Cropping a complicated image from a complicated background?

[dv8_fx]

I was wondering..... will something like this work for you?

 

[dv8_fx]

The above waveform on the shirt looks blurry as I had to decrease the size to fit into the smaller shirt template. Here's how a section view of the wave looks at actual size.


This was done from an entire sound clip using the Screenshot Tools function of Audacity, opened spliced together and edited in Photoshop. It's total size is approximately 2110px x 565px at 72 dpi.



You have to zoom magnify on one of the stereo tracks and enlarge the track channel (and minimize the other channel) to accommodate the wave in sections. Take a screenshot, move on to the next section, take screen shot and so on until you have grabs of the entire soundfile which you then open in Photoshop and splice together into one image. I isolated the wave using the Color range function. Afterwhich I created a duplicate of just the wave on a new layer and brightened up the default wave color used in Audacity.


Here's how it looks in my setup in preparation for the screenshot....

 

[ALB68]

dv8_fx, the dimension he's going to need is about 10" wide @300ppi for the printer. 2110 px @ 72 translates to about 7" at 300. He and I have exchanged a couple of PMs and his concern is the quality. I have suggested to him to see if he can make a physical print from his wave software and then scan it. If he can do that, then he should be able to bring that scan into PS and pretty much use it as is, assuming the length is adequate.This would eliminate the need for screenshots and all of the manipulations etc. Does this make sense?

 

[dv8_fx]

Ahhhh...... I see. Makes sense, Larry.

The above is just a suggestion.... an option for him to choose from. It's all up to him.

I didn't stretch/enlarge the track to it's fullest, yet. There's still more room to make the track bigger and longer to get to the needed size you mentioned. Not to mention that the sound track I used was a short one.

If he used a longer track and the steps I outlined above, he can attain the needed size..... maybe more than expected but he can crop it to the right length size at the resolution he needs.

No harm for me trying.... .



addendum ...... And from what I see in the soundtrack in his first post, if that is what he intends to use, I think he'll reach the desired 10" wide @300ppi image.

 

[ALB68]

Ahhhh...... I see. Makes sense, Larry.

The above is just a suggestion.... an option for him to choose from. It's all up to him.

I didn't stretch/enlarge the track to it's fullest, yet. There's still more room to make the track bigger and longer to get to the needed size you mentioned. Not to mention that the sound track I used was a short one.

If he used a longer track and the steps I outlined above, he can attain the needed size..... maybe more than expected but he can crop it to the right length size at the resolution he needs.

No harm for me trying.... .

Oh goodness no, I'm sure he appreciates the input. I am just trying to simplify the issue so it's makes it easier on him based on his stated capabilities and his deadline for getting the design in to the printing company. I have no knowledge of the software used to produce the waveform, so I'm surmising one can print from the program.

 

[dv8_fx]

no worries. And I didn't know that was what you had discussed in PM communication with him.

......... I have suggested to him to see if he can make a physical print from his wave software and then scan it. If he can do that, then he should be able to bring that scan into PS and pretty much use it as is, assuming the length is adequate.This would eliminate the need for screenshots and all of the manipulations etc. ..........

@ALB68 .....

If its a printout from Audacity, or any software for that matter that he'll be using, he may still need to do the preparation setup I mentioned in order to get the track at the height and most especially the length of the track needed .....


And I never did a printout from Audacity before. I can't say whether it will print just the wave or including the left control settings as well as the default channel track color background........ just saying.

 

[SouthernAuggie]

@SouthernA - Thank you for being honest about the commercial use of these images.

Every participant in this forum has their own opinion on helping entrepreneurs and is free to do what they feel most appropriate.

My personal opinion (ie, not speaking as a moderator) is that I will bend over backwards to help someone learn Photoshop related skills and techniques. Occasionally, if there is a family emergency situation (eg, rescuing photos that have been damaged by fire or flood, helping someone quickly prepare photos for a funeral, charitable causes, etc.), I will do work at no charge for individuals in such situations. However, I draw the line at doing free work for someone who themselves will likely make money off of my work.

So, if you you would like to continue to learn the techniques you need to get to your goal, I'll be more than happy to help you learn them. However, I won't supply another good quality, un-watermarked image for you to use.

That being said, there are participants in this forum who are only too happy to do free work for others, be it out of the goodness of their heart, for practice, to build their portfolios, or for reasons only known to themselves. You may have to have to wait for someone like this to come along, but it happens all the time.

