Select - Copy - Paste ?

[slophotos]

Hello - I couldn't figure out which search words to find the answer to my question, so I am posting it.

I have a picture of a person in a field of tulips. I am planning to desaturate the person, however, his shirt is blown to the side and looks funny. I have selected the portion of his shirt that needs to be cut. I now want to take that selection and put it in the field of flowers so I can copy the flowers into the selection and then take the selection and replace the portion of the shirt I cut out. I hope this makes sense. I am so perplexed as to how to succeed at this. Can someone provide me directions? - thanks kindly.

[Jodi Frye]

hello, so if I understand you correctly, you want to replace the 'bad portion' of the shirt with the background of some of the tulips that are already there ? The way I would do it; select the clone stamp tool and alt+click an area of the tulips ( choose an area that would have the tulips at right size,distance perception etc...) then create a new layer above your image and drag the clone stamp on the new layer to 'cover up' the bad part of the shirt with the area you sampled from. You can be as sloppy as you want as far as edges on the new layer....cause you can go back afterwards and erase and/or select what you don't need.

Afterwards, when ya think ya got it looking the way you want merge the two layers together.

You can then make a selection of the person with lasso tool or selection brush and go to toolbar>layer>new adjustment layer>hue saturation. ( or use shortcut to adjustment layers at bottom of layers palette..b&w circle)and desaturate the person. This adjustment layer creates a mask over your image. You can fine tune the mask by painting black on it to remove it or white to add....it's a good non destructive approach.

[Chuck S.]

Jodi, hi! I answered the same question with a slightly different technique in another part of the forum - but of course I like your technique better!

I have to learn to look in all the sections of this forum before answering; lots of new posters are obviously unsure which place to post so they do several duplicates. I understand that; I just have to look first, answer questions later!

:wink:

[Jodi Frye]

Chuck, honestly, i really didn't see the question elsewhere but was was in and out pretty quick. there just isn't enough hours in the day to keep up ! I'll bet your approach was just a different way but just as good. That is what's nice about this software 1001 ways to skin a photo !

[slophotos]

Thanks to both of you!

I posted it first on the beginners forum, because that is what I consider myself and then wondered if anyone would answer being as it is a more complicated question, so I posted it on the advanced forum too. I appreciate both of you answering. Jodi, I like the additional info you provided as well.

Thanks