Photoshop help required

July 1, 2009 12:18 AM

Photoshop question. I have a logo. I have a banner. I want to cut the shape of the logo out of the banner to leave a logo-shaped hole so you can see the page background.

When I paste the logo on the banner it goes all pixelly. It's a big logo (2000 pixels square roughly) and the background is 720 by 130. Obviously there needs to be rescaling. When I do it, I am left with a rough, pixillated edge that looks like shit.

I *think* I need to turn the logo into a vector shape so that it scales properly. I've no idea how to do this.

I *assume* that this is also partially a question of resolution.

Can someone hold my hand and explain this to me?

I have CS3 but I mostly use it to retouch the occasional photo.

posted by ninazer0 to media & arts (6 comments total)

This should be a nice tutorial on creating a vector shape from the existing logo using photoshop (link)

Once you have created your vector shape, you can then use it to create a clipping mask so that you can move around your logo shaped hole to get it perfect (Link here)
posted by SRMorris at 1:27 AM on July 1

I wouldn't bother with the whole vector thing until I'd tried and failed at the following, which should be a fair bit quicker: instead of shrinking the logo to paste it on the banner, expand the banner to make the logo the relative size you want. Then cut out the logo shaped hole, using a few pixels of feathering to smooth the cut edge; then shrink the banner with the hole in it back to its original size.
posted by flabdablet at 2:30 AM on July 1 [1 favorite has favorites]

Where are you pasting the logo from? What condition is the original logo, i.e. is it pixlated? What's the resolution of the logo and what's the resolution of the banner you wish you place it in?

Can you post a visual of the logo and banner so people can see exactly what you're talking about?
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 3:36 AM on July 1

Sounds like you might just be resizing while the image in Indexed Color mode (e.g. if it's a GIF), which doesn't support anti-aliasing when resizing. In PhotoShop, go to Image/Mode and if that's the case select RGB Color.
You certainly shouldn't need to create a vector version in order to use a 2000-pixels-wide logo in a low-res banner.
posted by malevolent at 3:44 AM on July 1

You shouldn't need to deal with vectorizing anything in this case. 2000px is a huge difference from 130px vertically. Scaling down for a shape to fit in 130px is going to be pixelly, comparatively. As mentioned above, ensure anti-aliasing is on to get the best result possible.
posted by beerbajay at 4:52 AM on July 1

Sounds like you are dealing with an image-resolution mismatch. Perhaps, even, a file-format mismatch (gif vs. tiff, for instance) Without having the actual files to evaluate, we can only speculate how best to procede.
posted by Thorzdad at 7:16 AM on July 1