This was completely unplanned but quite ironic that today of all days I finish my New Crown Rings. 6 Colors, $100L packs of 2 or get all 6 for deal at $250L. In gold, silver, turquoise, onyx, dark wood and light wood.

Find them at my store Royally. While you’re there, head down to the basement for a…

Gift Box of Whatnot! My clear favorite of the bunch is the monogram crown! Click to change the letter. (Again, find the freebie box in the basement.)

This is really an assortment of things I’ve made the past few years so it’s now it’s a little gift for my (slow) reopening. More stuff coming soon!

Have a great weekend! <3

This is a massive pack of turtlenecks. Heavy on the blues and purples if you notice! 21 total; 7 striped and 14 solid colors. Sculpted neck and sleeves. Ready for your mixin and matchin. I was hesitant about whether anyone would want these right now, since it’s a bit out of season and everyone’s looking forward to warm weather, but they work great for layering, and are just a great deal, I think.

Only 150L and the whole shebang goes to Project Fur Japan, of course.

Find them at the Project Fur Japan sim (direct slurl to my vendor!) , or I also have the vendor up at my store in Kilmarta.

Royally has some items at the Pacific Coast Fundraiser. I’ve got 2 at the moment and am working on more. I have also put up the vendors in my store. They are all 100% contribution. It’s the least I can do to help in this truly heartbreaking situation. Our hearts are with you Japan!

At the PCF Fundraiser (so much great stuff!) my items are on the sim edge here’s a slurl to point the way: http://slurl.com/secondlife/World%20of%20Beauty/250/170/1003

I also have them up in my (newly reopened) store: http://slurl.com/secondlife/Kilmarta/184/55/131

Thank you to everyone who’s making, buying or taking any kind of action to help. <3

My friend Laleeta requested help with how to cut out partially transparent items from their background, quickly and easily, in order to composite the image onto a different background in Photoshop.

There are a number of ways to go about this. I recently had to deal with this very issue when I was making the vendor ads with a partially transparent skirt, and I found one way (limited to SL) that works very well, very quickly!

There are a few steps to this tutorial, and I went into extreme detail so that any skill level of Photoshopper can use this trick, but overall it’s very simple and basic. This should also work for gimp but I’m not sure of the exact commands on gimp. Any gimp users that can provide gimp translations, give a holler in the comments and I will add them to the post.

Here’s a finished example, one of my vendor ads, the original inspiration behind figuring out this work flow. Particularly vexing for me was that I wanted to add a shadow in Photoshop, so I needed a clean composite. I also wanted to add more shading/shadow to the background image but didn’t want any of that to be on the untouched product image.

The detailed steps with pictures after the cut –>

First, we start in Second Life…

1. For taking the picture in SL, it’s best to use the final background you will be using in Photoshop, OR at least the major/main color of the background you plan to use. This does not have to be perfectly lined up by any means, it’s only meant to help prevent “matting” or “halo” problems (example: cutting out of a white background can make the cutout have a tiny white edge). This is especially true if 1. you are trying to cut out partially transparent areas 2. you have anti-aliasing turned on in your viewer.

So either upload the background image or choose the best overall/mid-tone color of your planned background. Again, you are doing this to make sure that the tiny wee edge that is left over is of the generally correct color for the final composite. If you don’t know the color of the final background, going with a mid gray is a safe-ish bet. Or if you are going to put a dark shadow around the avatar then going with a darker color should work. This is one of those steps that makes more sense when you’ve done it a few times. When I did my vendor, I simply used the background I was going to use as final in Photoshop. I could have also used mid/darkish green/grayish color and it would have worked fine.

2. Rez a prim and apply your background image or background color. Set the prim to FULL BRIGHT.

3. Get on your pose stand and line up the shot with your camera, adjust the background prim as needed to cover all edges of the avatar and the attachments. Note that here I have put my pose stand and the background prim within my all-white full-bright photosphere as well. (which is simply a 10m x 10m x 10m hollowed sphere with a lil dimple added, set to full bright white.) Here’s a shot of my photo area, set up:

And here’s my shot lined up. Notice the background covers the avatar and all attachments:

4. IF THE ITEM IS FLEXI…it’s best to take the following step so that things line up perfectly. When the flexi is in the place you want it, it’s time to turn flexi off to assure that the flexi does not move. We’re going to be taking 2 pictures here, so it’s important that they line up exactly. Turn flexi off by either the advanced menu (Advanced>  Rendering > Features >Flexible Objects)….or the keyboard shortcut (control/command + option + F9).

5. Ok, now to take the picture! Make sure you have your windlight setting you want for the picture, then snap away. If you made a custom windlight setting, you might want to save it as we’ll be changing the windlight setting in a moment!

