Photobie Forum

odidio · Joined: 01 Mar 2006 Posts: 89 Location: N.S. Canada

Ok, I was making a long one that was pretty complicated where you would clone the lashes and have lots of layers, but this is an easier way to get the eyes to blink.

Open your picture in Photobie, if it's a very large image you should resize it to a smaller one or you will have a very large animated gif file when your done. To do this go to the top menu and click 'layer', then 'resize layer by dimension only'. You can type in your smaller numbers or decrease them with the slider.

Go to the layer manager window, click the small arrow beside the 'clone tool' and click 'clone current whole layer'. Do this one more time so that you will have three layers, the background one and two other image ones. For now we are going to hide the last layer ( 2:imaging) by clicking on 'Hide' on the layer manager and then 'true'.

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Now you will want to zoom in on the picture so it's easier to work on, click the +zoom button on the top menu a few times. Also make sure the 'auto layer generation' option is unchecked on the layer manager, (turned off).

Select the second layer marked ( 1:imaging ).
Click on the 'color picker' tool in the menu to the right and then click on the skin color just above the eyelashes, this will set the primary color to use. Set the secondary color to black manually by clicking on the secondary color box and change to black with the popup window.
Select the 'Draw with color pen' tool on the menu to the right. Leave the size at 10 and start coloring over the eyelashes in the picture to make the eyes look half closed. If you don't like what you've drawn or made a mistake click on the 'undo' feature at the top and start again.

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Now to draw the lashes back in, click the two small arrows by the primary and secondary colors to switch them and have black as the primary color. Select the 'draw with color pen' tool again but this time set the size down to 3 or so, and carefully draw in the lashes just below the other color you drew in the eyes.

(click)

Now select that third layer ( 2:imaging ) that you have hidden, go to the layer manager - Hide - false to have it show again.
Switch the primary and secondary colors back and repeat the steps above. The difference this time is that you will fill in all the eye with the skin color, then switch the colors, and size of the pen, and draw the lashes at the bottom to make the eye so it looks closed.

(click)

Now you can zoom back out to the normal size. Also if you want a little more realistic look, you can select and clone the whole second layer, the one marked (1:imaging), the one with the eyes half closed. In the animation this will be the eyes opening up again.

Go to the top menu, Gif animaton - animation control panel. You can leave most of the default settings.
Click on the first frame to select it and change the delay time to 4000 or 5000, this will keep the eyes open for a while.
Click on each of the other frames and set their delay times to 50 or 60, this will set how fast the eyes blink.
Click on refresh and then start to view your animation. If you like it click on the save button, name it and save as a 'gif' file.

You won't notice any mistakes with the smaller sizes, lol. Smilie_PDT

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odidio · Joined: 01 Mar 2006 Posts: 89 Location: N.S. Canada

Excerpts from how this tutorial started.

Pathan wrote;