knothing Posted May 2, 2014 Posted May 2, 2014 I created the same thread in the main forum but this artwork will be for the HS Project so I think this will be a better place to ask for opinions. First of all, I know some Photoshop but Im sure my level is "Super-Begginer" so feel free say whatever you want to say, It will help me for sure. I wanna contribute to this awesome community with something and I asked brolly if there's something I can do so he has the last word on this . He gave me a lot of options and I choose this one because is not an obscure system and there's a bunch of artwork around the web so it will be easy for a start. This is the raw scan: http://i.imgur.com/sPQFx9Z.jpg?1 And this is how it goes after: Will this image work to make a relatively good 3D box? Any suggestions or tips on how to improve the quality?
manicshere Posted May 2, 2014 Posted May 2, 2014 I'll gladly give you a bunch of pointers on how to achieve a great looking 3D box that easily can live up to this projects standards, but before I do I would recommend you start collecting and gathering all the resources that are available to you. It might surprise some people how time consuming this process and it's essential to a good start. Don't focus too much on the final look of this set just yet. You will end up discovering that you'll want to make a lot of changes and alterations and you will end up having to redo all the artwork again and again. Trust me.. I've been through this process to many times already Like I said. I'll gladly help you out, but do yourself a favor and get to a good starting point.
knothing Posted May 2, 2014 Author Posted May 2, 2014 For resources do you mean achieving better skills on Photoshop? Im working on that, watching some videos and a doing a lot of practice... this is not my first test, it's actually the third. Im really a begginer but I have some free time so I will work hard to see what I can do. Better be learning something than just waiting for other people to start or do something for me. The HS Project looks awesome, so I just want to see if I can contribute with something... at least cleaning some raws scans to process them later. I have all the spines and cover for the Jaguar set, so I will keep trying! If you want to help, there's no hurry and I sure will listen to what you say Thanks for the feedback!
brolly Posted May 3, 2014 Posted May 3, 2014 I think it would be nice to give him some pointers about what tools/features in PS he should look into. This would definitely help him out searching for videos or tutorials, doing a focused search helps a lot. That image already looks pretty good considering the original scan so it just needs a bit more practice to get it there.
knothing Posted May 3, 2014 Author Posted May 3, 2014 Thanks brolly, I found some videos that cover the basics here: http://vimeo.com/user590640/videos. and with the links you gave me of THK tutorials (http://www.hyperspin-fe.com/forum/showthread.php?28426), I have some basics stuff to start. The image that I posted before was by no means intended to be the final work, I'll probably need to do this like 20 times or more... but there's no hurry and I have a lot of free time to spend right now.
knothing Posted May 3, 2014 Author Posted May 3, 2014 Having some fun with other scans... testing the "Levels" tools. It's amazing, what took me like 2 hours to do with magic wand and pencil, takes only 15 min with it ^^. I read in several places that the magic wand is not the best tool to learn because it gives bad habits, so I didn't use it this time. Raw scan: http://imgur.com/oIPVYb5 My work (it looks very dark because I give it a little too much contrast and some borders look messy... but borders are driving me crazy :C): A good tip for me will be how to make borders look more HD (?) and not so pixelated. I tried with a little bit of stroke, blur or refine but still looks messy.
relic Posted May 3, 2014 Posted May 3, 2014 your boxes are starting to shape up nicely keep up the good work 100%
knothing Posted May 3, 2014 Author Posted May 3, 2014 Thank you relic I'm really having fun... Let's just hope I don't get crazy soon, I know there's a long way to go to make something of good quality!
shinobi68 Posted May 3, 2014 Posted May 3, 2014 Hi, Thanks for your work, but I already have a Jaguar 3d boxes set. I don't remember where I found it (on the ftp I think...). Check my ftp (upload here/shinobi68/Atari Jaguar) and tell me if it's good enough or if you want to redone all this set
knothing Posted May 3, 2014 Author Posted May 3, 2014 Yes, Im aware of that. I've downloaded 2 different sets from the FTP. For now, Im learning how to clean those raws scans... maybe with some time and hard work I will be able to do something helpful. I created this thread to see if Im going the right way and also to get tips from the PROs Take in mind that Im totally new at this, since I used Photoshop before but never for this purpose. Thanks for passing by!
brolly Posted May 3, 2014 Posted May 3, 2014 Thanks for your work, but I already have a Jaguar 3d boxes set. Current set doesn't use real spines, besides the quality can definitely be improved. Starting to look better knothing, a bit too dark indeed but I will wait for the PS gurus to give you some tips. Just remember to always editing on top of the larger image and only resize afterwards, make sure you also keep the edited image btw. Just a note, some spines need to be corrected, you can see the "2" in the logo is missing a bit at the bottom on that one and needs to be added (check the other picture of the flat box in the dropbox).