6. Very important: don’t move your camera yet!! Not until we take picture #2, the silhouette picture.

7. Now select the background prim and change it to 100% white, with full bright still on.

8. Now change your windlight to the settings in the image below. Be sure to save it for future uses!

9. Now take another picture with this cool black and white look, which will end up being our mask in photoshop. (A mask is a black and white image that will tell Photoshop what parts to keep and what parts to make see through.) My silhouette image below:

10. Now you’re done in SL, you can turn your windlight back to a normal one and turn flexi back on if you turned that off, and its safe to move your camera now

11. Off to Photoshop!

12. Open up both images in Photoshop and first select the black and white one. We’re going to drag and drop this image onto the color image, but we’ll use a nice Photoshop trick so that it lines up exactly. The trick is: with the Move Tool (v) selected, drag the black and white image onto the color image, but BEFORE LETTING GO OF THE MOUSE BUTTON to drop it, hold down the shift key as you do so and it will drop it lined up exactly on top of the second image. You can now close the black and white only image; now that it’s in the file with the other we don’t need that file open anymore.

13. Now you have 2 layers in the other file, with the black and white image on top. Double click the “background” layer so it becomes editable.

14. Now, take a look at the black and white image on top. For the most part, it should be perfect. But full bright things worn by the avatar can mess up this method***, so we will fix any of those now. Also, some images sometimes leave a black bar on the left edge of the picture, or if you didn’t put your whole set up in a full bright photosphere, outside of the background prim it might be black. Let’s fix all those issues quickly so we can have a perfect silhouette. Close up of the issues I need to fix below, note the necklace which was full bright that needs to be cleaned up:

If there are no issues, skip this step! Otherwise, grab the brush tool (b) and reset the swatches to black and white. Now using a small round hard brush with black color chosen, color in the parts where the full bright item is messing with our perfect silhouette (the necklace in my example). Now switch to white (x), make the brush a bit bigger (the keys [ or ] make the brush bigger or smaller) and paint white over that right edge that has a black line, or any edges outside of full white background prim that are black. When it’s fixed, continue…

15. Select the black and white layer and hit “select all” (control/command A) then copy (control/command C). Deselect by hitting control/command D. Now turn off the visibility of this layer with the little eyeball in the layers palette.

16. Now select the color layer and hit the button at the bottom of the layers palette to add a layer mask. (button shown below with a red circle)

The mask added will be all white. Now, Alt+click on the white layer mask thumbnail image on the layer and the image is going to turn all white. This means we are viewing JUST the layer mask. One way you can tell you are viewing just the layer mask is that the eyeballs in the layer palette go dim. See image below, the red circled area is where you should Alt+click.

Now, hit paste (control/command V).

17. One tiny more step: while still just viewing JUST the layer mask, we need to invert the mask (control/command i). On a mask, the parts that are white will show through, the parts that are black go invisible and the parts that are gray are partly shown through. So we need to invert the colors of this so it works correctly.

18. Now click on the the layer thumbnail for the on the color layer, the lil square image that shows the preview of the layer (circled in red below), and the view will return to normal and you have your cut out picture!

The cut out picture in photoshop:

Now just drag and drop your cut out image onto your background.

*** There is one caveat: items worn by the avatar that have full bright turned on will cause issues with this method. Depending on the item or it’s size it may make this method not work (for example: full bright hair). If the item is mod, you can turn OFF full bright for the silhouette picture (but turn it on for the “color” picture). If it’s a necklace or something that is inside of the “outlines” of the avatar/shape you want to cut out, it’s pretty easy to fix as I showed in step 14.

This may seem a bit long and involved but the steps are quite easy and once you do it a few times it’s very very fast, much faster than any other method and much more exact.

Enjoy and happy compositing!

The first release from Royally is a ballet-inspired outfit that is named after my friend Alicia. It’s quite fitting that I named it after her, seeing as she both gave me the idea to create it, and has long been a source of support and inspiration for not only me but many, many people. My Second Life would not be the same without her, and it’s truly and honor to name my first outfit after her! <3

Alicia comes in 6 different color packs: pink with yellow, blue with green, white with pink, purple with blue, camel with black, and yellow with orange.  Each color pack contains a leotard top and bottom on all layers, prim sleeve bows, and 4 different styles of scripted skirts. Each touch-scripted, menu-driven skirt has texture change options, allowing you to swap colors on almost every part of the skirt individually, and some parts have options to make them invisible. Each color pack is $200L.

Alicia also comes in an All-colors pack option that contains all the colors PLUS some “fatpack goodies”. In this case, the fatpack goodies are 4 specially scripted skirts, that have ALL the texture change options contained within the same skirt, allowing for untold amount of customization between colors and parts of the skirt. Great for mixing and matching! The fatpack is also a great value at only $700L.

Alicia, like all items sold at Royally, comes with all parts mod/copy/no trans, and all clothing comes on all layers. Soon I will have a gift vendor set up that will sell mod/no copy/trans versions, but until that time if you would like to send it as a gift, please contact QueenKellee Kuu directly via IM and I can take care of those requests one-on-one.

More pictures showcasing the skirt and color change options under the cut…

A longer post about that in a moment, but wanted to post a quick note that I have a Valentimes Day gift in my subscribo! So head over to Royally, touch the subscribo and look in history for the message.