Pen Tool?

[ChawnC]

Hello folks! I spent a fair part of the weekend getting caught up on these forums. Also, I tend to lean toward using Aperture 2 for my initial repair/sorting; then export to Elements 6 for creative edit.

Honestly, I'm not an advanced user of either program.

I have been finding Elements more & more helpful as I use it, and just downloaded Grants tools.

I have 2 questions that seems to keep coming back up in my workflow:

1. Pen Tool. I've watched Photoshop tutorials enough to really envy this tool for selecting eyes, lips, etc. What is the best tool in Elements 6 to emulate this? If I'm retouching faces a lot, should I actually be thinking of CS3 just for this tool?

2. Kindly, could anyone give a recipe for performing a realistic rendition of an infrared photograph in Elements 6?

Thanks for any help!

Chawn

[Chuck S.]

Hi, Chawn-

A couple suggestions for you:


The selection brush is a good tool for making precise selections. I've never used the Pen tool in CS, so I can't make a comparative judgement; however, the selection brush is as good as your ability to use a brush.
Simulated infrared has been discussed here a few times over the last couple years. Here's a link to one particularly good thread:
Infrared (http://www.elementsvillage.com/forums/showthread.php?t=33920&highlight=infrared)

Hope that helps a little!

[Sonita]

For me, the Quick Selection toll works the best.

[Chuck S.]

Sonita, I forgot about Quick Selection. I keep reverting to PSE5, which doesn't have the tool; just can't get used to the dark interface of PSE6....

[TonyW]

The Quick Selection tool is probably best for what you want to do but if you want a pen tool you can get it without having to get CS3. The Essentials 2 plug-in from OnOne gives you a pen tool as well as several other additional and useful selection tools. If you want a real clean edge the pen tool is the way to go but I'm not sure that is really what you want for faces.

Tony

[ChawnC]

Thanks for the input! Thanks for the link to the IR discussions, especially.

The thing I liked about the pen tool was the way it tracks around difficult curves, like eyes. I'll have to spend more time using the quick selection tool and see what results I can get, as well. I've been using the lasso but it hasn't been what I've wanted.