Tutorial: Screenshot Trimming 101

.... shhhh... it's still Monday... somewhere. >_>

Turning this into the week of the screenshot was definitely not wholly intentional. However, I find that when the situation stands up and stuffs a half-dozen neon-colored hints right in your face, it's best to shut up and take them. (Else you go blind. I mean, we're talking 250 candles worth of hot, hot pink in front of the eyeballs, here.) So, since I value my vision and my momma didn't raise no hint-missin' fools, we're going to take a quick pictorial trip through the process of trimming a screenshot with Adobe Photoshop.

Step 0: The setup

Once upon a time, when we were waltzing through the wilds of Warcraft, we came upon a thing. It was a wonderful thing! A perfect thing! And we had to have it. So, with all the grace and agility at our command, we hit that crazy little button that sits above our "Insert" key on the keyboard. The Print Screen button works some massive mojo behind the scenes, plying our World of Warcraft game with its irresistible charm until WoW happily deposits a JPG file into the Screenshots folder of its install directory. Our thing is there, safely ensconced in that file.

Now, we need to rescue our thing. We want to use it as a pretty doodad on our blog, so we need to trim it away from its background and set it on a transparent one so it will always match our blog-layout-du-jour. Enter our hero, Photoshop! Using some relatively simple tools and techniques, he is going to let us extract our thing from its environment and place it on a happy, healthy, and ever-so-transparent background.

Step 1: Unnatural Selection

There are two concepts that are key to doing anything in Photoshop: layers and masks. Whether you're cropping, slicing, scrambling, doodling or painting your masterpiece, they are the cornerstones of the program's higher functions. Thus, I hope you'll excuse me if I take a moment to explain them both.

1. Masks: A 'mask' in art is something that literally blocks off a part of the canvas or paper. We don't want to get into artistic media, but imagine a mask like a sheet of glass that you're cutting to shape and putting over your piece of paper. You can see your drawing through it, but if you try to apply paint over the glass, nothing happens. It doesn't reach the paper.
   
   This is exactly the concept of masking an area in Photoshop. You're defining a boundary. Within that boundary, you're working on your paper... painting, drawing, applying a filter or effect - whatever you like. Outside of that boundary, your tool can't touch the paper, so if you try to paint or apply an effect, nothing happens.
   
   
2. Layers: If you think of a layer in a very literal sense, you're probably on the right track. If you took your painting and, instead of just painting on a canvas, you painted it on 5 different pieces of glass that were stacked one on top of the other, you would have painted on layers. This gives you the freedom to, say, change or destroy layer 3 without altering layer 1, or maybe move the apple on layer 5 a little farther to the right with respect to the orange that you painted on layer 2. When the layers are stacked and viewed together, you see your picture, but when handled separately, they let you work on only the orange instead of the whole fruit basket.
   
   That's all I'm going to say about Layers, but if you want to see a great graphical representation and further explanation, I recommend you go visit The Web Design Library.
   

Okay. Wake up, now. We're going to start the step-by-step rescuing of our thing. Open up that crazily-named JPG that WoW deposited in your WorldofWarcraft/Screenshots directory. (Clicky for source file, if you please.)

Well, will you look at that?! Our thing is a door. A very pretty, ornate door from Silvermoon City. Luckily for us*, this door seems to have really high-contrast colors compared to its background. That means that we can use a really friendly tool when we mask the door to trim it away from its background. Hold your horses, though. First, we need to play a little footsie with the layers.

See, Photoshop is sometimes too smart for our own good. When it opened your JPG file, it said to itself, "Well, self. This JPG is a file format that doesn't support transparency. Thus, of course our esteemed user doesn't want to be able to put transparency in here!" Operating on that erroneous assumption, it opens our file on a transparency-locked background layer.

I'm sorry. I have to apologize here because I am wholly self-taught. There may be some way to unlock this special layer type, but I have never found it. So, we need to bust free from the restrictions imposed on the 'Background' of a JPG. We do that by duplicating the layer and deleting the original Background. In your layers toolbar (by default, it should be on the right side of the workspace), right-click on the Background layer and select "Duplicate Layer". It will open a dialog that lets you specify a name and location for this layer. I don't usually bother to rename it, but you can feel free to give it whatever name you want. Don't change the location, however, or cowthulu will fall from the sky and squash you dead. Plus, you'll get really confused. Drag the original Background layer to the little trash can in the lower right corner of your layers window to delete it.

