User blog:Yami riku/Guide to Editing Images

This is a very quick tutorial to teach the basics of editing images once a user is familiar with their tools. When uploading avatars and pets to the wiki, I take screenshots and I edit out the background. This quick rundown will teach you how you can do that too.

Introduction
Don't have Photoshop? Use https://pixlr.com/ which is free!

Once you arrive at the page, scroll down til you see the "PIXLR EDITOR" and select to "LAUNCH WEB APP".

Get familiar with the tools on the lefthand side. Play around with them for a while. If you hover over a tool, you'll see a name pop up which tells what the tool is. It takes time to remember where everything is but once you have it down, it's smooth sailing.

Learning About Layers
Once you play around, you'll notice "Layers" on the righthand side. When doing any big editing project, chances are that you're working with layers.

I'm starting up a new project. A blank canvas.

I'm going to select a new layer and I'm going to draw a smiley face in this layer. https://i.imgur.com/rsD64e6.png

Now I'm going to create another new layer. Drawing a heart in Layer 2! https://i.imgur.com/3IiCs68.png

So as you can see, Layer 2 (the heart) is stacked on top of Layer 1 (the smile).

Well, what if I want the heart BEHIND the smile? I click go to the righthand side to click and drag on the layer and I can place it under Layer 1. Now the heart is behind the smile!

Want to hide a certain layer in case it's distracting you or blocking your view? You can do that by clicking on the checkbox in the Layers section. https://i.imgur.com/b6yk959.png

I don't want a background for my image. When working with Pixlr, the background is "locked", meaning you can't accidentally delete this layer. You can unlock it by heading to the Layers section, hovering over the lock, and clicking on it twice. It should turn into a regular checkbox if it's unlocked. https://i.imgur.com/Oqjvi8T.png

I can delete a layer by right clicking on the layer and selecting "Delete layer". As you can see, you can also duplicate layers and merge layers. Feel free to play around with that later.

For right now, I'm deleting the background and I'm going to save the image. When saving, for the "Format", I recommend saving as a PNG.

I now have a file of a smiley face with a heart behind it which has no background. (The grey and white checkerboard background indicates that it's transparent in that area.)

Editing Out Parts of Images
Let's work on a Town of Salem related project. I want to grab an image of John Hathorne with no background. How can I erase the background? https://i.imgur.com/DeTu1GJ.png

First off, in Pixlr I'm going to delete the background layer. I basically never keep the background layer. If I need a background layer, I can always just create it later by selecting a new layer and dragging it to the bottom of the layers list!

In this photo, there is basically just one color behind John Hathorne and then there's a rock beside his foot. Let's go ahead and use the wand tool.

Once you select the wand, you'll notice at the top it says "Tolerance" with a number beside it. The higher the number, the more pixels the wand will pick up. Play around with the tolerance number and click around on your image. You'll see if your wand picks up too much or too little of what you want to highlight and potentially delete.

Right now I have it set at "21". Now using the wand, I'm going to click on the dark gray part behind John Hathorne. https://i.imgur.com/8ZlTZ7H.png

Notice how it highlights around his body? I'm going to press "Delete" on my keyboard to tell Pixlr to delete the part I've selected with the wand. Now we have this: https://i.imgur.com/jc3kK5n.png

We have Hathorne lying dead beside a rock. How can I get rid of this rock? You can use the eraser. But you should also get familiar with the lassos. Lassos let you click and select areas you wish to edit.... or remove. https://i.imgur.com/peX5tZx.png

The default lasso is the "Freehand lasso tool". I prefer using the "Polygonal lasso tool". I'm going to use the polygonal lasso to click around that rock by Hathorne's feet. https://i.imgur.com/FFPybw5.png

Now that it's highlighted, I'm going to delete it! For some reason, my delete button isn't working here, but I just went to the Edit menu and selected "Clear" to delete the section I had lassoed. https://i.imgur.com/iufaV9e.png

Now I'm ready to save my image. Hathorne is dead on the ground and has no background! https://i.imgur.com/WrgJquZ.png

End
There's a lot to learn and it really just comes down to playing around with the tools. Then you can search up guides online if you wish to learn more advanced stuff.