Kitely Forums

Hi Marstol,

We want to make sure people immediately recognize the ads as belonging to Kitely Market even if they only view them at a glance so the template has to remain consistent. That said, some drop shadows for the displayed items may be acceptable, we'll need to see and judge on a case by case basis.

Some creators have asked for tips on cleanly cropping their products from a white background and making the edges anti-aliased. Here are the steps I follow (they are the same for Photoshop or GIMP):

1. I have a large wall prim that I use to photograph my products against. It is colored pure white and full bright is turned on. My settings in world are set to Ultra (only when I'm photographing) and anti-aliasing is turned up as high as it will go. I also have the sun set to midday. This is to ensure the product picture is true to how it looks inworld.

2. I take the biggest picture my viewer will allow and I get as close to the product as possible without clipping it. This will give you the clearest image.

In Photoshop/GIMP:

1. Using the magic wand set to 15 for the threshold, select all of the white background (hold down Shift to multi-select) and then shrink/contract by 1 pixel before deleting the background. Make sure your layer has an alpha channel so that you end up with a transparent background.

2. Zoom in to about 800 times and clean up any edges (pixel by pixel) that the magic wand missed. There shouldn't be many. Zoom back out once you've cleaned it up.

3. At this point, save the image in case you want to use it again.

4. Open the AD template. Copy and paste your product image into the layer called 'PRODUCT GOES HERE'.

5. Re-size and move it into position allowing for an even amount of white space (to your taste).

6. Adjust the levels of the product layer so that it isn't too dark for details to show up.

7. Use the magic wand again to select your product (select the background, inverse the selection) and shrink the selection by 1 pixel. The edges of your selection should be just inside the edge of your product.

8. Add a layer mask (by selection) to the product layer and then deselect everything.

9. Select the layer mask itself (the little black and white thumbnail next to your product in the layers pane).

10. Perform a Gaussian Blur of 0.5 pixels in Photoshop or 5 pixels in GIMP on the layer mask.

11. Adjust the levels on the layer mask using the white pick only (right side), moving it towards the middle slowly until only the very edge of your product image is still blurred. You shouldn't have to move it very far.

Following these steps assumes a knowledge of GIMP or Photoshop. If any of these steps are unclear, please email me at sweet.distractions@hotmail.ca and I'll do my best to point you to a tutorial to help.

Thanks for the info Ilan and Tocy. I wasn't sure how much we were allowed to manipulate the product image. Between levels and/or a drop shadow, I should be able to work something out.

Thanks Tocy! I have always wanted to Gaussian blur my layer masks, but didn't know what to search for to ask how!
(Seriously!)

Most welcome! Please don't hesitate to ask further questions.

There has been a lot of chaffing at the "10px away from the fonts" limit that Ilan has asked for in the templates.
Here are some images I made showing the "Forbidden Zones" where your pictures may not go. At the end I'll describe how I made these: Taking what I learned from Tocy and running with it:
(I use GIMP, your tool names may vary)
In the background layer I used select-by-color on the blue fonts.
I used select->grow to grow the selection by 11 pixels (not just 10, to get past the anti-aliased edges)
Create a new transparent layer, set it to 33% opaque, and fill the selected area with red.
Go back to the background layer, select-by-color the orange text.
Grow it by 11 pixels
Go back to your new layer, and fill this selection with red.
The two selections overlap into big red blobs, THE FORBIDDEN ZONE!
Don't forget to delete this layer in the final copies that you send to Ilan.