Another option for you is to place a request for help on our fee-for-service forum and negotiate a fee with the folks who respond. Be sure to read the sticky threads at the top of that forum and abide by the rules PSG has laid down. People are likely to respond to a notice of a paying job on that forum much more quickly, and there is a good chance that the work will be of higher quality than a freebie.

Good luck with your enterprise.

Tom M

PS - If you decide to go with the fee-for-service route, to give others a chance, I will not bid on your job.

Oh man. I hope you don't think I was fishing for handouts or anything of that nature. I genuinely am trying to make it so that I can complete this challenge, but if need be, i'll explore the other options you just laid out.

Well, with that said, I STILL would like help with re-creating the waveform you provided earlier. -- "So, if you you would like to continue to learn the techniques you need to get to your goal, I'll be more than happy to help you learn them." -- DEFINITELY WILL!!

Perhaps you can break down further the lines of code that I need to output a high-quality waveform. Particularly, in Octave. I'm sure i'm not the only one who struggles with coding, so this should also aid others further down the line.

As you can tell i'm not as tech savvy as I thought I was. Also, how is it that you created the waveform without the actual audio? It seems as if that's a major part in the steps that you've laid out for me if I read them correctly.

 

[SouthernAuggie]

The above waveform on the shirt looks blurry as I had to decrease the size to fit into the smaller shirt template. Here's how a section view of the wave looks at actual size.
View attachment 51877

This was done from an entire sound clip using the Screenshot Tools function of Audacity, opened spliced together and edited in Photoshop. It's total size is approximately 2110px x 565px at 72 dpi.

View attachment 51878

You have to zoom magnify on one of the stereo tracks and enlarge the track channel (and minimize the other channel) to accommodate the wave in sections. Take a screenshot, move on to the next section, take screen shot and so on until you have grabs of the entire soundfile which you then open in Photoshop and splice together into one image. I isolated the wave using the Color range function. Afterwhich I created a duplicate of just the wave on a new layer and brightened up the default wave color used in Audacity.


Here's how it looks in my setup in preparation for the screenshot....

View attachment 51879

Isolating the wave...so outside of the box. Although, the blurryness is definitely making me nervous. As for the shirt, it literally will be similar to this


I've come to the conclusion that it's basically all about making the waveform as visually hi-rez as possible in photoshop to obtain the best result.

Removing the waveform from the background completely in a way that the quality doesn't suffer -- and is actually heightened is the goal.

PS: I do indeed appreciate the input as ALB said! It really does mean the world.

Alb86 - I still have to get back on you with printing! My printer/scanner doesn't want to cooperate. It's overall been a pretty unlucky experience dealing with all of this haha. I'm going to have to wake up early tomorrow morning, drive to the library and my laptop and I will do my printing and scanning there. Also, as for setting the correct dimensions, I should be able to put them the way I want in the printer settings -- correct? Or is getting it at 10" wide @300ppi something I do beforehand in photshop?


THANK YOU BOTH AGAIN!!

 

[ALB68]

Isolating the wave...so outside of the box. Although, the blurryness is definitely making me nervous. As for the shirt, it literally will be similar to this
View attachment 51911

I've come to the conclusion that it's basically all about making the waveform as visually hi-rez as possible in photoshop to obtain the best result.

Removing the waveform from the background completely in a way that the quality doesn't suffer -- and is actually heightened is the goal.

PS: I do indeed appreciate the input as ALB said! It really does mean the world.

@Alb86 - I still have to get back on you with printing! My printer/scanner doesn't want to cooperate. It's overall been a pretty unlucky experience dealing with all of this haha. I'm going to have to wake up early tomorrow morning, drive to the library and my laptop and I will do my printing and scanning there. Also, as for setting the correct dimensions, I should be able to put them the way I want in the printer settings -- correct? Or is getting it at 10" wide @300ppi something I do beforehand in photshop?


THANK YOU BOTH AGAIN!!

The scanner should give you options as to the ppi etc. Hoping your waveform software will allow you to print a fairly long length. So print as wide as you can with the limitation of your paper size and then scan at a high resolution. Once done, the electronic file can be manipulated in PS. You don't have a printer or a scanner at home? Your computer will have to have drivers installed for the scanner and printer at the library. Good luck. PM if you need some help.