Now that you have a workable, unlocked layer (notice that the padlock icon to the right of the Background name is gone?), you need to use the Magic Wand Tool to make your mask. Go to your toolbar and grab your Magic Wand**. In CS3, it is hidden under some crazy new tool I haven't played with. In CS2 or older, it should be staring right at you from the toolbar.

The Magic Wand Tool makes selections based on color. It's a very versatile tool, but if I go into too much detail right now, you're going to be asleep by the end of this tutorial. Feel free to email me if you want to know more. Today, we get to use it on some pretty standard settings. Once you have the tool selected, you will see that the horizontal menu bar immediately above your image has changed its options. (General tip: This menu bar is always specific to whatever tool you're using.)

Use a 'Tolerance' of 32 (default) and make sure both 'Anti-alias' and 'Contiguous' are checked. 'Sample All Layers' might as well be unchecked, but it doesn't really matter. We only have one layer right now, anyway. Also, make sure that the 'Add to Selection' button is depressed. It's the second one from the left of those four funny-looking little boxie-things.

Alright, we're ready to select, now. We are choosing the areas of the image that we want to CUT AWAY, so start clicking the wall and the flooring below the door. You've selected 'Add to Selection', so each click should extend the dotted 'marquee' that marks the boundary of your mask. I put little stars on some of the places that you'll need to click. I think you'll get a feel for how the wand works pretty quickly, but just remember... it's choosing contiguous areas of similar colors to the one pixel you click on each time. You can always use Edit >> Undo to go back to your previous click, and if you click outside the image, you can blank the boundaries of your mask and start over again. (CTRL+D does the same thing.)

After a while, you should have a mask boundary that looks something like this:

That pesky golden filigree on the pillars is causing a headache, though. Sure, we could click a dozen more times with the Magic Wand to add it into the mask, but let's take easy-mode. We gotta get back to WoW, after all!

The remaining area is far enough from the door we want to keep that we can safely just draw a square around it, so we're going to switch to the Rectangular Marquee Tool. This is the dumber-but-likeable version of the Magic Wand. It just draws a square and masks everything in it. Remember, though, we are still adding to our previous mask, so make sure that you've got that 'Add to Selection' option toggled.*** Draw squares around the areas of the columns that are still unselected, similar to the handy red dotted-lines I've put in the image above for you. Now you have the entire background 'masked' away from the door, that beautiful thing that we love so much! It's time to cut it free, boys and girls...

Step 2: Sweet Freedom

Under the edit menu, select the Clear option. This will take everything you selected back in Step 1 and make it completely transparent. Well, except that Photoshop shows transparency as a grey-on-white checkerboard pattern. You'll have to get your head around 'checkerboard = transparent.'

Lovely! We have a free and independent door. But we really don't need our 150-pixel-wide door to sit on a 550-pixel-wide transparent background. That's mad internet magumbo. So we need to make another mask and crop this baby down to good-magumbo size. I'm showing you a little tool that can help with this in the screenshot above, but you don't have to use it. The grids are just guidelines on the image, and when activated, they give your mouse pointer a 'snap line' that it will cling to. It helps for drawing straight lines and boxing in doors without clipping any corners. Of course, with or without the guides, this step is simple. Grab your Rectangular Marquee Tool and draw a nice, tight box around your door. (Highlighted in red in the image below.)

Under the Image menu, you want to select the Crop command. That will trim everything outside your marquee completely out of the file, thus making your file a nice, small, tight little view of your door and nothing else. Don't fret. If you don't like your Crop, just hit Undo. (Undo is the GOD of Photoshop, and if you haven't noticed it yet, the program lets you 'undo' about the last 25 actions or so. CTRL+ALT+Z steps backwards through what you've done.) If you turned on your Grid, you can feel free to turn it off, now, by the same method. Or not. S'up to you.