knothing Posted May 3, 2014 Author Posted May 3, 2014 Again with the first one. Working on the cover! I guess I see an improvement... I tried to match the color of the logo, with the color of the Wheel for this game! Raw scan: http://i.imgur.com/sPQFx9Z.jpg Old one: http://i.imgur.com/o51xoKF.png New one: Current set doesn't use real spines, besides the quality can definitely be improved.Starting to look better knothing, a bit too dark indeed but I will wait for the PS gurus to give you some tips. Just remember to always editing on top of the larger image and only resize afterwards, make sure you also keep the edited image btw. Just a note, some spines need to be corrected, you can see the "2" in the logo is missing a bit at the bottom on that one and needs to be added (check the other picture of the flat box in the dropbox). I saw 2 set's on the FTP, one have modified Spines and the other doesn't match the logos of the cover with the real scans (for example, on this image, the "Atari Jaguar" from the bottom). We all want the real stuff to be on the artwork so Im trying to work directly on the Raw scans, just using some other pictures when the quality is really really poor, but again, always attaching to whats on the scan. About the Spines, yes, mostly all of them all "cutted" in the borders so I will pay a lot of attention to that! Will focus my time on the covers for now, they're so much fun. Just let me know if Im going in the right direction
knothing Posted May 3, 2014 Author Posted May 3, 2014 Raw scan: http://i.imgur.com/sPQFx9Z.jpg Old one: http://i.imgur.com/o51xoKF.png Zoop Box Art 2D (Cover & Spine) - Take 3: I used the wheel image for the logo on the Spine, because its cropped on the scan and I really dont know how to make it look good. If you pay attention, its not the same image (look at the shadows over the letters, they don't exist in the raw scan).
brolly Posted May 4, 2014 Posted May 4, 2014 Looking much better than your first stab, using the wheel in the spine is a no go though because like you mentioned it's different. Why do you need to use the wheel btw? You have a perfectly good logo in the top flap of the box in the raw scan, just cut that one, resize if needed and use it in the spine. Why do you have that white line between the front and spine? There's no need for that. Finally you'll probably need to manually add the red TM letters to the Jaguar logos since they became barely visible, other than that I think it's looking pretty good.
knothing Posted May 4, 2014 Author Posted May 4, 2014 Looking much better than your first stab, using the wheel in the spine is a no go though because like you mentioned it's different. Why do you need to use the wheel btw? You have a perfectly good logo in the top flap of the box in the raw scan, just cut that one, resize if needed and use it in the spine. You're right about the top logo, I used that one in the previous version and forget to use it on this. Anyway, I would like to learn better how to work with borders... they're the most time consuming thing on this work. Why do you have that white line between the front and spine? There's no need for that. I'll put that line because some scans have black covers/spines, and I think they look more pretty that way but that It's just a matter of taste. I have all the PSD so I will delete them in the next version or when I learn how to make them 3D. Finally you'll probably need to manually add the red TM letters to the Jaguar logos since they became barely visible, other than that I think it's looking pretty good. That was something I was about to ask you... I'll keep cleaning and see what I can do! Thanks again brolly,
brolly Posted May 4, 2014 Posted May 4, 2014 As long as the white line is a separate layer then it's fine. The PSD with the final template uses a guide to separate the spine from the front cover so that's more than enough, if you like having that line as well that's ok of course just make sure is on a separate layer that you can disable. Not sure what you mean when referring to the borders.
knothing Posted May 4, 2014 Author Posted May 4, 2014 Yes, it's all on differents layers. The spine is now the real one, the line is gone... but the "TM" on the logos are still almost invisible. I think they're too tiny to be seen but thats the "real" size. I still have to work the text at the bottom of the cover, and both "Atari Jaguar" logos, specially with those golden balls that looks really dark. It's okey if I take the same text from other scan (that looks much better), clean it the most that I can and then save it to use it on all the scans that uses the same text and color? I'm talking about the part that says "Interactive Multimeda Cartridge". When I try to correct the colors levels of the logos in the raw scans, the borders always tend to look messy or a bit too much pixelated and sometimes I have to go pixel by pixel with the pencil. I see some artwork from people on this forum that have perfect borders, really HD... will dig on this topic to see what I can do to make them look better.
DamnedRegistrations Posted May 4, 2014 Posted May 4, 2014 Cleaning raw scans can be pretty tiresome and sometimes difficult. Surface Blur can do wonders once you start running into some really noisy scans. While using levels is good for photography, I'd recommend avoiding it when it comes to doing this kind of stuff unless the image is really washed out. It usually messes up colors and saturation too much when you're aiming for accuracy. Try using selective color instead for more precision (Image-> Adjustments-> Selective Color...) and if you need to give your image some more pop, try this: 1. Clone your logo layer (ctrl+J) 2. Make sure this copied layer is active and go up to "Filter-> Other-> Highpass" 3. Around 8-10px should be good 4. Now go over to layer panel and change the layer mode from Normal to either Overlay or Soft Light 5. Adjust the opacity until it's not overdone
juniorunderground Posted May 4, 2014 Posted May 4, 2014 I have this set in 2D, 54 images, Resolution 2382 X 2713
brolly Posted May 4, 2014 Posted May 4, 2014 Oh... are those spines accurate junior? Any chance you can drop those in the project ftp so I can check them out? It's missing some boxes I see, but the spines do look ok from what I can see. I wasn't aware you had those, if they are accurate enough then there's no point on knothing doing this set. knothing: Copying parts from other scans is fine as long as they are exactly the same.
knothing Posted May 4, 2014 Author Posted May 4, 2014 Cleaning raw scans can be pretty tiresome and sometimes difficult. Surface Blur can do wonders once you start running into some really noisy scans. Thanks Damned I'll try this in a minute!! I have this set in 2D, 54 images, Resolution 2382 X 2713 They look awesome, but the Spines, the Text and some Logos in the Covers are not the real ones. Anyway, they look reallly pretty so if you could upload these to somewhere It surely will help! knothing: Copying parts from other scans is fine as long as they are exactly the same. Got it!
juniorunderground Posted May 4, 2014 Posted May 4, 2014 I am now sending to ftp excuses, duplicated the post
knothing Posted May 4, 2014 Author Posted May 4, 2014 I don't have access to the project FTP so when it's done uploading if brolly can upload them to the dropbox folder I'll check them! Thanks a lot junior!
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