 

[Tom Mann]

Hi SouthernA -

Sure, since you seem to want to pursue the Matlab approach, of course I'll be delighted to help you with it, but before we get into that, there are still some very important questions that I asked in a previous post which you haven't answered. Specifically:

A. "...3. If you don't need the waveforms corresponding to specific music tracks, and a few generic waveforms would be OK, why didn't you just search Google Images for {audio waveform} and set the desired resolution to be something large, like "Greater than 2 Mpixels"? When I did such a search, it produced dozens of hits, most of which seemed almost immediately useful...."

- - - Why aren't you doing this / why isn't something this simple acceptable to you?


B. "...Of course, don't forget that there are many, many different, equally valid ways to visualize the data in a sound file starting with a simple adjustment like the time scale you are using. A snipped that is a couple of seconds long will look wildly different from a snippet that is only, say, 10 msec long (eg, that one might use if you are looking for zero crossings to make a click-less loop). Many different variants show up in the Google Image search. ..."

- - - Have you done the Google Image search that I suggested, and looked at the various graphic representations of audio data? Are you "married" to the one particular look that comes out of Audacity?


C.In post #27 of this thread, you requested, "...Perhaps you can break down further the lines of code that I need to output a high-quality waveform. Particularly, in Octave..."

- - - However, in post #18, I gave you links to three different bits of Matlab code. Each of these contains exactly 4 or 5 or 6 lines of code that you can use to produce a graph of audio data in Matlab. As I recall, some of these links had excellent descriptions of what each line of code does, why it's included, etc..

- - - Have you studied and tried the code contained in even one of these links? If so, tell me what happened.

- - - If you don't find the descriptions in the examples I provided adequate, did you do the Google search I suggested, ie, {matlab plot audio file}. Doing so will turn up numerous lengthy descriptions of such code, probably much better than I would write.


D.In an earlier post, you mentioned that you can't even get Octave to run on your machine. Is this still the case?


Cheers,

Tom M

PS - We'll be in and out all day today and tonight with New Years eve activities, so it may take me a while to get back to this thread.

 

[SouthernAuggie]

Hi SouthernA -

Sure, since you seem to want to pursue the Matlab approach, of course I'll be delighted to help you with it, but before we get into that, there are still some very important questions that I asked in a previous post which you haven't answered. Specifically:

A. "...3. If you don't need the waveforms corresponding to specific music tracks, and a few generic waveforms would be OK, why didn't you just search Google Images for {audio waveform} and set the desired resolution to be something large, like "Greater than 2 Mpixels"? When I did such a search, it produced dozens of hits, most of which seemed almost immediately useful...."

- - - Why aren't you doing this / why isn't something this simple acceptable to you?


B. "...Of course, don't forget that there are many, many different, equally valid ways to visualize the data in a sound file starting with a simple adjustment like the time scale you are using. A snipped that is a couple of seconds long will look wildly different from a snippet that is only, say, 10 msec long (eg, that one might use if you are looking for zero crossings to make a click-less loop). Many different variants show up in the Google Image search. ..."

- - - Have you done the Google Image search that I suggested, and looked at the various graphic representations of audio data? Are you "married" to the one particular look that comes out of Audacity?


C.In post #27 of this thread, you requested, "...Perhaps you can break down further the lines of code that I need to output a high-quality waveform. Particularly, in Octave..."

- - - However, in post #18, I gave you links to three different bits of Matlab code. Each of these contains exactly 4 or 5 or 6 lines of code that you can use to produce a graph of audio data in Matlab. As I recall, some of these links had excellent descriptions of what each line of code does, why it's included, etc..

- - - Have you studied and tried the code contained in even one of these links? If so, tell me what happened.

- - - If you don't find the descriptions in the examples I provided adequate, did you do the Google search I suggested, ie, {matlab plot audio file}. Doing so will turn up numerous lengthy descriptions of such code, probably much better than I would write.


D.In an earlier post, you mentioned that you can't even get Octave to run on your machine. Is this still the case?


Cheers,

Tom M

PS - We'll be in and out all day today and tonight with New Years eve activities, so it may take me a while to get back to this thread.

As for "A" and "B"..like I said earlier:
"There's a specific message behind the audio that will be visually displayed on the shirt, that's the reason i've been so headstrong." -- random waveforms would defeat the whole purpose of the shirt in it's entirety.

As for "C" and "D":

"As soon as I enter the first line of code, I press enter, it gives me an error, and the whole program closes." I've studied it, sat with it, typed in what I could over and over, tried various different .wav's. I know i'm doing something wrong, but I can't for the life of me figure out what. I'm following the directions in the links you provided step by step with no luck.

Octave can run on my computer, it just closes after one line of code is entered.