Step 3: Mini-Me

Great! Liberated and skinny door! However... if your screen resolution is anything like mine, your door is still over 400 pixels wide and nearly 600 tall. You don't want your cute little blog doodad to overshadow your witty words of wizardly wisdom. It's time to scale it down to a more sidekick-appropriate size. Under the Image menu, select Image Size.

Since you didn't hit the Daily Double, I'm guessing a dialogue box popped up. Make yours look something like this (choose whatever size you like most, but make sure the "Constrain Proportions" option is checked before you change anything):

You will probably find that your Resolution defaults to 72. Generally speaking, 72 pixels per inch is sufficient for any web image, as that's the best pixel density modern monitors bother with. Higher PPI ratings are purely for print images. Hit Okay.

Your door is now a properly sidekick door. We like that, however we (being me) also kinda dislike how Photoshop tends to let things get a little 'fuzzy' when it shrinks them. This is an optional step, but I do this on almost every image I resize. I want to use a Filter to Sharpen the lines in the door. We're not going to talk about the math of it all, but it makes all the detail of a small image just a tad clearer.

Open your Filter menu and select the Sharpen command.

... no 'and then'. That's all there is to it. You can repeat that if you want it even more sharpened. Since you haven't played with Photoshop (presumably) as long as I have, here is a side-by-side of exactly what this Sharpen thing is doing to our door. Left is unSharpened, as it was when Photoshop first shrunk it down to sidekick size. Right is with the Sharpen filter applied twice.

Step 4: Set In Stone

And there you have it. Your door is trimmed, transparencied, possibly sharpened, and definitely liberated from the confines of its background. Now all we need to do is save it before the dog kicks the power cord and kills the computer. In your File menu, select Save As. Choose PNG as the file type. No, not GIF. GIF is so 2007. We use PNGs these days, because they are clean, friendly and they don't add that nasty gunky pixelation to the edges of the transparency. Look, just do it. You'll thank me later.

And there you have it. You've got a shiny, wonderful, blog-friendly thing, and you can hug it and squeeze it and call it George. Would you like to see George the door in all his glory?

I knew you would. :)

Epilogue: Summing Up

So, what did we learn in this lesson?

• How to Duplicate and Delete Layers.
  
• How to use the Magic Wand Tool and the Rectangular Marquee Tool to make masks.
• How to Clear a portion of a layer to transparency.
  
• How to show and hide the Grid system and what it means to 'snap' to the Grid.
• How to Crop and Resize images.
• How to apply a basic Sharpen filter.
• How to create a PNG file.
  

Next lesson, we'll take a lower-contrast image to work with. Because all the colors are similar, our Magic Wand Tool doesn't work as well, so we'll be using the Onion Skin and the Lasso Tool for more refined control of masking. Until then!

* Ah, but is it luck or is perhaps the author a devious being who planned it this way?? ... the world may never know.
** ... that sounds wrong, doesn't it?
*** If you accidentally forget, it will clear the mask. Don't fret, though. Just Edit - Undo (or CTRL+Z) to get your mask back.

Where in the World? - Old-world Details

We do a lot of it in World of Warcraft - the running around. Point A to Point B, nonstop gryphon (or wyvern) all the way. You need to deliver eggs from Feralas to Gadgetzan, stop by the Hinterlands and take a picture of a giant turtle, then swing by Rut'theran village and deliver some feathers, the snapshot and another stack of Morrowgrain for that arrogant jerk, Staghelm*. It's enough to make the busy adventurer's head spin.

I'm here, today, to tell you that you should really slow down and take a look around. Azeroth is full of beautiful and interesting detail**, and if you're rushing around like an XP junky looking for her next fix, you're missing way too much. So, please... let me help you remember what you've forgotten to notice with a fun little contest.

Below are 16 cuts from scenes found all over Azeroth (not Outlands). They're places and objects in places that I noticed as interesting, amusing, lovely or just downright cool. A few of them will probably be pretty obvious, but some of these guys are tricksie-tricksie. The first person who can accurately name each location by zone and area gets a prize. (Email information is in the sidebar to the right, there.) Be specific because I love to catch people up on technicalities. MUHAHAHA!

