Essentials Cafe

Hello,

I have Corel Painter Essentials 3, and have a question.  I have a background image of a beach, and an image of a cartoon person.  When I try to put this cartoon person on top of the image, I only want the person to be on the beach.  Instead, the white border area around the person is also being shown on the beach.  I guess I need some sort of a mask or transparency or something in order to get this to work?  Do I need extra layers?  I'm sorry if this is a basic question, but I'm quite new to this.  Could someone tell me how to do this "step by step" please?  The program has a lot to it and can be very confusing for a beginner.

 Thanks So Much

Bobby

Bobby, I'm not sure that it's going to be that easy (and anyone here that can straighten me out . . please do   ) Anyhoo, it can be easier if we could see your images, but selecting the cartoon and deleting its white background is the first thing you'd have to do. PE has basic selection tools and they do a fairly good job especially if the background is a solid color. I would take the magic wand and click on the white area around the cartoon and it will select only the white. then press delete and the background should disappear. Again, without actually seeing your image, this is all I can offer at the moment. Maybe you could upload them to whatever photo sharing website (photobucket, flickr, image shack . . . ) you use and give us a link to them so we can see what your challenge is. Alternately, I suppose you could post the images here as well. Let us know how it goes. Kirk (ARPhot).

Hi Kirk,

 Thanks so much for helping me out.  I couldn't attached the two pics to this email, so I put them together into one pic.  Perhaps you could create the two pics:  beach.jpg and person.gif when you download it.

See the white area around the person?  I would like the beach to shine through this area when the person is put on the beach.

Hope this helps explain what I'm talking about.  If you could tell me step-by-step what you would do to resolve this issue I would really appreciate it.

Thanks So Much...

-Bobby

Choose the rectangular selection. The tool bar at the top near the menu items has 3 options, choose the first one (the square without the + or -). Draw a selection around the man. Choose Edit>Copy, then Edit>Paste. This will put the man on another layer. Now choose the crop tool. Make sure the beach layer (Canvas) is selected. Draw the crop selection around the beach area of your image and click inside the beach image somewhere. Now you will have the man in his white background sitting over the beach layer (just like you don't want it to be :)~ Now, click the eye on the Canvas layer to "shut it off". All you can see now is the man and white. Choose your magic wand tool and adjust the tolerance to 78. Make sure that you have the man layer selected & click on the white area of the man image. Now, go to the Edit menu and choose Clear. Then go to the Select menu and choose None. Click on the eye again on the Canvas layer to bring it back into view. Use the Layer Adjuster (Arrow with a cross-like sign next to it in the toolbar) and drag the man to when you want him. Remember, you have to have the man layer selected in order to move him.

BTW . . . I used PE4, but I believe you can do this with 3. Let me know if it is the same. ARPhot

That's it!  Thanks so much!

You're welcome.