Saving selections

[Shari]

OK - Hi
Nothing seems to be straightforward. I am using Scott's Elements 3 book. I want to take a selection of my dog out of one photo so I can put her in front of the fireplace with a santa hat on in another photo for a card. I twice did the selections with the brush and by clicking around the selection. I then chose save selection, gave a name and clicked OK. Both times (and it takes a while to outline my little doggy) I seem to have lost the selection. He says you can get it back by choosing the load section but when I go into that it is faded so I cannot use it. I think I must be missing a step. Any help would be appreciated.

And when I have your attention is there a quick way to add a santa hat. I can find one in my Print Shop graphics but how do I bring it into Elements Editor. I'm thinking the whole thing is probably easier to do in Print Shop but now that I have Elements I feel I should use it. Am I trying to use Elements for the wrong thing. I do take the finished edited photo and put it into Print Shop so I can print them on to notecards. I think I am trying to figure out too much just before Christmas. Thanks for any help.
Shari

[Pauline]

Shari it does get easier. When you are saving your selection, are you then trying to put it into ANOTHER photo? If that's the case the selection saves for that open file and I don't believe can be opened in your other file. (I hope what I'm trying to say is making sense.

Here is what I do. Make a selection, and put it on it's own layer. Control Click on that layer to make it into a selection, then save that selection. Now it's saved for this picture. With the selection still active, I drag it to the photo I want to put it in. Now that you have it in your new document, you can use save selection again, and in THIS document it will be saved as a selelction. Does that make sense to you? I could be doing this in a backward way and maybe someone will come along with a better idea.

As for your graphics, can you just copy the file, and the go to edit>paste on your new file??

[Ward Grant]

A quick note to Pauline's great answer:

You said you had saved the selection. When you open the file again, you should be able to Load Selection, which should save you the trouble of reselecting the outline you want. You can then use Pauline's method to save that to another layer.