Tubes can be made from any object or picture; this tutorial explains one method of isolating one part of a graphic and making it into a tube. In a nutshell, all you need to do is delete all the extraneous background around your selection, select the background (which should now be all one color) and invert to make your chosen part of the picture the selected item. Copy or cut and paste it to a new graphic, resize if necessary, then export it to your tube folder. For this tutorial, I'm using a picture I have in my CD clipart collection. Note: I worked with a large graphic, so the frog graphics are all thumbnails, except for the graphic I made utilizing the tube; which is almost full-size. Left-click on each thumbnail to view so you can see the details.

To save just the frogs as a tube:

• Select as much of the background as possible.
  Use as large a graphic as possible to work on, increase the colors to 16 million (Colors/Increase Color Depth) (you'll reduce the size after all the editing is done). Make sure your background is set to a solid color. Choose a shade that contrasts with the frogs (or whatever graphic you're using). My color is set to a medium blue. The background of this graphic is not very complicated, so it will be easy to delete. Select the background with the magic wand. The higher the tolerance setting, the more background is selected. In my example, I used 47 as the tolerance, then selected the background. You'll see the "marching ants", the small dashes showing what areas have been selected.
  
• Find out where the graphic you want has been compromised because of breaks in the outline.
  Look at the graphic at this point: the marching ants are selecting almost all the background, but also a few sections inside the frogs (circled in red). If I lower the tolerance threshhold, it keeps the frogs from being invaded by the ants, but it doesn't smoothly select all of the very slightly textured background. To fix the problem, I deselected the background and fixed the outlines of the sections that were affected. Use the magnifying glass to zoom in to the areas that need to be fixed; what you're looking for is sections where the outline is fuzzy or very light.
  
• Repair the outline.
  Select the push tool (the finger); make sure Push is set as the Retouch Mode. I used the settings shown here for this project; they will vary depending on your graphic. For smaller areas, I changed the size to 1. Set the tool directly on the dark part of the outline and "push" it over to join the other section. Do this on all the outline areas that need to be joined.
  

  Another way to do this is to use the dropper tool to select one of the dark colors in the outline then use the paintbrush to paint over the light section. This makes a more solid and noticeable line, but if you're working with a large graphic that you'll be reducing later, the outline will 'fuzz; enough to be unnoticeable. Sometimes you'll need to do a combination of the two methods. You can push the background around to trim the outline where it's too thick.

• Delete and clean up the background.
  Use the magic wand again to select the background; if you have missed any areas (pay particular attention to the eyes on the lefthand frog), deselect everything and go back and fix them. Once you have fixed them all, hold the shift key in and click on each part of the background. Press the delete key. If you're using my graphic for practice, you should now see only the outline of the globe for the background. Deselect everything again.
  
• Finish cleaning up the background, then select it again.
  Use whichever tool is comfortable for you; the push tool, the eraser or the paintbrush. If you use the eraser, make sure your background color on the style selector matches your current background. If you use the paintbrush, click on the jointed arrow to flip the background color to the foreground color. (Background color doesn't matter if you use the push tool). Change the tool size to about 40 or 50 and clean up the globe outlines. As you get in closer to the frogs, reduce the size of the tool. When all the big stuff is gone, your brush or push size should be about 2 again. Then you'll get in close and get rid of all the small areas next to the frogs. The better you clean it up, the better your final tube will look. The reason for the blue background was so I could distinguish the sections that need to be cleaned up easier. After you've done all the cleanup, click again on the background. The marching ants should be clean and snug against the frogs.
• Invert the selection and choose Copy, then paste the frogs as a new selection. When you paste the selection as a new image, it automatically saves as one layer with transparency.
• Resize the graphic to 80%.
  Do not check the resize all layers option; if it is checked, uncheck it. Reducing the graphic will get rid of some jaggies if you have any, and will give the graphic some space around it.
  
• The last step will be to Export the graphic and name it.
  Choose File/Export/Picture Tube. This is just one tube, so you can accept all the default settings. All you have to do is name the tube. Voila!
  Tubes resize smaller without any loss of detail; when you resize them larger; they sometimes get blurry or distorted. When possible, always use the largest version of a graphic that you have. This also makes it easier to work on, especially if you're working with more complex graphics. You can reduce the graphic to a more manageable size just before you export it as a tube.
  If you're trying to isolate a piece of a graphic with gradient or textured color around it, you may want to use the "smart outline" selector, then do your cleanup. E-mail me at raggbaggrealm@aol.com if you do not know how to use this tool; I'll be glad to help. I didn't want to get into it here since it's a more lengthy process and these are supposed to be "instant" tubes.
  Here's a graphic that utilizes the new tube we just made.
  

  Questions? Problems? Suggestions? Please e-mail me at RaggBagg; I usually get back to my e-mail queries within a day or so. This tutorial was created: May 10, 2002. Updated: May 25, 2002 Back to Tutorial index Back to RaggBagg index