changing back ground colors

[jgaslin]

I have a pic of me jumping in the air, what I want to do is change the background to black or white, so nothing else can be seen except me. Then I want to rotate the pic of me a little.

Thanks for everyones time

[Mary]

use one of your selection tools - Magnetic lasso maybe to select what you want to keep in the picture - then copy - then Ctrl J to create a new layer via copy (just learned that yesterday). Make sure this new layer has a transparent background - then below that - create a new layer that is either black or white and you will be able to select and rotate your picture and you will have a great montage.

(I have seen some good intros to layers if you would like to look at them just let this forum know and you will get lots of help).

[MikeH]

The Magnetic Lasso Tool is good for this as you can adjust the selection as you go along. If you make a mistake, pressing the delete key undoes the last selection.

A tip I have found useful with any of the lasso tools is using the Selection Brush Tool (keyboard shortcut A) to make adjustments afterwards. To add an area to your selection, just paint with the brush inside the selection, to remove an area - from outside the selection hold ALT and then paint.

After you have selected the outline using the lasso tool, it is best to soften the edge so it doesn't look to harsh against the new background. You do this via the Feather command (With the lasso tool selected, right click, choose the feather option OR from the tool bar Select > Feather. A value of 3 should be sufficient.

To rotate your image, select the Layer that has just the shape you cut out and use Free Transform (CTRL T or Image > Transform > Free Transform. If you alter the size of the shape, make sure you hold the SHIFT key at the same time to keep the aspect ratio.

If you want to understand Layers, I recommend that you look at the two Tutorials on this site - "A Quick Intro To Layers" Parts 1 & 2. In Part 2 there is an example that shows how to create a montage from three pictures. You can download the three pictures and work through it yourself.

Otherwise as Mary said, post back with any queries.

Mike

[FJBrad]

I have a pic of me jumping in the air, what I want to do is change the background to black or white, so nothing else can be seen except me. Then I want to rotate the pic of me a little.

Thanks for everyones time
So what you want is you in color, and everything else in B&W?
There are several ways to do this, but since you want to rotate just you against the background, you'll want to select yourself, then press ctrl-J (Command-J on a Mac) to put yourself on a separate layer. Then highlight the background layer and desaturate by enhance>color>hue and saturation, then drag the saturation all the way to the left.
on the you layer, highlight the layer ctrl-click on the layer to change it to a selection, then ctrl-t to bring up the free transform box. Put your cursor outside the box and click and drag to rotate yourself, then press enter/return to apply the transformation.
Flatten the layers to finish.