"What's the prize?!" you say? Don't ask. It's a ... um... secret. Yeah. I'm keeping it a secret⁺...

Anyway, have at thee! Answers will be posted next week.

* We hates him, my precious! Haaaatesssss him!
** So are the Outlands, but that's a contest for another post. ;)
⁺ .... until I figure out what it is. >_> Maybe a free character commission?

Back After These Important Messages!

Today is a very important day in my husband's life. It only comes once a year, so I am required by contract to coddle and spoil him all day. That doesn't leave time for blogging. I'll be back with an off-schedule entry later this week to make up for it.

In the meantime, please enjoy a moment of graphical zen that I've retrieved from my screenies folder for your viewing pleasure:

Bringin' More Than Just the Boom, pt 2

Mage 101 is over, ladies and gentlemen, so if you missed the first class, I'm afraid we're going to have to send you back to grade school. Don't you dare return until you're feeling the urge to try Polymorph on your next door neighbor while sing-songing, "Un muton!"

Now that the kiddies are out of the way, welcome to the Advanced class, where we put away the things even the nubs know and pull out the subtler side of the Mage. Granted, 'subtle' is a relative term for a class that brings their own bonfire to every party and just adores hearing things Shatter, but ... hey. Rogues can have the sneak-up-and-murder-you end of the subtlety spectrum, and we'll take the veeeeeeeeeeery distant end, the one that kind of ... skirts the edges of the definition of the word.

So, on Monday, you pulled out the basic list to convince Mr. Party Leader that you're the right squishie for the job. He perused it, naturally impressed, but by some strange and perverse twist of the synapses, he's still not convinced enough to send you your invite! That's fine. Not everyone was born as smart as you were (after all, the World isn't 100% mage, is it?). Thus, it's time to bring out the big(ger) guns in your fight for your right to shusplodey.

Part 2: Advanced Abilities

1. 
   Decurse - Look, I know it's tough to take time away from the massive burst damage. We want to see the numbers fly. We want to see the fools who oppose us dying in blazes of glory! But... we do have a powerful and rather rare special ability that doesn't involve damage per second. Mages are one of only two classes* who can cleanse a Curse, arguably one of the nastier and more prevalent debuff categories in the game. Mobs and bosses alike love to throw curses around like evil candy, so your party will love you if you take the time to toss a few Remove Lesser Curse** on their sorry hides. It could save lives.
   
   
   
   ... and if saving lives is not a motivator at all for you, "Decurse" is also a great counter to those pesky, fear-loving Warlocks we love to hate. Take away their DoTs, and they're just pansy goth mages. If for no other reason than to thwart our most dastardly rivals, put that spell on a hotkey on your bar. Please? For me?
   


2. Counterspell - Look, there's a set pattern for these things, right? We stand as far away as possible; we shoot a very powerful bolt of something destructive; the enemy gets mad; and while he waves his big axe and runs at us, we murderate him with extreme prejudice. Simple, right? Yeah... until you have to fight another caster. He, like you, prefers to keep his distance and nuke you from afar, which turns into an annoying casting-time battle that results in a few more scorch marks on your pretty dress. We don't like that, so we whip out our Counterspell and shove it in Mr. Caster's face. While he's choking on the 8-second lockout of his favorite (and hopefully only) school of magic, we are free to commence with the usual murderation.
   
   Word to the wise, though. Counterspell is not at its most effective unless your timing is precise. If he's not casting when your CS hits, then you've just triggered a 24 second cooldown for the pure joy of it. Watch carefully and account for lag.
   


3. 
   Group Hugsplosions - WoWwiki says that AoE stands for "Area of Effect", but we know better. AoE really means "All-over Explosions", because when we kick it into group-hug-destruction-mode, the fireworks of pain start flying. While a couple of other classes have a token AoE or two (pansy goth mages, for example), this is where the mages really take the field over their peers. No one else can take down multiple mobs with our speed and mana efficiency***, and when you combine that raw power with the fact that a lot of our Area damage spells also involve some form of life-saving crowd control, we become the best, most survivable AoE class in the game.⁺
   


4. 
   
