Photo-Need more help

[Shari]

Me again - watching the skating - and having fun here - but MUST take the dog for her walk!!
How do you pros get such good selections? I usually have a pretty good eye but cannot seem to make the clear ones I see in your galleries. I use the lasso tool. So in the end what I do is a filter - like here I used crystalize so my uneavenness (word?) does not show so much. Any helpful comments would be appreciated. Thank you.
Shari
http://www.pixentral.com/show.php?picture=1UsjYvOJgNfENZhl6boJzvxxvrX67

[Pauline]

Shari making selections does take practice and having a tablet really helps. (at least for me. It's easier using a pen and tablet rather than the mouse). A lot of times when I'm making a selection where I want to cut out the background, I do a rough selection first and put it on it's own layer and then work from there. What selection tools you use really depends on what you are selecting and what the background is like. For a picture with a plain background, you can get away with using the magic wand tool to get rid of what you don't want. Practice really is the key.

Also after I've made a selection and put it on it's own layer I will then control + click on the layer to select it again.......chose layer contract and chose 2 pixels. Select inverse and hit delete. This helps clean up if you have any background still on your cut out. Also a small feather (one or 2 pixels) on the selection helps your selection blend in with the background and not look 'pasted on'.

[Shari]

Thank you for so much for all that information Pauline. I will print that for my binder and try later - after I sit down with a cup of tea and enjoy my first newsletter which just arrived minutes ago. Yea!!!
Shari

[Wendy]

Shari ...

If the edge still looks a little rough then run the blur tool around it :)

Wendy

[waydon64]

Hi
Just thought I would butt in if thats ok, contracting pixels is another word for feathering I think, you can do this by the menu or just right click inside the selection and this will bring up the menu
Sorry for the interupption hope it helped
Donna

[Ellen]

Hi, I'm jumping in too. This is fun -Shari is just north of me where it's 10pm Thursday and Donna is maybe having lunch on Friday.
Shari- Here's a screen shot of what Pauline was talking about.
http://www.pixentral.com/show.php?picture=1MrA70oUqX7nHynPvj4QzEjNzuF0d

Hope this helps
Ellen

[Wendy]

Hi Shari ...

You need to still have your selection active (marching ants visible) then do Select>Modify>Contract

All that does is contract the selection

Then you do Select>Inverse
and Edit>Delete

What you are doing there is trimming off a little of the image .. and when it does that it tidies up the edge for you :)

Feathering is something different ... that makes the edge slightly see through and I don't tend to use feathering on a selection. I prefer to run the blur tool around it (After I have contracted the selection and trimmed off the excess)

Something else to bear in mind is that the higher the resolution of the image then the better the edge of the selection will be ... images are made up of square pixels so the more there are in there the less you see the squares on your selection :)

Wendy

[karen donnybrook]

Ellen, love the magic circle in your screen shot. What was it originally?

[mel]

Shari.... another way of making a selection, that is if you want to place an object (or person) from one image into another, is to use the eraser.

Sometimes when I just want to add something to an image from another image I just place to whole image in the one I want as a background and the just erase everything I don't want in there. When it comes to the 'fine tuning' I just use the zoom tool to zoom in so I have a better view of what I'm doing.

This usually works really well and it's very easy to do :)

Hope this helps :)

Mel

[Pauline]

Shari so sorry I wasn't clear there. I forgot the 'modify' part. Some times I just need to have elements open to make sure I get the steps right. Wendy explains things so much better than I do.

Wendy I really must start using the blur tool more often. I think it would be a lot easier. Although I have gotten good results from a slight feathering on a selection.

I no longer use the eraser to get rid of backgrounds. I used to but once you erase, it's gone. I prefer to use a layer mask as I can easily correct any problems. This morning I opened a picture that I edited this summer. I want to enter it in a contest but needed to do a bit more work on it. I had blurred the background and then used the eraser to remove the blur where I didn't want it. I found that my erased areas on my dogs fur wasn't not very accurate back then but because I used the eraser I was stuck with what I had. I threw out the layer and started the blur over and this time used a mask. It turned out much better. (and I sure took me a lot less time this time around) :rolleyes:

[Wendy]

Hi Pauline ...

Layer masks are by far the best way to do thing like this ...

I used to use feather quite a lot and then I just went off it ... not sure why.

Another way is make the selection active then do Select>Modify>Border (just a few pixels) ... then apply a Gaussian blur to the border. :)

Wendy

[mel]

Layer masks :rolleyes: I keep reading about them, must start to try that more often. Do I even know what exactly this is :eek:

Does it really make it easier? It's something I think I haven't tried out yet........or maybe I have and just didn't know it :eek: because I tend to try things out and sometimes I don't even know what I'm doing (or the technical terms for what I have done ;) )

Mel

[Wendy]

Hi Mel ...

See that you later found the other thread about Layer Masks ... :)

Wendy

[karen donnybrook]

Pauline, you wrote

"Also after I've made a selection and put it on it's own layer I will then control + click on the layer to select it again.......chose layer contract and chose 2 pixels. Select inverse and hit delete. This helps clean up if you have any background still on your cut out. Also a small feather (one or 2 pixels) on the selection helps your selection blend in with the background and not look 'pasted on'."

I have been trying to follow the above hint but whenever I do what I think is right when I go go layer > layer contract options; I can't be use it because it is not "visible" What am I missing?

[Wendy]

Hi Karen ...

You need Select>Modify>Contract :)

Wendy

[karen donnybrook]

Thanks Wendy. I have changed my notes, so hopefully I will be able to do it the right way in the future. Enjoy your week away. :)

[Wendy]

Thanks Karen :)

We will be leaving about this time tomorrow ..


Wendy

[Pauline]

Sorry Karen!! Some times it's hard to remember all the steps if I don't have elements open!!

[karen donnybrook]

Pauline, that is alright. It is very hard trying to write instrucitons from memory when it is something one does automatically :)