (lots of different-colored pixels, so even with the tolerance higher, hard to get an exact area) so what I usually do is use the Lasso tool or even the Select tool (Polygon), to get a general area. You can also use the Magic Wand first, then the other selection tools, but what helps is pressing Shift to add to the selection. Your select tool cursor will have a little plus under it to indicate this. Press Ctrl to remove selections.
* what you can also do is that if the selections are not fine enough for you, use the Select Pen and Eraser Pen to refine the edges of these selections. These two are under the other selection tools. Works basically the same way as a regular pen, but you instead draw and erase selections. Select the tool and then select the kind of brush you would like to edit with. This works pest with a brush that is close to what you want the edges to look like. You can also use the transparent brush feature in Firealpaca while in the Select Brush. Press Z for temporary transparency while drawing or Shift+Z to switch your brush to transparent. I would reccommend using a hard-edged brush to get a clean look for your transparent area and avoid problems when viewing the work.
* If you accidentally deselect while making your selection better, you can undo the deselection. If you need to save your selection, make a new layer and fill it with black.
Hope this helps!