   
   Amplify / Dampen Magic - Probably the best-kept mage supahsekrit spells in the game now stand before you, exposed in all their glory. Amplify and Dampen Magic are utility buffs that we can cast on ourselves, our allies or our enemies. They increase or decrease, respectively, the effect of magical spells and abilities on the debuffed target, which makes them a very flexible and situational pair of tools that most Mages seem to forget about in the pursuit of destruction. I'm here to tell you to dust those babies off and put them back on your bar. If you're smart about their application, these two spells can become a great boon to not only a party, but to the solo mage.
   
   Let's illustrate with a couple of potential situations:
   
   Example #1: You're bouncing around outside of Manaforge Cooru, taking out those pesky Sindorei for fun and profit. All those Sunfury Arcanists and Arch Mages in their red-and-gold robes make the place look like a Barbie convention, so you feel the need to bust in there and blow them out of the water with some Arcane Explosions. Cast Dampen Magic on yourself before you pull to save on the damage from these spellcasters, and throw some Amplify Magic on Spellbinder Maryana to take her down faster when she tries to come in and crash your murderation party.
   
   
   
   Example #2: Deep in a cave in Blade's Edge Mountains, there lives a large, smelly, and slobbery poppa gronn known as Gruul. If you gather up 25 of your bestest buddies and fight your way past the stupid ogres that worship him, you'll get your chance to molest him for his phat porples. Now, Gruul, being a rather unintelligent fellow, doesn't know any forms of magic at all; his attacks are all physical. This means that you can buff your entire team with Amplify Magic to enhance the power of any heals that are cast on them.
   
   
5. Mage-Yoink - No longer do rogues have the monopoly on the glory of a good steal. Since the Burning Crusade, we mages have been given a gift of thievery that is not only powerful but is also a total blast to use. Spellsteal is a level 68 trained spell that lets us yoink the beneficial debuff off of our enemy and take it for our own. Are you feeling a little lonely in your travels, my dear mage? Find yourself a shaman or a Storming Wind-Ripper and steal away his Lightning Shield for some spinny, sparky company. Or maybe you want an extra +295 spell damage during your Botanica run? Grab that Holy Fury off of a Bloodwarder Mender and go to town! There's lots of potential for fun and fury in this spell, so keep it nearby to play with.
   
   
6. 
   Improved Scorch - Down on the fourth tier of the Fire talent tree is a lovely little gem that has the potential to bring some great benefits to both you and your group, depending on who Mr. Party Leader has brought to play, today. Improved Scorch is a 15-point mage talent that adds a pretty little debuff to the target of your Scorch spell. It makes the enemy mob 3% more vulnerable to fire damage - any fire damage. The warlocks, shamans and other fire mages are cackling in malicious glee, right now, since they all have abilities that can leach off this debuff and bring some extra hurtin' capability to your party. Share the destructive wealth, I say!
   


7. Winter’s Chill - All right. I admit it. This one's stretching it just a bit, but I believe in giving credit where credit is due... even if it's very situational credit. Winter's Chill is a talent that comes from pretty deep (25 points) in the Frost tree. It's tough to reach and has limited utility on short fights, but if the group we're trying to get into is a raid going against the bigger boys, this particular talent might just blow them all away. Like Improved Scorch, this guy is a stacking debuff that the mob gains, this time from any of our frost damage spells. It stacks up to 5 times, giving a possible 10% increased crit rate from frost spells. Once again, any Frost spells. Unfortunately, the only people who really do frost damage on a regular basis⁺⁺ are... well... us. Mages. Still, if we're in a raid with 3 of our Frosty, magey peers, it's a great talent to bring to the group, busting out an extra 10% crit for all of us! Our tank won't know what hit him, boys and girls. ... maybe because it never reaches him.
   

Okay. There you have it. I now pronounce you educated and graduated from the School of Boom. If this doesn't convince Mr. Party Leader that you should be the one he invites, then I'm afraid there's just no hope for him at all. Let him and his silly little group go slog through their task the hard way. There are plenty of smart people out there that will recognize that you're way more than just a dress-wearing squishy with a fireball in your hand.

