What's the problem you're having? If the shadow is an issue, try selecting the whole background with a Magic Wand selection tool (this presumes Photoshop, sorry) at a reasonable tolerance, probably between 20 and 30 to include the shadow, neatening up where necessary with the quickmask and a nice fine brushtip, then either filling that, or making a new layer totally filled black, and then create a Mask from the inverted selection. You can then also use the Maximise function under Other Effects to remove any white border around the dice/words by adding a pixel all round the mask.

I can explain in more detail what I'm talking about if required, or you can just send it to me and I'll do it for you; I love Photoshop these days- though I've only got version 6. Sigh...

Shevaun

Edit: I take that back about the tolerance. Go for a very low tolerance, non-contiguous, and then do the shadow by hand in quickmask mode. Probably more effective.

Edit 2: Have you got the dice image separately to the writing? The anti-aliasing on the writing probably makes it a pain to fill around; doing the dice and then putting the writing back over it would probably be easier.

The dice are the same colour as the background, so I'd be inclined to use a Magnetic Lasso and carefully mask off the dice, I'd then Feather the selection when filling it in to avoid having sharp edges to it. You probably also want to copy the masked stuff onto a layer above too and drop the opacity to make the dice look as natural as you can at the edges.

There's probably not a simple "click this button" solution.

[This is why people like Paul Bourne and Jon Hodgson get paid. :-) ]

...and that little shadow at the bottom of the dice makes things difficult.

Shevaun, since you mentioned it, would you mind having a go? My email is Graham C. Walmsley (except without the spaces and full stop), at gmail dot com. It would be much appreciated and I'd buy you something apposite. A beer, maybe.

Graham

A method I usually use if I can't get a decent lock-on with automatic masking tools is to make a bezier path by hand and convert it into a mask. It's a touch laborious to trace the entire image, but with something simple like this it oughtn't take all that long. You can also exclude whatever you like from your masked area, including the shadow which you could always mask out separately and treat with different filters.

Ash

I've totally not got the hang of the pen tools yet, its my next hurdle to jump. I've sent what I've done so far to Graham, but I'm a geek with a Wacom, so I'll probably poke it again later, beziers and all.

Shevaun

I don't think you need the pen, just zoom in and select the outline of the dice (minus shadow) using the lasoo, then invert the selection and do a fill with black, I do that all the time for similar things.

Solipsist RPG Website

Easy solution: Invert the image, re-do the text.

Of course that would mean you ended up with black dice too.

How are things going with this project? Are you still having problems getting the cover to look the way you want it to?

Ash

Shevaun did a good version.

And, then, I realised that there's shitloads of black RPG books of about that size (especially on the CE stall), and virtually no white RPG books of that ize.

So I think I'll keep it white, so it looks a bit different.

Graham

Hah! Yes, gamers are all black, didn't you know?

Once, many years ago, the first year that I ran Conpulsion, I had yellow t-shirts instead of black. People hated them ... and they complained, and they didn't buy them all.

*but* they are also just about the only old Conpulsion t-shirt that people remember :)

http://www.solipsist-rpg.com/

Not sure if that's so much about gamers liking black as gamers hating yellow ;) It's kinda a glaringly bright background to drop anything onto. I've always preferred nice neutral shades myself, so white and grey are good as well. That said, I'm colourblind so what would I know! :D

Ash

Its a warm and happy colour :)

I have loads of those t-shirts and I love them

http://www.solipsist-rpg.com/

Yes, it says that on this colour psychology website I just found. It also says that yellow causes the most eye-strain of all the colours, that it can cause feelings of frustration and anger, that it increases the metabolism and that it can be used in small doses to grab the attention (note small doses) ;) Now, is it me, or is about half of that complete rubbish? Why am I telling you this? Somebody shoot me!

http://psychology.about.com/od/sensationandperception/a/color_yellow.htm

Ash the Evil Thread Derailer

Hey, let's not drift this into being about discussions of colour or psychology or T-shirts (the thread looks done now that Graham has decided to stick with his white background).

Maybe the last few posts here should have been e-mails? Anyway, let's move on before someone takes up your offer.

They would have been PMs if we had a PM system. I don't have people's emails.

http://www.solipsist-rpg.com/