Open your template psd on Photoshop ( File >
Open or Ctrl+N) and open the layers window if you don't have it
opened already ( Windows > Layers ). Let's look at it a little: we see
three layers, one with the transparency color so that we can make that parts transparent,
another one with the template itself and the last one that says "your image
here", so obviously we'll paste our image there. Click on "your image here"
layer.
Now go to File > Open and open the image you want to
use as avatar with the template. I chose this one from Kamikaze Kaitô Jeanne I scanned
from a manga cover, pretty eh?. Press Ctrl+A, Ctrl+C (or
go to Select > All, Edit > Copy) to copy the
entire image. Close it and go back to your template, press Ctrl+V (Edit
> Paste) to paste the image.
Ugh, but it's too big and it doesn't look good X.x what do we do now??
Zoom the image out quite a lot and go to Edit > Transform. A square
will appear representing the size of the image we pasted. Continue to the next step to see
it.
Click on one of the corners and drag it to the middle until you have what
you wanted on the avatar. Remember to press Shift while you drag it or it
will deform. We can't see much seeing it so little, but we can just zoom it in and
transform until we get something nice.
Okay, so we transformed it and we have the image centered in the template
^o^ it looks so good! let's save it and make the magenta color transparent. Go to File
> Save for web and a window with strange things will appear.
On that window, select the settings below. Why do we do this? it has to be
a gif file, otherwise it couldn't be transparent! The other settings are just for web
optimizing.
Now it's when we'll make the magenta color transparent. See the color
boxes in your window? (well, there'll be more and different colors on your image of
course...) Click on the magenta and then click on that icon (hovering the icon you will
read "maps selected colors to transparent") on the bottom that I marked
on the image.
Ready! press save and put it wherever you want on your computer. This is
my result! Got a nice one you too? If you want you can submit your avatar here.
Tutorial © Melfina. Do not reproduce in any way without previous permission from the author. Printed from http://celestial-star.net