* Druids are the other class.
** -50 DKP for that stupid spell name, Blizzmonster. -_-
*** ... Even though our AOE spells are our least mana efficient type.
+ Dear Blizzmonster, thank you very much for giving us all Ice Block. Our repair bills love you forevah!
++ I'm sort of discounting Frost Shock from Shamans, here, because my limited understanding of the shamanic ways leads me to believe that it's hardly ever applied in a raiding situation. Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong.

Bringin' More Than Just the Boom, pt 1

It's 6:25pm, and you're feeling the itch.

That's right. You need to go light some massive fires, freeze a few feet to the floor, and maybe add a couple of fluffy widdle sheepies to the wilds of Azeroth. You don't want just any old in-game murderfest; no, not for a mage of your caliber. You want to hit the Elites and burn your way through an instance. You want a meatshield to take the hits, a healer to keep your fragile little form alive, and maybe a minion or two to add their own paltry efforts to your explosions. In short, you're ready find a party and join a dungeon run.

You, however, are a mage. You may be awesomesauce in a wrapping of highly colorful cloth, but the fact is that mages just aren’t the lynchpins of a group. We are too smart to stand there and gleefully let the mobs beat on us, tank-style (blame Arcane Intellect for that) and too interested in furthering the cause of devastation to cast something pansy like a heal. Thus, the rest of the game lumps us into this nebulous ‘class’ called DPS. They weigh us off against rogues, warlocks, hunters and hybrids when they consider who to bring and who to leave chillin’ in Shattrath City.

So, how do we make sure that we’re the ones getting the invites while the lesser beings get left behind? We tip the scales with some facts. Let’s make sure that everyone understands just what mages bring to a party.

Part 1: The Basics

1. DPS – You’re rolling your eyes, right? I know. Yes, the mage class, the ones that Blizzard says will "introduce monsters to a world of pain", does a healthy chunk of damage per second. Debatable though it is, I firmly believe that this is and will always be the foundation of our class. Everything else is icing and details.
   


2. 
   
   Smarts for Everyone – Mages bring Intellect to the group. (Well, to the toons, at least. Sorry, but we can’t always say the same for the players.) Arcane Intellect and Arcane Brilliance give us the ability to make our fellow mana-users happier and longer-casting. All the better to heal us with, my dears.
   


3. Crowd Control – Polymorph and Frost Nova are how we keep a respectful distance from those who would like to maim us. The other classes call this ‘Crowd Control’; me, I just call it smart. We wear cloth, my friends. It’s like bringing a paper umbrella to a sword fight: it quickly teaches us that the wise mage keeps her distance!
   
   Fire mages enjoy the effects of Blast Wave with its 6 second daze and Dragon’s Breath with its 3 second disorient. For the cold-inclined among us, it’s all about Frostbyte and Permafrost combined with some great cooldown-shortening talents like Cold Snap and Improved Frost Nova. Arcane mages aren’t left out, either. They get Presence of Mind to turn an angry enemy into an insta-Sheep as well as Slow, which affects not only the enemy’s legs but his sword arm, as well.
   


4. 
   
   Free Meds – Water. Food. Our new, much-loved banquet tables. You, my dear mage, bring your group freebies that they would otherwise have to buy. You’re the anti-gold-farmer, earning money for your friends by dint of your generosity! Are they kissing your feet, yet? Turn them into pigs if they don’t at least say ‘thank you’.
   


5. 
   
   Portals – Mages, probably because we spent so much time atrophying in the library while learning our weapons of massive destruction, don’t like to walk. Instead, we use teleportation to let us insta-blink to our favorite cities. Halfway across Azeroth? Hey, that’s easy. Other side of the inter-dimensional, time-space-spanning evil portal that destroyed a world by its very creation?! Psh. Give us ten seconds, and we’re there. We can even let our party members tag along or send them off to repair, restock, or buy us presents.
   

It’s not a bad start, huh? The basics are already pretty impressive. It’s only half of the list, though. If the group leader is still eyeballing Joe Rogue for your spot, then I guess we'll just have to whip out the Advanced Mage list! Let’s see who gets left in Shattrath, then.

... but I'm betting your eyes are tired. Let's save the Advanced class for next post. Until then!