Karen's Teen Outfit


Karen dresses much more flamboyantly than her sister Sheba.
SimsHost subscribers can click on the image to download Karen's outfit from The Pearl.
Warning: Large file. About 480 K.
The zip archive contains the one Teen Female outfit worn by Karen Lund in the image above.
Unzip the .package file and save it in your Downloads or SavedSims folder.

Here she is! The young lady in the boots and blues is Karen Lund, as she appears in Chapters 272 and 273 of the Tales of Happy Valley.

Being Sheba's kid sister isn't easy. Karen finds that she has to go the extra mile to attract enough attention to be something more than "Sheba's sister," and she's willing to go the distance to develop her own style.

At the same time, her big sister's reputation tends to make her a little scary, keeping the wolves at bay; and despite her outgoing appearance, this suits Karen just fine.


The lucky guy in this picture is Meadow's son, Arthur Thayer.

More on Karen's Teen Outfit

Here are some more pictures of Karen's Teen Outfit. These were taken at the local high school in Happy Valley.



That zipper pull is as intriguing as bow ties on a bikini.



Guaranteed to be waterproof.

I neglected to make an image while I was in Body Shop and couldn't find an in-game image that would work for today's SimsHost Chronicle, so I stopped by Karen's house to take another picture.

I found her dancing in the living room. Here's a larger version of the image from the Chronicle. I think it's pretty neat.


Karen's Teen Outfit
The download link is in the first message in this topic. Scroll back up to find it.


(Do not try this at home. Professional driver on a closed course. Erm, that is, I used some Photoshop tricks to make the background out of focus.)


That's Karen and Sheba's mom, Lois, watching television. She's fragrant again.

Greg wrote:

(Do not try this at home. Professional driver on a closed course. Erm, that is, I used some Photoshop tricks to make the background out of focus.)

Actually, you posted those tricks somewhere here...

Greg wrote:

That's Karen and Sheba's mom, Lois, watching television. She's fragrant again.

It's hereditary!

miros1 wrote:

Greg wrote: (Do not try this at home. Professional driver on a closed course. Erm, that is, I used some Photoshop tricks to make the background out of focus.) Actually, you posted those tricks somewhere here...

It's on page 5 of The Whole Sort of General Mish-Mash:
Blurring the Background to Simulate Depth of Field

It even has one of those tricky mouse-over thingies.

miros1 wrote:

Greg wrote: That's Karen and Sheba's mom, Lois, watching television. She's fragrant again. It's hereditary!

Yup!

Lois isn't as baby-obsessed as her eldest daughter but she's definitely a family sim.

so do you just use the selection tool to select the character? Also, I'm not entirely clear on masking. Can you point me to a good tutorial on it or explain it real quick?

Liss wrote:

so do you just use the selection tool to select the character? Also, I'm not entirely clear on masking. Can you point me to a good tutorial on it or explain it real quick?

I duplicated the whole image twice.

On the top layer, I painted out the background using a layer mask. For more on layer masks in Photoshop, see here:
http://www.moonsims.com/tech/how-to-skin-07.html

I blurred the second layer, using a Gaussian blur. Then I masked the blurred layer so that foreground objects (at the bottom of the image) would be sharper by making the blurred layer more transparent toward the bottom of the image. I did that by putting a gradient in the mask that went from black at the bottom to white at the top.

The third layer stayed as the original image. It's there so that it can show through the blurred layer, where the blurred layer is masked.

Ok, i'll wrap my head around that later

But how did you select her in order to mask the rest of it out? pixel by pixel with the selection tool?

Liss wrote:

Ok, i'll wrap my head around that later But how did you select her in order to mask the rest of it out? pixel by pixel with the selection tool?

You don't have to select her. Just Add Layer Mask, set your foreground color to black, pick a paintbrush, and (after making sure you're painting the mask and not the image) paint over everything that's not her. Anywhere you paint the mask black, the picture disappears. Anywhere you paint it white, the picture appears.

I usually start with a huge brush and glob out most of the background, then use ever finer brushes to work my way into corners as I get down to the details.


One Exception: When you do a screen shot in Body Shop with a solid white background, the solid background makes it easy to select the character. No painting required.

Just use the magic wand to select the white background. (Zero tolerance, anti-alias OFF.) Then pull down under Select to Inverse. That will select the character.

Then, with the character selected, you can easily mask out the background by just adding a layer mask at that point.

Since you have something selected, Photoshop automatically paints those pixels white (in the mask) and the rest black.

If you have nothing selected when you Add Layer Mask, Photoshop will paint the whole mask white at the start, so it's 100% visible.


Note: Shades of gray in the mask make those pixels partially transparent. (Gray '808080' is 50% transparent.)

hehe...actually I figured it out before you posted this....but thank you! You don't know how much you've helped me. (See my "eyes" topic in Webmaster's).