Dear readers,
My recent posts have managed to land me a position on the CIVITAI Leaderboard for Writers.
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I’ve published a few articles now talking about my use of PowerPoint. Since no one has taken to the comments yet to mock me I figured I should post some more tips and tricks that others out there might find useful. If you care to follow along I've attached a copy of the starting and ending slides in a PowerPoint deck to this article. As always please feel free to reach out if you have any questions or get stuck.
Earlier today I was playing around with some prompts and I really liked what Civitai was churning out. Be sure to check out Lulu in Green to see the final images.
Usually, once I find a few good starter images I’ll do Hi-Res fixes to further punch up the images. Often the Hi-Res fix improves the look of the image, but it still requires just a little more help (aka post-production). I’ve mentioned before that I use OpenArt for in and out painting. I found that it gives me a lot of the functionality I need, and I’m not overwhelmed by the UI/UX like with some other tools I’ve tried. OpenArt also can further upscale images.
What I loved about my CIVITAI Hi-Res image was the fact that the lighter floral pattern in the dress looked nice. What I didn’t like was that the face did not seem as sharp. Once I put the image through OpenArt’s upscaling tool I really liked the way the face came out, but I was not happy that the light floral pattern had been changed to a splotchy pattern.
So what does one do when they want some part of Image A and part of Image B and they either don’t have Adobe Creative Cloud at their disposal or want just a quick and easy fix. Enter my trusty PowerPoint to save the day.
In my earlier article [ARTICLE] I mention about PowerPoint’s ‘Selection Pane’ [PC: ALT+F10] used to label and arrange objects. I’ve highlighted the CIVITAI image in blue and the OpenArt image in red to try and keep a clear distinction between the two.
I then add a 2”x2” circle (dotted red) over the portion of the blue CIVITAI image I want to overlay with the face from red OpenArt image. Once that is complete I left and right align the CIVITAI and OpenArt image making sure that the OpenArt image is layered on top of the CIVITAI image.
PRO TIPS: I’ve found that sometimes during OpenArt’s upscaling process it will not always preserve the original size of the image. This means that the picture will perhaps be a pixel or two shorter or narrower. Upon checking I see that the OpenArt image is just a hair narrower than the CIVITAI image.
Select the OpenArt image, select Picture Format, in the Lower Right corner of the Size is a small arrow that will open your Formatting Pane. Select ‘Size & Properties’ and you’ll be able to adjust the size of the image. You want to make sure you uncheck Lock Aspect Ratio and then you can adjust the height and width of the images so they match.
Once the images are the same size, select both images and got to either Shape Format or Picture format and Align the two images Left and Top.
Once the two images are aligned, check the Selection Pane and adjust the layers to make sure that the OpenArt image is on top of the CIVITAI image.
Next, you’ll want to select the OpenArt picture and under Picture Format you’ll then select Crop. When you first select Crop you’ll notice in the BEFORE image that black markers will appear in the sides and corners of the image. As you select the Upper Left corner drag it and in the DURING image you’ll notice small red dotted lines appear when you hit the border of the overlay circle we added. If you click off the photo you’ll see that the OpenArt image is now aligned to the top and bottom of the overlay circle.
If you repeat the process, but now from the Bottom Right corner you should end up with the OpenArt image now being 2”x2” which is the same size as the overlay.
IMPORTANT: If you’re following along before the next step remove the red border from the OpenArt picture.
For the next step you want to Cut [CTRL+X] the OpenArt Image. Once you have, select the red dotted Overlay circle. In the Format Pane select Shape Options>Fill & Line (Paint Bucket) you then want to select Picture or Texture fill and then Picture Source Clipboard
Once you have pasted the OpenArt image, select the Overlay shape and in the Format Pane under Line you want to select No Line which will remove your red dotted line.
You can take great care during the process, but it is possible the overlay might not be pixel perfect. In that case you have two options. Option 1: You can ‘nudge’ the Overlay by selecting it and pressing CTRL plus any arrow key. This should move the shape using smaller increments so you might be able to align the image.
Option 2: Select the Overlay shape, go to Picture Format>Picture Effects>Soft Edges and then select a setting that blurs the edges and blends the overlay in better with the underlying image.
The left image below shows the final image with the Overlay and the CIVITAI image. The center image has a slight red ring showing the Overlay. The right image has the transparency of the CIVITAI image lowered to better see the Soft Edge effect.
All that remain is to select both the CIVITAI image and the Overlay shape to Group them [CTRL+G]. Once you select the grouped image it’s Right Click and then Save As Picture.
That’s the process of how I manually patch images when In Painting isn’t giving me the results I want or when I get good results from two similar, yet different images.
