How to you do this PLEASE..

[Juice]

Hi

I have been trying this out on psp9 and elements3 but i just can't get it right..How do you make a selection mask from a flower,lets say a dandelion,BUT when its seed head is white and fluffy. and move it to another picture...can elements turn jpeg into pngs? Thats what i want to do ,,but I can't..rather dont know how...

Juice

[Goofup]

First, I'm no expert. I bow humbly in the presence of Jodie, Wendy, and others who are, but nobody's jumped on this, so what the heck- I will!

First, yes, Elements will save jpgs as pngs. Just use Save As and select the file type. (You've probably already figured that out by now.)

As for your dandelion, imagine you've got a picture of a tennis racket against a black background. Cutting the tennis racket out and moving it is easy- but you want to put a person's face showing through the tennis racket. You'll have to make a mask deleting all the black between all the the strings so the face will show through (that should keep you busy for a while). Then there's your dandelion, which is about a couple thousand times tougher because you've got all that background (and in various shades) showing through the seed pod. Can it be done? Well, yea, but Adobe will probably come out with a new version of Elements before you could finish.

HOWEVER, I haven't seen your picture, but hopefully the dandelion has a solid color background, and you want to move it to where there's another, but different, solid colored background. In that case, you could just use Replace Color (with the Fuzziness set kinda high) of the original to match as close as you can to the new background. It won't be perfect, but it's better than nothing.

[Jodi Frye]

well it was late last night when i read this and didn't have the energy to reply ;)

you could try selecting that fuzzy dandelion head with the magic wand tool...but it probably wont get every little hair...I'd still try it anyways. You can also make a rough selection around it with the lasso tool. After you have it selected have both images open on the screen then select the move tool and drag the selection of the dandelion head over to the other image. You can use the smudge tool to soften up the edges of the dandelion puffy head afterwards...just light smudge it out from the edges. ...and maybe blur it a bit. Yes it can be saved in any format as Goofup mentioned...' save as'.

Goofup...lol...what a name :lol:

[Wendy]

Jodi,

I too saw it late last night and was to tired to reply ....

If there is a good contrast between the dandelion head and the background you may stand a chance. For example if it is a light coloured seed head against a darkish background then this way may work.

Duplicate your layer and do a level adjustment on the new layer then select the dodge tool ... set it to 70% and highlights. Now go over all the edges of the seedhead ... don't worry if it looses detail and goes white. Next use the magic wand to make a selection then go to the layers palette, turn off the eyeball of the new layer and click on the old layer. Hopefully that will have captured most of it.

It maybe easier to go out find another and photograph it agains a black card :)

Wendy